Well, that got me to thinking about fire crackers. Seems that my generation isn't the only one to be obsessed by firecrackers - or more accurately, pyrotechnics. Here - let me tell you about it.
Me and the Kid
And Firecrackers
The kid says to me, "Can we go get some lady fingers?" he says.
"Have a peanut butter sandwich," I says. I thought he was talking about cookies.
It took him a minute to figure out where my mind was at. Then he got it. "No, not cookies." He eyes me kind of funny. "Firecrackers! They're called lady fingers!"
"What?" I wanted to know. "They still make those things?"
The kid was surprised. He never figured I even knew about ladyfingers. "Yeah," he says, "They're cool."
About this time my mind leaves the conversation. It drifts back, way back to a time when I remember two or three boys, maybe eleven - twelve years old have got their heads together to think up something to do. Not that there isn't always something to do, but if you've done it before it loses it's edge. No, you've got to invent something new.
The time I'm talking about is just after WW II. Our heads were still full of airplanes and battleships and tanks and blowing everything to smithereens. Of course our experience with death and destruction came mainly from the movies, so we had kind of a different perspective on things.
Blowing up bombers or sinking destroyers had everything to do with pyrotechnics and nothing to do the loss of human life as far as we were concerned. And we could blow things up with the best of them.
Boys of that age are endowed with some extraordinary talents. It must be in the genes. Firstly, every last one of them is a demolition expert. That's a given. Next, most know how to build stuff – after a fashion. Well, you can't destroy something unless you build it first. The other necessary ingredient is the usual over abundance of imagination born into every boy. You stir all that in a mixing pot and voila! There’s a whole stew of fun and adventure.
Up to now, most of our model building had been centered on model airplanes. Every model of fighter and bomber ever built in the real world could be had at St. John's hobby shop. We'd spend hours with balsa wood, glue, colored tissue paper and airplane dope on these things only to have them crash on their maiden flight. Then we'd patch them up and do it all over again.
Well, normally that was good enough to keep us occupied between other adventures during the year. But given all our special talents, come Queen Victoria's birthday when there were fireworks all over the place, that just didn't cut it. Maybe the fireworks were good enough for the old folks and two-year-olds, but after you’d seen it once it was just plain boring. What a waste!
Even lighting these little ladyfingers and throwing them at the girls wasn't all that much of a sport because they always told their mothers on us. That was more trouble than it was worth. No, we had bigger fish to fry.
We soon figured out how to build a big destroyer ship from left over balsa wood and paper and airplane dope. We could make it go too with a rubber band and propeller from one of our wrecked model planes.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Before the days of paved roads and curbs and sewers and all, there were ditches on all the streets to drain rain and spring run-off water. We had all kinds of uses for those ditches, one being to sail destroyer ships in.
Where was I? Oh yeah - ladyfingers. They used to come in little packages with the wicks all braided together by one long wick. That meant you could string them out in a long line and you'd have them popping off one after the other like machine-gun fire until you ran out of ladyfingers. Either that or you could pull them out one by one, light the wick and throw them at somebody. The thing was that they were small - couldn't do much damage by themselves. They were only about three-quarters of an inch long and about the thickness of a fat pencil lead. There was maybe fifty in a single pack.
So what we did was load the inside of our self-designed destroyer with ladyfingers. When everything was in place, we’d wind up the propeller attached to several loops of rubber band. The wick was kind of short so you had to hold the thing in the water while somebody struck a match. If you didn't let go soon enough, you could wind up with about two hundred ladyfingers going off in your face. Of course, that was part of the challenge.
When she blew, it was just like in the movies - even better! There was a rapid-fire set of explosions that lasted half way past the neighbor's place before she sunk. That was the best piece of demolition we'd ever pulled off! We've been talking about it ever since.
I wouldn't have told you about all this except that's what I told the kid.
"Cool," he says.
A while later he says, "Can I invite my friend over? He's got a whole bunch of ladyfingers."
I figure, why not? We don't have any model boats to blow up mind, but we ought to be able to find something. Besides, if I'm there to supervise, what can go wrong?
"Okay," I tell him.
So the friend's dad drives him over - says he'll pick him up about four. Soon as he's gone the boys want to get at blowing things up.
Nothing else is on their destructive little minds. Well, like I said, you've got to build something before you can blow it up, and I'm racking my brain.
"How many ladyfingers you got?" I ask the friend.
He hauls a whole fist full out of his pocket and shows them to me.
"Holy Hannah!" I yell. "Those are no ladyfingers! They're Block- busters!" They're at least two inches long and as fat as a whole pencil. I know what those things can do! They can blow a Campbell's soup can twelve feet in the air if you set them right.
"No," say the boys both together and show me the package. They're ladyfingers all right. “What can we blow up?"
Old shingles and stones from the gravel driveway on a piece of tin, you name it and we blew it up. It was one of those magic afternoons you reminisce about. Only this time I was old enough to have some common sense about safety precautions. Still, it took me right back to my boyhood. I wouldn't trade that afternoon for all the rice in China. All too soon four o'clock rolls around and the dad shows up to collect his boy and the kid heads for the television. Me - I climb on the lawn tractor and mow the grass, all smug and self-satisfied.
About six-thirty or so I'm outside doing something I can't remember what when a cruiser car comes slinking down our driveway. The Mountie pokes his head out the window and how dee do's himself. I do the same back. He tells me the neighbors called to say they heard some shooting in the afternoon that sounded like it came from here.
“No kiddin’,” I said, trying to think how I’d answer him without telling a big whopper.
Well, you just can't go around lying now can you? What sort of example would that set? You've got to tell the truth and that's all there is to it. So I said I hadn't heard any shooting, which was the truth. Heck we don't even have any guns. I could have said it was just the boys and me setting off some firecrackers, but I didn't know if that was legal, so I didn't.
But I felt I owed the cop something more so I offered that I'd just finished cutting the grass - about three acres of it. When that lawn tractor is going, you can't hear a thing so I couldn't rightly tell. That was the truth too. But I asked had they checked on that road behind us? It's kind of lovers' lane of sorts where anything can happen. The Mountie allowed that he might, and left. I haven't seen him since.
Of course when I got inside, everybody wanted to know what was up. They were kind of excited to see a cruiser car at our place. I told them they were here because they had a complaint about shooting going on around here.
The kid's eyes bugged right out of his head. "What did you tell them?" You could see he was already imagining himself in handcuffs and being hauled off in a cruiser car.
"I told them the truth," I said casually. "I told them I didn't hear any shooting going on here this afternoon." Then I added, "You got to tell the truth, especially to the cops. Otherwise you'll get in big trouble."
"Cool." Says the kid.
I never got chewed out for that one neither. I guess I still got what it takes.
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