Romie’s Raccoons

I recently returned from an all too short camping trip that included 4 generations of Vandermolens.

For those of you who have read several of my previous stories; No, as surprising as it may seem, there is no law against that many Vandermolen’s getting together at the same time and camping.

And also; No, no forest fires, explosions, or other significant disasters occurred. Well, mostly, though you might want to watch for the “Jesse, the gas can’s on fire” story to be posted later. But, in defense, while there were Vandermolen’s present at the gas can issue, the causal individual was not even related by marriage, much less blood. Well, not yet anyway.

One of the more important individuals on this particular trip was Romie. Romie is in the 4^th generation tier of the group. Young, pixy pretty, energetic, and overflowing with joy that constantly infects everyone around her.

On the first morning in camp while walking from one site to another, Romie noticed some movement at the base of an old cottonwood tree. Sneaking close she spotted something climbing up the trunk of a huge Cottonwood tree just outside of camp. Suddenly, peering around the heavy bark she saw sharp eyes staring back at her from small masked faces as three young raccoons followed their mother up the trunk into the high branches to sit out the coming day’s heat nestled in fluttering green leaves and shade.

Instantly ramped up, Romie ran back to her campsite. Her announcement got there before she did, but just b ehind it came Romie bubbling with her discovery. And from there, it became obvious that what I have always maintained is true. None of the tales I have related are truly my fault….there’s a gene somewhere in the Vandermolen DNA that’s to blame. It runs from generation to generation.

Romie excitedly drug her parents, grandfather, and by virtue of the level of activity, noise, and excitement; a cousin, two great uncles and great-grandfather over to the base of the tree to stare upward as the young coons climbed ever higher into the leafy cover.

After the raccoons had climbed out of sight, Romie bounced over to the great uncles’ camp and wallowed in the wonders of having seen the raccoon family.

While sitting there retelling the story, Romie and her brother Orion started munching on some unshelled peanuts that were in a bowl on the table. Romie began to wonder if raccoons liked peanuts and she and Orion latched onto the idea of hiding peanuts around in the bushes to see if the raccoons would search them out. The first two nights proved that indeed, peanuts were good bait. Not only did the raccoons eat the peanuts, but to Romie and Orion’s joy, they even left slobbered on empty shells behind.

After a couple nights, that became boring though, so Romie decided to make marshmallow trails around the campsites, leading the raccoons to selected tents in the camp where they would find treasure troves of peanuts to fight and squabble over.

That was even more fun.

It worked out so well in fact that “gas can boy” thought he heard a bear outside his tent one night. By mid-week her parents’ campsite had over a dozen raccoons raiding camp even before the adults turned in for the night.

And the great-uncles’ camp? Each morning if you got down close to the ground and looked, there was not a single square inch in the entire campsite that didn’t have a coon paw print on it.

As neither Barry nor I have been known to miss an opportunity, I was soon suggesting to Romie that she get a long stick to prop open the camp dumpsters and see if she could catch a raccoon in one of those. And, since my older brother has always had a thing about being one upped by baby brother, Barry dug through his trailer and came out with a Rubber-made tote and rope and showed Romie how to built a ground level “box trap”, suggesting of course peanuts and marshmallows for bait.

Romie ran back to her own camp and convinced her mom and dad to give up a clear Rubber-made tote for her very own box trap and set up her trap Wednesday night. The trap had a blue trip rope that was about 40 feet long and the entire Vandermolen group sat talking quietly around the campfire that night while Romie tended the trip rope and Mom made baked bananas.

But alas. No raccoon ventured near the trap and one by one the watchers drifted off to go to bed until finally Romie too was so tired that she couldn’t keep her eyes open.

Undeterred, Thursday night found the trap set, and the watchers gathered. Romie alternated between making SMORES for everyone and tending the trip rope.

As the watch evening was once again drawing to a close, Romie’s father and grandfather both saw movement near the trap. Sure enough, the mother coon and her three young charges had snuck up behind the trap and were carefully reaching under the suspended tote, grasping for peanuts and marshmallows.

Romie’s blood zinged as she waited to pull the trip rope. Finally, one of the baby coons darted under the tote and Romie jerked the tripline.

Down clattered the tote.

Off scampered mother coon and two of the youth, and another nearby coon as well.

The tote lay quiet and still.

No one was sure if anything had been caught.

