I Love Childhood Memories
AN EXPLOSIVE BOYHOOD
Like many boys, I had a great interest in soldiers and wars and explosions and guns and bombs. No internet then, but I managed to find the recipe for gunpowder, and I was able to buy the ingredients at the chemist's shop. I was 14 or 15 at the time. I mixed sodium chlorate, saltpetre, and the third ingredient (was it sugar?)in the required proportions. I got a foot-long copper pipe, drilled a hole in it for the fuse (a drinking straw filled with the same mixture), hammered one end tight shut then hammered it over on itself, filled the pipe with my "gunpowder," then CAREFULLY hammered the other end shut. It made a nice little bomb, and I could move a fair-sized boulder with it in the field behind our house.
My undoing came with the next project. I decided to make a gun (very elementary in form) and my own bullet for it. The bullet was to be made with a shell case from the local firing-range, filled with my powder, and plugged with a wooden plug that would be the projectile. Firing was to happen when the head of a nail, placed head down against the bottom of the case, was pressed against an explosive cap between it and the case bottom.
The trick was to get the wooden plug in tightly, with the nail through it, the nail touhing the cap. Of course, this was bound to go wrong - and it did.
It blew up in my hands.
I found myself on the ground, with a finger blown open, and - here is the miracle - one lens of my glasses missing, but no injury to my eye, thank God.
My parents were out. I ran to the neighbour's. She drove me to hospital, where they stitched my finger and cleaned me up. No permanent damage, except for the finger scar visible to this day.
The only pleasant thing I remember about the hospital was the attentions of two nurses. One of them bent over me and her breast was against the top of my thigh. You can imagine the effet that had on a 14-year-old boy! I twisted myself to get her breast against a more strategic part of me. They saw me, and thought I was in pain. They didn't know, but it was more like ecstasy than pain!
That put an end to my gunpowder exploits. Instead, I started to explore other things...
Like many boys, I had a great interest in soldiers and wars and explosions and guns and bombs. No internet then, but I managed to find the recipe for gunpowder, and I was able to buy the ingredients at the chemist's shop. I was 14 or 15 at the time. I mixed sodium chlorate, saltpetre, and the third ingredient (was it sugar?)in the required proportions. I got a foot-long copper pipe, drilled a hole in it for the fuse (a drinking straw filled with the same mixture), hammered one end tight shut then hammered it over on itself, filled the pipe with my "gunpowder," then CAREFULLY hammered the other end shut. It made a nice little bomb, and I could move a fair-sized boulder with it in the field behind our house.
My undoing came with the next project. I decided to make a gun (very elementary in form) and my own bullet for it. The bullet was to be made with a shell case from the local firing-range, filled with my powder, and plugged with a wooden plug that would be the projectile. Firing was to happen when the head of a nail, placed head down against the bottom of the case, was pressed against an explosive cap between it and the case bottom.
The trick was to get the wooden plug in tightly, with the nail through it, the nail touhing the cap. Of course, this was bound to go wrong - and it did.
It blew up in my hands.
I found myself on the ground, with a finger blown open, and - here is the miracle - one lens of my glasses missing, but no injury to my eye, thank God.
My parents were out. I ran to the neighbour's. She drove me to hospital, where they stitched my finger and cleaned me up. No permanent damage, except for the finger scar visible to this day.
The only pleasant thing I remember about the hospital was the attentions of two nurses. One of them bent over me and her breast was against the top of my thigh. You can imagine the effet that had on a 14-year-old boy! I twisted myself to get her breast against a more strategic part of me. They saw me, and thought I was in pain. They didn't know, but it was more like ecstasy than pain!
That put an end to my gunpowder exploits. Instead, I started to explore other things...
