| In our early teens, one of our favorite hangouts was the township dump which was located about 2 miles from our place. We would ride our bikes there and spend countless hours playing in the trash and throwing glass bottles down to the bottom of the heap and watch them shatter. One time we found and old car hood and used it as a toboggan and slid down the trash hill and then pull it back upto the top with an old rope we found there and do it all over again. One spot about 3/4 of the way down the "hill" had an old sofa sticking out of it and we would slid down and hit the sofa and fly up in the air and land back on the trash. The most fun was setting some of the trash on fire and throwing aerosol cans in the fire and watch them explode. The best aerosol cans to find were "Rapid Shave" cans because they were seamless and really blew loudly! One Saturday on a late summer day we gathered all the "Rapid Shave" cans we could find and stacked some old tires up in a pile. We figured with a really hot tire fire and all "Rapid Shave" cans, that we would have the ultimate chain explosions! We started the pile of tires on fire and waited for them to really get going to get the biggest, hottest fire we could. The black smoke was pouring from the burning tires in enormous black plumes! We then threw in all the shave cans and took cover behind the small shed at the dump. After a short time, the cans started exploding. WOW! The explosions were of epic earth and ear splitting proportions! After all the cans finally exploded, we decided to ride our bikes into town to see what kind of mischief we could manage to get into. When we got there, due to the wind direction and a thermal inversion, the WHOLE town was blanketed with an immobile thick black cloud of, acrid tire smoke! You could hardly breath! We quickly made our exit out of town and went back home and sat "innocently" watching T.V. Since we never got caught for this huge foray, we once again managed to elude another "close shave"! |