As Romie’s father approached the tote and reached down a hand to make sure any trapped raccoon couldn’t tip the tote off and escape, the young raccoon trapped underneath exploded upward with a snarl-growl and a snapping of teeth but his teeth ran into clear plastic and not Dad’s hand.

Romie immediately took refuge behind my left leg. I’m not sure if that was because she thought the raccoon wouldn’t attack me because as she said “you’re the scary Uncle“, or if she just figured it would stop to chew heck out of me long enough for her to make her escape. I rather think it was the second though.

Everyone was completely amazed that the trap had been successful; even Barry, Jeff and I who had spent many hours with box traps lying in and among the grave stones on Boot Hill trying to trap birds in our own youth.

A few pictures were taken and then a rope was carefully tied to tip open the box from a distance.

The box was tipped open and after standing still for a few bewildered seconds, the young coon sauntered off as if nothing had happened.

Now, before all the PETA folks get up in arms I would like to point out a couple things.

The first is that unlike all of the Government/Environmental funded research actions, this young raccoon was entirely uninjured; no needles stuck in it, no blood drawn, no shots given, no hair or other body parts yanked, pulled or sampled, and no radio collars permanently screwed on. And in fact, if anything, the young coon will be more cautious around people, thus improving its life expectancy, quality, and “natural-ness”.

And second, Romie and the rest of the Vandermolens were responsible for the next morning’s Great Raccoon Rescue.

You see, overnight a different raccoon had climbed into the freshly emptied Dempsey Dumpster and once in found he wasn’t up to jumping out. Oh, if the lids hadn’t been closed he probably could have made it, but since he couldn’t climb 4 feet of smooth steel wall, and every time he jumped, his head got to the bottom of the lid before his paws got to the rim, he was completely stuck.

It was pretty warm overnight, and with all of the escape attempts and no water, that was one tired and drained coon come morning. Grandpa Jeff dropped a bottle of water in for the heat drained little bugger while cousin Bryan searched around for a long tree branch. The coon quickly tore the water bottle open and sucked it dry.

Romie, Orion, her father, grandpa Jeff, uncles, and Great grand father all gathered around while cousin Bryan carefully positioned the tree limb into the dumpster. Everyone backed off to give the raccoon some room and to see if he would use the branch to get out, or if we would have to try something more drastic.

No sooner had we had all backed across the camp road, than a small gray paw gripped the rim of the dumpster and a little masked face popped up to peep out at the world. After a few minutes of checking angles and distances to assure that it could run away without being caught (I wonder if raccoons talk to each other), the raccoon climbed up onto the rim, over the side and scampered off into the woods.

Proving again my point. Vandermolen’s naturally come imbued with a willingness and desire for adventure; a desire to try new things and to learn through personal experience; all the while tempered with compassion for the less fortunate; and a sense of playfulness and humor.

Romie’s raccoon adventures prove that those attributes remain undiminished.

©Copyright 2015, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved

Thunderstorm

Billowing white clouds shift gray as they assemble in serious soldier ranks along the distant horizon; rolling closer to glaze over the summer sky; freezing the blue surface like ice on a northern lake in winter; darkness blots out mid-day’s light. Far off, dusky streaks trace downward from massed cloud cliffs to hazy ground; row after row marching closer on rising wind streams and gusts. The dank musk of long dry earth suddenly dampened surges forward to proclaim the approaching cataclysm.  

A shifting curtain suddenly springs into view; rain and hail hurtling ground-ward with astonishing force, driving small and large divots into the bare earth, rebounding skyward from paved street, further obscuring the distance.

There is magic in lightning; and thrills in thunder. White fingers and flashes snapshot the dark and speak directly to every child’s core being; racing past guarding ears, eyes, and rationale.

Children dance in the streets and across the yards; willing the wonders of the approaching storm to visit upon them, life. Youth zings, rings, and brings every sense open to the energetic touch of tumult. Events inspire wonder; blood races, memories are etched into the alleyways of the mind. The unique species that is child runs just ahead of the drenching, shaking, atmosphere; outpacing any storm, of any strength, and any speed.

Huge drops splat laughingly on up-tilted faces and thrown open arms, soak thin fabrics, and flatten hair to skin across cascades of goose bumps. Pea–sized hailstones fall in rapid pursuit to pile across street and yard.

