| The story about our exploits with .22 firearms reminded me of another one of our exploits with .22's, albeit a much more dangerous one! When Len, Tim, and I were not otherwise engaged in shooting .22 shells in rifles and pistols, we were just shooting the shells without putting them in firearms! We would go to the "Oat House" (which we called the small barn down the lane where some of our grain was stored), and break an ear of corn in half and take a live .22 shell and push it head first all the way into the soft pith center of the cob so just the firing rim was flush with the cob center. (When we were very young and would break an ear of corn in half, we used to think the soft pith in the center of the cob was snow that never melted)! Alas, the young mind! Anyway, we would put the corn cob with the .22 into a grain bin and put the end of the barrel of a BB gun against the end of the .22 and then get behind the outside of the bin with just our hand on the trigger of the BB gun, then shoot a BB into the end of the .22. The exploding .22 shell would cause the corn cob to explode, sending kernels of corn and pieces of cob bouncing of the walls and top of the grain bin! Other times, we would hold the barrel of the .22 rifle straight up in the air and put a penny on the end of the barrel and hold it straight up over our heads and fire it! The penny would "whizz" out of sight straight up in the air! We would then take cover in the oat house in case the penny would come back down and hit us in the head. In those days we really took extreme care to be safe! (Yeah, right!) Other times, we would take a shot gun shell and open the end of it and remove the buck shot, then remove the plug and empty out the gunpowder into a pile and throw a match in it and watch it go "Poof" in a cloud of acrid smoke. Then we would put the stub end into our shot gun and fire the cap. Sometimes we would get our hands on some flashpowder from John W.(which packed a much more powerful "wallop" than gun powder) and make pipe bombs. Our most memorable pipe bomb was one that we made by taking a 6 inch piece of old water pipe we found in the barn and threading both ends and put pipe caps on them and drilling a hole in one end and filling it with flashpowder and sticking in a cherry bomb fuse. We put it in Len's woods across from his house and used our old reliable fuse and cigarette method that we used behind the bank. After inserting the lit cigarette, we raced on our bikes to our place and listened. When it went off it seemed like the whole woods shook! When we went to the spot afterward, the ground where the bomb was sitting was stripped of all vegatation in a diameter of about 4 feet or so (as best I can recall). Hmmmm, I guess you could say we had a rather "explosive" childhood! |
