by "Buck"

June 29, 2005

The Fourth of July means many things to many people.  For some it's a celebration of America's freedom, to others it's a get together with
family and friends, in our hometown I knew guys who find it another
occasion to get drunk and do something stupid.  Seems among the
circles I ran with in my formative years, there really wasn't a special occasion for that—it was considered daily life.

However, it was only on a rare occasion such as the Fourth of July and New Year's Day those white tents started springing up literally feet from the Virginia/Tennessee state line and across the border in the Volunteer State it was a terrorist's version of Kroger's.  I'm often amazed at how they can, literally overnight, create a store with a fireworks inventory along the lines of a Super Wal-Mart.

As a kid I would walk down the aisles of explosives of varying degree
dreaming up ways to destroy things for no reason.  There were firecrackers, smoke bombs, cherry bombs, swizzle sticks, sparklers, Roman candles…. the list of these common pyrotechnics went on…. fuck dat.  I wanted the good stuff.  The guy running the joint always had the look that he was on sabbatical. Perhaps his regular job was Ferris Wheel repair or he was the pixie dust spreader on the tilt-o-whirl. He always had a collection of naked women tattoos—and this was at a time that nobody respectable would have a tattoo.  It was always very likely he was a fugitive and wanted for some crime in another state. We'd glance in both directions and then grunt something to the effect, "Let's see the REAL shit."   He'd glance both ways and motion us into the back.

I could be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure if we had the money we could have purchased a couple of nuclear warheads in that back room.  The summer between my junior and senior year, we amassed enough cash to buy 25 M-80's.  It cost us roughly $50, but what the fuck, it was the Fourth of July.  I was always told that four-M-80's was the equivalent of a stick of dynamite, but Kevin Lane told me that and he could have been off since he always cheated in math class.

The M-80's were placed into an ATF approved brown paper sack and we left with our booty, intent on starting World War III with a first
strike.  We got to my dad's farm and decided the safest place to let these off was in an old junk dump on the corner of the farm.  The
dump is actually a large sink hole where large junk items had been
"stowed" for years.  My dad tells me over the course of his life he's seen five cars disappear into the hole.  They've been trying to fill it with old appliances, wood surplus, various rusty steel products and the like since the 1940's and all of that just keeps sinking further.   Yes, I know it's an environmental nightmare—but I didn't start the shit.

Anyway, there was an old car freshly deposited in the hole.  This was
perfect.  We decided to start out safely and placed one M-80 on the
bumper, lit the fuse, and ran like hell.  The sound was nothing short
of an atomic bomb and the vehicle's grill disintegrated before our
eyes.  We lit a few more in safe fashion and watched with glee as
pieces of sheet metal were carved apart.  Don't get ahead of me,
but yes you are correct—we weren't satisfied.

We decided to take TEN of the M-80's and wire the fuses together.  I held the homemade grenade while my buddy lit the thing.  I tossed the mass of high explosives into the front seat of the car and ran like a scalded dog for cover.  The only difference in us and Jackass was that we had no video-camera.  We were renaissance men ahead of
our time I suppose.  The ensuing explosion was not unlike the loudest boom you've ever heard—times 100.  None of us could hear anything for days—save for that high pitched "ring" in our ears. The interior of the car filled with fire, the whole thing jumped 10-feet off the ground and all four doors were blown in four directions.  We had positioned ourselves behind and embankment at least 25 yards away.  One of the doors flew over our head and landed another 100-yards behind us.  Glass flew everywhere; we later found pieces of it sticking in trees in a 200-yard circle around the dump. The force of the explosion sent other debris in the dump flying in all directions as well. There was shit laying EVERYWHERE.  We figured the car's seats would catch fire, but did not.  I later learned they would have, but the concussion of the explosion blew out the flames. We felt that concussion through our own bodies—sort of a hyped-up full body shiver as Jeff Kay likes to describe.

The 10-M80 blast was our grand finale for the Independence Day celebration.  We had several of the explosives left over, but after that we figured there was no reason to use any more.  Ironically, we didn't destroy anything---at least nothing that wasn't already junk. I'm glad we selected the secluded location, otherwise my dad would have been explaining a lot to the guys at State Farm.  My dad didn't seem to appreciate the car and precautions we had taken and ordered my buddy and me to pick up all of the debris from the field and return it to ground zero.  He harped and bitched for years that all of that glass would kill his cattle and actually fenced off the blast zone to keep them out of it.

Those remaining M-80's would later become the subject of a couple of
criminal investigations and are probably becoming unstable in a police
evidence locker.  I'll relay those stories at a later time.

Buck Out

                             <<previous next>>

                                    
                 The West Virginia Surf Report!