I recall many a mountain afternoon, sitting quietly, leaning back in the wind shade of a cliff face, looking outward and downward on smoking ozone and discharged ions flitting from cloud to cloud, cloud to tree, and cloud to mountain top.

Ears gloriously crushed by bass rumbles, counting seconds carefully, calculating distances. Eyes and thoughts filled with the wonder of nature at its most riotous.

I wonder now, less at the storms and more at the adults who have forgotten the glorious sensations of these rare events. Growing older has risen calluses on their imagination; thickened the skin of feelings; and caused arthritis in their emotions. As this storm flows past their windows, they simply sit inside and turn on a light.

But they have lost their life’s illumination. They have turned their backs on their senses. And thus, have doomed themselves to a dry desert of endless dismay.

© Copyright 2015, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved

Chief Johnnie Michaels

Back in the day, policing was handled a bit different than it is today and truth be told, most of the “better stories” I have to tell would land a kid in jail these days, but not back then. 

When I was about six, our parents purchased a house that was just a few short blocks from the Police Station.  Appropriate, I know.  But back then, even Barry had yet to really get into anything that was community level, and so, we Vandermolens were flying under the radar, something the Livermore yokels hadn’t even heard. 

 

Every year along about Thanksgiving there was a bum that came rattling into town on his route.  I know, my lack of sensitivity training is showing and I should refer to him as a poor underprivileged alternate domiciled human of holistic means (the appellation of person after all includes “son” a blatent sexism if ever there was one) …but back then we cut directly to the heart of the matter, if it dressed like a bum, had no job like a bum and didn’t try to get one, and road the rails for transportation…..it was just a bum.

Right across the main street from the Police Station was the Ford Dealer and that down-trodden soul would walk up to it, day before Thanksgiving every year and put a large rock through one of the front windows of the place.  Always in the middle of the day, when there was sure to be someone there to watch him do it, and then he would just stand there and wait for the police to cross the street and arrest him.

Of course the Courts would already be closed for the Holiday and what with one thing and another it would be 4-5 days and one thanksgiving feast later before he would be up in front of the local Judge who would sentence the guy to 30 days (no such thing as time served back then) or a fine.  And of course no fine was ever paid.  So that would mean the bum’s alternate domicile would become the city jail effectively from Thanksgiving through New Year’s.  Yep, three solids and a cot, and warm to boot; Regular as the calendar.  Thanksgiving celebration, Christmas (with appropriate gifts from the community) and New Year’s all covered with one simple rock.

 

Oh, and then there was the entire shift change ritual to watch, better than TV at times.  Yep, any thinking thief who spent any time in town knew that the time to pull a job was shift change.  All three of the city’s police cars would come screeching up to the station at the same time (most likely cause they left the coffee shop at the same time and raced each other back to the station) and it would be 20 minutes until the new officer’s hit the “mean streets” of Livermore again.

 

About a year after we moved in, the Howard family moved in a block closer to the police station.  Never could figure out what prompted them to do that.  Their house was on a side street a block and a half down and across the street from the entrance to the jail/police station.

Old man Howard would get liquored up now and again, settle in on his front porch and start taking pot shots at the light that was always lit over the jail door.  Off to jail, a bit of notoriety, 30 days to dry out, and back out to do it again.  Seemed to me that if’n he disliked the police that much, he would have moved into a place across town so that he knew he could get away with something every shift change.

 

Johnnie Michaels was the police chief and he had a couple unique solutions to dealing with crime that were ahead of his time.

His officers used to be required to fill out a “field interrogation” report any time they ran across something that seemed a little off center to them.  Now a field interrogation report was nothing more than a 3 x 5 card with the date, location, and name of whomever the cop felt might have been involved in something out of the ordinary, but hadn’t actually been seen to be doing anything wrong.

If a citizen filed a serious complaint, Chief Michaels and his detectives would go back through the day’s reports and find out if anyone had been in the area that should be talked to.

I have thought about those things often through the years and must admit that I am fairly pleased that this was before the evolution of affordable computing power.  Because, knowing the number of those little cards that had a “Vandermolen, something” on them, I have come to the conclusion that they had to file those cards by date.

If they had been filed alphabetically, long about 6 or 8 inches later, someone would have come to the conclusion there was three boys that needed some attention.

 

Chief Michaels had another novel concept.  This one worked much better.

