by "Buck"

July 7, 2005

I penned a piece last week in reference to $50 worth of M-80's that we purchased when I was in high school.  The blast that leveled a dump was our finale, but we still had fireworks leftover.  What happened to those remaining fireworks remains a mystery to this day, but some of them most certainly wound up in the wrong hands---as if ours were the RIGHT hands to be in to start with.

The leftover M-80's apparently survived several more weeks in storage in the home of my friends, because the troubles started in the fall after we returned to school.  There are three specific incidents of which I was not involved—that M-80's mysteriously led to destruction and mayhem during my junior year.

Incident number one.  Our vocational school was actually located at
the county seat in Wise, Virginia.  That's about a 25-mile ride by bus
and a lot of mischief can happen on that ride.  I recall my buddy
telling me in the locker room before a football game that season that
he had SOLD some of the M-80's.  He gave me a cut of my money since I was an investor.  I thought nothing more of it, we played the game and had a big time afterward.  I remembered however that the air was ripe with wood smoke for that night's game.  It wasn't unusual to have forest fires in the fall….but on the following Monday I learned this was no ordinary forest fire.  The State Police were at the school
questioning several people from the "Shop Bus" about this fire that
had been traced to fireworks thrown from the window.  To my knowledge they never caught the culprit, I was never hauled in for questioning nor were my friends, but I'm almost certain the suspect used one of our aforementioned M-80's to set the woods on fire from the bus window.

Two weeks later, I was sitting in my English class minding my own
business when the entire building shook and there was a muffled "boom".   We thought perhaps one of the local coal mines had endured a methane explosion.  It was so powerful the windows of the building rattled.  There was another thought that the noise and shudder came from blasting operations about three miles up the mountain from the school where a highway was under construction.   All of that speculation ended when water literally started to seep from the floor's tiling.   It was eerie as the room began to literally BLEED
water.  It was like a massive H20 hemorrhage right there among the
desks.  Naturally it was cause for bedlam and we were going insane.
The smart ass remarks were flying with every moment and the high
comedy was underway.  Somehow the school administration was less
amused than we—and even lesser amused by our public commentary on the FUBAR situation.  A couple of guys got paddled for nothing more than smart ass wise cracks.  The final analysis, somebody (never identified) flushed an M-80 down the commode in the boy's restroom next to our English class.  The explosion happened in a drain pipe directly beneath our feet.  We got a little water in the floor---the computer lab downstairs got a torrential downpour and there were a bunch of busted Apple-II-E's short circuiting along with a couple Future Business Leaders of America.  They were PISSED down there.  Nobody was ever fingered and again, none of us were ever questioned.

The final blow of this Shock and Awe campaign came a couple of weeks later when all was quiet and we were studying Shakespeare or some such shit.  The silence of the afternoon was split—and I was shaken awake—by an explosion that this time sounded like it was just next door.  No surprise—it was.  This time, the culprit had used a
short fuse and blasted the urinal off the wall.  It was a classic setup. Light a cigarette and tape the M-80 to it…as it burned you'd
have about five minutes before detonation.  The explosion happened
after the terrorist was long gone.  The M-80 had apparently been
dropped into a crack between the urinal and the wall—just big enough
to slip the bomb into.  The explosion shattered the urinal into a
million pieces, shattered the sink next to it, one of those partition
walls, and blew out every window in the room.  Fortunately, nobody
was taking a piss or they would spend the rest of their life enduring
the nickname "stumpy."

The next chain of events is something I'll never forget as long as I
live.  Once janitors managed to stop the rushing water, the principal called every boy in the school to the auditorium.  Of course there was a huge buzz about the big explosion in the upstairs bathroom and it was the source of constant chatter and amusement. All of the festivities ceased when the principal walked, in dramatic fashion, on to the stage from behind the curtain.  He carried a paper grocery bag with him.   A hush fell over the gathered punk ass crowd as he stepped forward.  He was a former Marine and was big as a mountain.  He opened the bag, and dumped huge chunks of glass into a big pile on the stage.  He then proceeded to scream, "That could have
been one of your little pussy faces!"  He wove a tapestry of
profanity in that address that may never be topped.  He called us
every name I'd ever heard—and a few that I haven't hear since.  He
was fucking PISSED.

We sat ramrod straight, staring straight ahead and trying our best not
to eyeball him.  Everybody was ordered to stand at attention, military style, and anybody who didn't was going to get an ass whipping.  A couple of the real rebels attempted to call his bluff---only to learn it was no act—he smacked one guy across the face and told him the next one would be a full fisted sucker punch in the nose.  Holy Fucking Shit.  It was abundantly clear by now that he was in no mood for bullshit.  He paced up and down the aisles of the auditorium, in R-Lee Emry style and occasionally jumped up in somebody's face.     Fortunately, he never singled me out for questioning less than an inch from his face.  I saw two guys who were the height of toughness, start crying—literally sobbing in tears.  He dragged another guy out who snickered and kicked him square in the ass.  It's safe to say, he had our attention.

He stopped onto the glass pile and started kicking it all over the place and demanding somebody either fess up, or rat out whoever was
responsible.  Trust me, nobody was going to lie because his bullshit tolerance meter was running on fumes.  He threatened to close all boys' restrooms for the duration of the school year until the culprit was found.  He also threatened to take us to the gym and start running our asses until he found out who was responsible. Fortunately, it never came to that.   A guy in the back stood up and confessed.  The principal didn't say a word.  He walked to the guy, grabbed him by the back of his collar, and literally dragged him out of the room, kicking and screaming.   The assistant principal was in no mood either—he dismissed us and I recall him saying something to
the effect, "If any of you says a fucking word on the way back to
class, we'll be coming after you as well."

To my knowledge, it was never spoken of again.  You know how weird
school shit gets out and grows as it's told…this story was NEVER
retold in the halls.  All of the girls were asking what happened in
that auditorium.  I would never say a word, and I never overheard
anybody telling them.  Oh, I'm sure outside of school a few things
were relayed, but the gravity of the moment was most certainly used to suppress any rumors.  I'm almost reluctant to relay the story here.
Hell, the truth in this case was beyond anything we would have made
up.  Nobody would believe it if this story were made up—and today,
that principal would have been in prison.  As for the culprit, I didn't know him…and none of us ever saw him again.  He probably was
sent to a federal pound-me-in-the-ass reform school…and then prison
once turning 18.  There were never any more M-80 in school incidents after that.   However, as a monument and reminder, that boys bathroom TO THIS DAY is still closed and as far as I know was never
repaired.

Buck Out

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