I’m reminded of three instances while growing up: When Dad said no, and I lit the fuse anyway; the smoke bomb in the neighbor’s basement; and the bottle rockets that friend Dave and I set off to land exactly above his neighbor’s dog house.
Oh, we were so evil then …
***
First, when Dad said no.
This is the most innocent of the three. I’m guessing I was but 8 or 9 years old. As July 4th approached, I and my neighbor friends had amassed loads of Black Cats, Atomic and Dixie Boy firecrackers. We also bought Peacock brand, but I remember they were kind of wimpy. Lots of duds.
Sure, we had “safe” fireworks, like snakes and sparklers. But who does those and then boasts about it?
Firecrackers, though … oh, what power! We put 'em under tin cans and sent the cans soaring. We did other things, of course, but I can’t say what for fear of inspiring others.
So on that holiday, we had family friends over for food and fun. The food was ready, so Dad decreed “no more firecrackers.”
As everyone else sat down to eat barbecue outside, I dawdled in the backyard. I had a Black Cat all ready to go. I have no idea why I did it. Perhaps because I could. But I lit it.
“Bang!!” A single shot, but stark because of the quiet around it.
“Doug!!!” Dad yelled.
“Uh oh,” I thought.
I ran down to where he was, between house and garage. Dad rarely got mad. But he clearly was angry. The only other time I saw him like this was when I had hurled a tennis ball through the back-bedroom window.
“I told you … no … more … firecrackers.” He said it quietly, forcefully, his face hard, his normal smile gone.
Chastened, I lit no more that night. Oh, a few snakes and sparklers.
But nothing to boast about.
***
A couple of years later, I was visiting my next-door neighbor, Mikey. We hung out in his basement, which was kind of cool … it was “finished,” which meant it had decent walls, was dry and well organized. It had a television at one end, couches in the middle. We used to gather there to watch spook movies like Frankenstein and the Mummy.
In the corner of the basement, though, in a small, separate room, sat the internal portion of the central air conditioning system. Now, keep in mind that central air conditioning back then wasn’t necessarily common. We didn’t have it at our house; we’d eventually get a few window units, but nothing like the neighbors’ centralized installation. It was a massive metal box with a big whirring fan that sat behind slatted doors. You could pop the doors open to see what was inside.
Well, for some reason that day I came armed with a pocketful of round smoke bombs. Smoke bombs then and now are pretty harmless. Not a bomb at all, really, but a ball of sulfuric substance that releases innocent clouds of various colors. They stink, of course, but that’s the fun of it.
I don’t know why I did it – perhaps because I could – but I lit one of them and tossed it in to the air conditioning unit’s little chamber. And the smoke billowed forth.
Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect when I lit the fuse. Sure, I assumed there’d be smoke in that room. But I think I also knew intuitively that the AC unit would send that smoke up throughout the whole house. That was the experiment – and the mischief.
Sure enough, I heard cries upstairs, and then Mikey's sister charged down the stairs, complaining that green smoke was coming through the vents in the rooms above … all the way to the second floor.
“Ah hah!” I thought … followed by “ooops.”
I decided to leave. I walked up the basement stairs to the outside and slinked back home. I never heard from the neighbor’s parents about the incident. Luckily they weren’t home. And green smoke, after all, is eye-catching but temporary. Poof, it’s gone.
But the act became legend in the neighborhood. If I may so boast.
***
Now this third act was the most diabolical. By now I’m well in to junior high school, so the mischief gets a bit more sophisticated.
What I can’t recall was whether this was July 4th or New Year’s Eve. I believe the latter, because I remember it was a dark night. Regardless, the bottle rockets were leftovers from a July 4th stash.
My folks and I were at a friend’s house for holiday dinner. Dave and I had been friends since grade school. Not quite like peas in a pod, because he was smarter than me. But close nonetheless. One Halloween, we made matching Indian totem-pole costumes and wore them in our grade school’s Halloween parade. That’s how close we were.
Anyway, older now and unquestionably wiser, we decided to step outside while the parents enjoyed coffee after dinner.
“I’ve got some bottle rockets,” Dave said quietly. And a metal pipe to shoot them from, he added. So we were set.
Only, the target wasn’t straight up. The neighbors across the street, to the east, had a rather large dog in the backyard. Dave wanted to see if we could arch the bottle rockets over the house, into the backyard.
Oh, a key point: These rockets soared then “BOOMED!” at the end of their short journey.
A marvelous invention.
So we prepared our first launch. Dave, using his smarts, estimated distance, angle, wind speed. The pipe in the ground now adjusted, he lit the fuse.
“FFffffffiiiiiitttttt!”
Off it went; trailed by sparks, it banked wide left of the house.
“BOOM!!”
“Rrwooof!! Rrwoof!” The barking began … not barks of fear or cowardice, but slow barks directed at a nuisance.
We snickered.
Dave adjusted the pipe up and to the right a bit, then loaded another one.
“FFffffffiiiiiitttttt!”
Up it shot, a beautiful arch over the house, then behind it.
“BOOM!!”
We could see the tight blast, white against the dark sky.
“RRRR-WOOOF!! RRRR-WOOOF!!”
No longer tentative, the dog was in a frenzy. The barks weren’t just angry ... more a deep-throated scream of bloodlust. I imagined him on a rope that was overstretched, a rubber band ready to snap.
We laughed, now nervously.
So we readied a third and sent it soaring. Perfectly targeted, it exploded as designed.
The dog was apoplectic. And dogs throughout the neighborhood were joining in … barks of sympathy or shared anger, I couldn’t tell. But many voices, and loud.
Suddenly, the neighbor’s front door crashed open. The father charged out. We could see him because of his porch light; he could see us because of ours.
He looked straight at us, his face an angry red. Cursing loudly, he spun like a dervish, marched inside and slammed the door.
“Oh crap,” I thought. Dave uttered something more vivid.
Within seconds, the telephone inside Dave’s house rang.
We held our breaths, knew what was coming. The dogs’ chorus continued.
Dave’s front door jerked open; we looked at our shoes, like that would save us.
You can imagine what came next. It did. Needless to say, we were disarmed.
In hindsight, I’m a bit ashamed of this act. So there’s no boasting here. I love dogs, and I would be incensed if this was attempted on my two pups.
But youth is a time to test limits.
We did it, clearly because we could.
We did it, clearly because we could.
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