If some kid was caught out screwing around on a Friday or Saturday night, doing something he shouldn’t, or being somewhere he oughtn’t be, the cop that picked him up wouldn’t take the kid home, he would haul the kid to Johnnie’s house.

Johnnie was reputed to be a pleasant host all told.  Feeding the kid, getting him a soda, turning on the TV.

Then, along about 3:30 in the morning (no matter when the kid was picked up), Johnnie would call the kids home and roust the parents out of bed to come and get their child.

I am sure the ACLU would have something to say about this tactic these days, but let me tell you, most kids I knew feared this more than going to jail.  Johnnie knew that Mom and Dad might blow off a little “youthful exuberance” but certainly didn’t take to kindly to Mom having fretted herself silly and Dad losing sleep and having to traipse across town in the wee hours of the morning because of their idiot kids.

Luckily the three of us were not only pretty fleet of feet, but knew every hidey-hole, low fence, dogless yard, and accessible roof in town and so never had to deal with that little issue.

 

 

© Copyright 2015, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved

Things that go “Bang” – Part Four – Making Some Noise

 

Our excursion into the field of “explosives engineering” began as I have related with a few firecrackers and some purloined gun powder.  But not being smart enough to cut our losses, we kept at it from there. 

Often in life I have looked back on this and wondered how we got out alive, or at least with all our fingers and toes.  Not to say that there weren’t a few close calls such as the time where for most of a week Barry couldn’t feel the fingers on his right hand or hear much from his right ear.  Jeff always claimed it was a “fast fuse”.  I think Barry always figured it was a slow “it’s lit” instead.  And of course no one was impaled by the flying cannon, or any of the numerous intentional projectiles either, but remove those and a few other temporary difficulties, and we all came out of the “Bang Phase” biologically intact amazingly enough.

   

One of the first lessons that we learned was that highly volatile reactions may create lots of smoke and some flame but, unless there was a force working to contain them, they just really weren’t all that impressive.  In a gun, the burning powder has the shell, the brass case, and the bullet to resist its expansion; in a bomb, there is the metal casing; and even in a firecracker, there is the tightly wrapped layers of paper.  Yep, without a counter-acting force, gun powder (or any other fairly simple man-made mixture) just burns really fast.  No bang.  No shockwave, no damage; still pleasing to smell to young men such as we were, but no “blood-racing” wow factor. 

Minimal metal working tools and fewer pennies to spend meant that custom fabricated metal casings were mostly out for us.  Sure, we could pool our savings and buy a few selected metal containers, but that would leave no funds for powder to fill them with.  And somehow, using glass (other than for “underwater” devices) seemed too risky.  Not that a piece of metal shrapnel flying through the air was any safer than glass, but the imagination does what the imagination does and seldom bases its conclusions on fact.

Truth be told, while my brothers and I liked to make things go bang, we really had no desire to damage anything.  In fact, you can apply that to a great deal of our youthful foolishness; it was seldom at the intent of harm.  Pain and damage were just our constant unconsidered companions.

 

Over time, we hit on an ideal solution.  File folders.  Yep, standard manila file folders, carefully cut to fold up into small little boxes.  Then, filled with our “powder de jour, we would stick in a fuse, and wrap the cubes tightly with fiberglass strapping tape.  Now at some point, we ran out of gun powder and while we were starting to reload our own ammunition by then, an explosive with a “little more bang” was what we wanted for our little boxes.

It turned out that Barry knew a guy in high school who was farther ahead of us on the experimenting curve, but perhaps further behind us in caution.  And so, when one day he was rushing and didn’t carefully clean out the grinding equipment between component chemicals, he touched off a batch of powder that was significant enough to put him out of action for a while, run up some doctor and home repair bills for his father, and put him out of the business of making and supplying explosive powders permanently.

Like a shark on blood spore, Barry recognized the opportunity when he saw it and offered to buy up the guy’s “back up” tools and materials.  The Vandermolen Powder works had come into it’s own.

 

Back in the day, you could send off and get chemicals mail delivered. No, really.  The back few pages of most boy focused magazines had colorful ads for everything from aircraft plans to x-ray glasses.  And somewhere in there was a chemistry supply house just drooling to pair energetic boys with energetic chemicals.

All we had to do was make sure we were hanging around on Saturdays during mail delivery time if we had an incoming shipment so that Mom or Dad didn’t get the mail and wonder what was in the package from ACME Explosives (or some other graphically named supply source).  Heck, we even bought underwater fuse by the foot and it arrived coiled up in an envelope.

And if for some reason the mail wasn’t safe enough (I know, that is probably an oxymoron), we could stop by the local army surplus store and like as not the important things we needed could be bought there as well.

 

Because over the years I gained a few bruises and scars at the hands of un-named senior members of my familial generation, I won’t go into details as to what makes a good fast burning powder.  That and of course the Department of Homeland Security, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, the FBI, CIA, and various other law enforcement agencies would prefer I don’t share for fear that some religious or political malcontent will be inspired to lodge a high decibel complaint with their local government office.  

Suffice it to say that we came to the skills and materials needed to fill little boxes and thus have a nearly unlimited supply of things that go bang.

Now, my father was always fond of quoting that a little bit of knowledge was a dangerous thing, and for some reason, my brothers and I seemed to feel that we needed to underscore that point once in a while.

So after making and blowing off innumerable ½” x ½” x ½” cubes, with truly wonderful bangs and resultant smoke clouds, we decided to build one slightly larger.  Exercising “our little bit of knowledge” we promptly decided to make a device that was 4 times “bigger”.  The results were a little bit like when NASA made the original mirror for the Hubble Space Telescope.  Things just naturally turned out a little bit fuzzy.

I would like to in clear conscience blame the failure on Jeff, or Barry, but I really can’t tell you who screwed up.  In any case, while 2 inches may be 4 times bigger than ½”, a 2” x 2” x 2” box is not 4 times bigger than a ½” box.  For those of you struggling with the math in your head…..it is actually 64 times bigger physically. 

The “wonderful bang and resultant smoke cloud” of that ½” cube unknowingly was going to grow in dramatic proportion.   As to the resultant multiplication of force….I must admit that I discontinued my studies after surviving this one and thus have never figured it out.

Luckily after making the powder to fill that cube, fitting a very long fuse, and using a full roll of tape, we decided to head out to the far edge of town for the test instead of a simple quick trip to the football field.  Running right through the middle of town (east and west) was the local train tracks.  Those came close to our house, and ran right past the charred remains of Barber’s cycle shop and feed store.

Baseball sized cube in hand we headed out the tracks east of town where the rail bed had been cut through a bit of a ridge.  Although only about 6 feet of bank existed, it allowed us to burrow a hole back into the dirt a couple of feet, push the cube to the back of the hole, trailing the fuse out and pack the hole with dirt again.  That repacking of dirt added to that “resistive force” I was mentioning earlier.

I recall some discussion as to how close we could safely stand (to get a good view), and surprisingly enough the natural skeptics in the crowd actually won out in that discussion.  I can’t recall which one lit the fuse, though I am sure it wasn’t me.  Not that Barry or Jeff would have minded too much, but they knew I was at that “gangling puppy” phase and they figured they didn’t want to have to explain anything about this to Mom and Dad.

I used to know how long it took to burn an inch of fuse, and certainly we had done the math back then but you might want to refer to the ½ inch to 2 inch discussion above before you decide there was any security in that.  We had, however, vacated the immediate area and doubled back up above the embankment and backed off most of 50 yards or so.  I remember watching the fuse smoke over the embankment and then what seemed like forever before the ground literally shook.

A huge, no I mean HUGE fountain of dirt and rocks leapt skyward accompanied by a tremendous lung crushing explosion.

Now, most evidence to the contrary, my momma didn’t raise no dummies and so, before the smoke had even risen from the resultant crater we boys were legging it back towards town as fast as our paperboy strengthened legs would carry us.  There was no doubt in our ringing ears and befuddled minds that explosion had been heard.  Next town over likely, and we knew that the local authorities were going to put down their coffee cups and doughnuts and come see what was up.

 

Fast as we were, the cops were faster.

 

We were running down a two-track crossing the dirt and grass fields when we heard the first of the sirens about to round into the field at the far end.  Panic set in.  While we didn’t have a hope in heck of beating the cops, we spun around and started running back towards the settling dust cloud.  

A few seconds later a police cruiser came careening down the lane behind us, bottoming and scrapping as a city car will do in a hardscrabble field, plume of dust in its wake.

Sliding to a stop the cop hollered out the window; “Boys, what are you doing out here”.

I can’t say as I have a clue what Jeff would have said, and I know that my eyeglass frames were still singing like a tuning fork from that detonation, but at least Barry was still firing on all cylinders, cause he ups with “Wow, we heard this really big bang out this way and are going to see what caused it”.

As I recall the cop didn’t look too convinced, but after taking our names down on a “field interrogation” 3 x 5 card, he told us to go back the other way and then he raced on towards the smoking crater. 

 

 

 

© Copyright 2015, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved

Let Me Die

I find the desire to live as long as possible odd.

I have watched the process of growing old throughout my life. Heck, I have been running an experiment on the subject. I watched it often as a boy, and more frequently as a man. There is one very strong commonality that is almost universal in the process; live long enough and you will wish you were dead.

　
My wife’s grandmother was a remarkable woman. She lived through a rich and full life. She lived to be 98 years old. She told stories of riding to church on Sundays in the wagon, drawn by her father’s plow team; she used her “new-fangled” hand lever agitated washing machine with hand-crank wringer until the very end; she saw the dawn of airplanes, and man set foot on the moon; she gave birth to six children, and buried 3 of them after they had lived full lives; she was a treasure.

She was also very tired. Each letter that she sent us for the last full decade and a half of her life ultimately boiled down to “God, why am I still here” and “When will you call me home”?

My paternal grandmother?; Much the same.

My father-in-law lived to 83. Spent the last 10 years in a succession of care facilities, and the last 2 and a half in a place that was locked down like a prison; heck, no like about it, it was a prison, a prison of old folks who could no longer remember, who they were, how to take care of themselves, or much of anything else.

　
Look around you; people are living longer and longer lives. We live in such comparative wealth that we no longer have to focus all of our time on just eking out an existence. We are free to spend more time exercising, we know more about the benefits of exercise on the physical and mental being. We know more about nutrition, and medicine, relaxation, and safety. We pour uncountable resources into every conceivable concept that will extend life.

Still, we suffer from more dementia, Alzheimer’s, cancer, arthritis, heart disease, depression, Parkinson’s, and osteoporosis than ever before.

In fact, the single fastest growth industry in the industrial world is: Elderly Care.
　

That’s right. All that living better to live longer means that those who do, get shoved aside and housed in do-nothing, go-nowhere left to die facilities for longer trying to stave off the inevitable end.

Face it, Old Uncle Joe no longer lives out his days sitting on the front porch, playing checkers with his cronies, and tinkering in his shop. Granny Sue isn’t puttering in the kitchen, growing flowers, quilting blankets, or playing bridge.

No, the Middleton’s who lived across the street some years back? Wonderful, giving people who had no biological kids of their own but adopted three small children. They both passed within a couple weeks of each other, and in the 4 years that we lived across from each other, and all the times I visited, did a bit of “fix up” or called an ambulance, I never once saw any of the three kids who’s’ financial squabbling tied up the sale of the old homestead for 3 years after their death.

Or Pastor Ron and his wife Maybell. Out walking each morning and evening. Devote souls. My son stacked firewood and repaired cars for them. Money was tight, and their grown kids were far off living pressure filled lives. And like Carmen Wildt, it wasn’t that the grown kids didn’t care, it was just that life had pulled them somewhere else and the job and distance, kids and commitments meant they didn’t have time for the folks.

Whatever the reason, be it health, wealth, loneliness, or disappointments, the vast majority of people that I have known over 80 have lived more unpleasant days than pleasant ones.

An extra ten years of that?

I think I’ll pass.
　

Copyright © 2011 - Marty Vandermolen -　All Rights Reserved

A Day on the Trail – Morning Breaks

First Light.

That gentle time in the wilderness when stars still fill the waning night sky and galaxies paint broad whitish slashes through the heavens.  The eastern horizon is just beginning to pale from black to gray while the night’s creatures are rushing to nests, burrows, cracks, and dens and the day’s replacements remain securely enfolded in sleep.

Eyes open coming into focus after grit is wiped from moist corners.  Legs, arms, and back are stretched to ease the stiffness of ground, cold, and yesterday’s exertions.  Chill, dark, slightly ominous draping of trees and brush, hill and rock surround each warm, comforting, cocoon.  Contesting desires delay venturing forth from sleeping bag into the coming dawn.     

One by one, arms reach forth, drawing cold clothing into spare spaces to be gently warmed before donning.  The first person up stirs the surviving coals and kindles the beginnings of the breakfast fire.   The second riser heads to the food cache, untying the rope that holds sacks high, above small noses and large paws.  Once lowered and carried to the fire, the morning’s meal is removed, organized, and laid on the kitchen rock; the remaining food is left bagged, to be individually collected as the others pack.

The first rustling of the day is heard in camp.  Individually as breakfast is prepared, each youth gathers, rolls, collects, organizes, and packs.  They make furtive trips to the fire, to warm chilled hands, to the food sack to collect their lunches and share of the patrol’s food, and back to continue preparation for the day’s march.

The older, more practiced youth finish first and gather around the fire to pull out maps, review the planned route, identify likely lunch stops and emergency plans.

The boys and girls gather for a hurried breakfast of hot cereal, dried fruit, warm drink, and laughter.  Cups are rinsed, extra fruit is tucked in pockets, pots are washed and dried, and the fire is drowned under a flood of stale liquid poured from individual water bottles and canteens.

A quick stroll to the lake, nearby stream or snowfield and bottles, canteens, and bota bags are refilled and dosed for purification.  A few fish rise in the early morning grasping at insects that dot the glassy, mirrored lake, leaving expanding circular ripples in the surface serenity.  An early Osprey tucks wings into a streamlined dive chasing breakfast into the deeps.

Long pants are shed in favor of shorts, jackets are tucked into flaps, feet are checked for tenderness or wounds, and boots are laced tight as the birds of the forest begin for flit from tree to tree under the first colored edges of dawn’s full glow.  The group lines up at one end of camp, walking closely in a broad line they search the ground for any scrap of paper, piece of plastic, or man-made object lying half hidden in the duff and dirt.

Straining weight up off of the ground, and onto shoulders, hips, backs, and thighs.  Packs settled high, or low, or in between as each prefers.  A groan here and there, a joke tossed into the clearing, as each one shifts and settles, tightens and cinches.

The sky is fully alight, but the sun has yet to rise above the horizon when the point rolls into the familiar early morning stride and heads up out of the campsite, climbing slightly to reach the trail and one by one the remaining individuals fall into line behind.

As drag leaves camp, if they choose to stop and turn, they will be just in time to see all of the little creatures dash out of hiding and scurry back and forth seeking anything that was inadvertently left behind.

And so, as another day begins, the miles stretch out before us, our belongings are on our backs, the world is at our feet and the yards begin to fall slowly behind.

© Copyright 2015, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved

That’s a bit of a Different Breed isn’t it?

My brothers and I had four dogs during the years we were growing up.

That is of course only if you discount the basset hound that “followed” one of us home tied with a slip knot around its neck, or the Beagle that came in the yard tightly tied into a set of paper route bags with a plaintive “It followed me home, mom, can we keep it?”.

 

The first real dog pet was a cast off female Springer Spaniel that we found at the SPCA over in Oakland, California named Lady. That dog I have written about in greater detail in other stories.  She intimidated me when I was young, and although Jeff may not admit it, she scared him too.

She breathed on my neck on the way home from the pound, I was short enough to look her directly in the eye, I thought she was going to eat me, and she did steal and eat my graham crackers in later years. 

Karen has always found it tremendously funny to imagine me afraid of anything, much less a dog the size of a Springer Spaniel.

Other than that, her Brillo pad course hair and joyful nature ultimately won me over and I recall being mortally crushed on the morning I was headed to school knowing that mom and dad had decided she needed to be “put to sleep”.

Between the getting and the loosing, she ran and played with us, stomped me into the ground on more than one occasion, helped to break my glasses often, and was the patient devoted companion that every boy wants his dog to be.

 

Then there was Hunter.  A full blooded Black Lab.  Dumb as the day is long.  Undoubtedly inbred.  Woeful, insensative, and footloose.

Hunter was a dog that found it impossible to contain his joy.  He was happy to wake up, eat, walk, not, whatever, he was happy.  His tail was always in motion.  So much so that he literally beat the tip open by wagging it into hard objects.  There was a blood line on all of the walls and furniture in the part of the house Hunter was allowed in.  And outside as well.

His tail wag muscles were built up so strong that he could raise a bruise on a person with that thing. 

But most remarkable about Hunter was that he had a wanderlust like no dog I have ever known since.  It seemed that he lived to break out of the yard and run off down the street.  We boys would play with him all day, and then as soon as it was dinner time and we sat down to eat, we would hear his soulful “Bowr, Bowr” fading off into the distance.

It was so commonplace that everyone knew exactly what they were to do.  No naval crew was as well drilled.  Dad would jump into the car while each of us boys would jump on our bikes.  All four of us headed to our prescribed search sectors in town and we would start combing the streets looking for that vacuum-headed dog.

Didn’t take too many of those dinnertime excursions before dad was done with that routine.  He removed Hunter’s collar and identification tag and said: “Next time he goes, he stays gone”.

No sooner said than done.

I never really built up much attachment to that short bus dog.  But Barry sure did.

Barry was so worried that he biked the 7 miles out of town to the dog pound fence and called Hunter’s name just to listen to see if he had at least been caught and was “safe”.  I suspect Barry didn’t understand the reality of dog pound turnover back in those days.     

 

Possibly the most memorable dog we had was Gretchen.

Gretchen was a German Sheppard, reportedly “the runt of the liter” she was none to big all in all.  But what she lacked in physical size she made up for in intensity.

Gretchen had no problem walking along, choke chain cinched up around her neck, effectively cutting off all respiration, while on hind legs alone (front paws 6 inches off the ground) she drug one or more of us boys down the street towards some neighborhood cat.

That dog had a thing for cats, never knew another that was as focused on cats as Gretchen.

Some fool cat one time thought it would walk the top of the back fence and harass her.  Big mistake.  I never knew a dog could think in complex problem resolutions until that day.  We were out in the back yard playing with Gretchen when this big old Tom come slinking along the top of a 6 foot board fence.  History had taught that cat that he was safe up there and orneriness patterned him to stop midway across the back fence and announce his presence with a spittled hiss just to watch the fun.

Gretchen looked up from 35 feet away and launched herself straight at the fence.  The cat smiling smugly arched his back and started to hiss again.  About that time, Gretchen reached the fence.  And instead of trying to climb it, she threw herself at the fence, twisting sideways, and literally body slammed the top of the fence right out from under that cat.

His snotty hiss instantly changed to a falling scream as he dropped right in front of that Sheppard.

Last time that cat ever pulled that stunt.

 

And she was maniacal about protection.  Turns out she had been attack trained and took her responsibilities serious.  Not that she was inherently mean.  Far from it.  She loved to play and we boys could ball up our fists and swing as hard and fast as we possibly could, and on those few occasions that we actually connected, she just shrugged it off.  More often then not though, out fist would end up clamped gently in her teeth without here ever braking skin that I recall.

And we could take her to the football field, order her to sit and stay and anyone could walk up and she would love to be pet.

But lord help you if one of us was close by.

One of Barry’s good friends found that out the hard way.  Tim used to hang out with us a great deal, even though he went to the other High School in town.  But he was a fellow scout and thise a friend.  Tim and Gretchen would play at the football field without problem.

Then one day, Barry and Tim were chatting over the drive gate.  Tim laid his arm on the top rail.  Gretchen was watching his every move.

Tim rolled his hand at the wrist to punctuate some point he was making.

To Gretchen it was a movement that she interpreted as trying to reach Barry.

Tim’s arm ended up with this really neat set of parallel fang mark scars, right across the bulky part of his forearm.

That incident combined with the elderly next door neighbor’s fright of Gretchen was enough to send her on to another locale.

 

 Our last dog was a Doberman named Becket.  Black and brown, lean bodied and fast that dog was.  He was a bit of an airhead like Hunter before him.  But he was mostly lovable.

By the time we had him, my brother’s and I had grown to acquiring inappropriate “liquid beverages” as the saying goes.  We used to find it funny to get that dog drunk.

Becket was a happy drunk.  Mostly.  He would wobble around for a bit then curl up and sleep for a half hour or so.  That seemed to be all it ever took.  30 minutes and he would wake back up with a hangover.

Yep, poor dog would walk around moaning.  A moan would elicit a whine and the whine would elicit a yelp.  The funniest part to us was the most soothing to him.  He would stand up, slowly lower his head until the top was pressed firmly down on the carpet with his nose pointing back towards his tail, and then holding his head like that he would slowly walk forward rubbing the top of his head until he bumped into a wall and then turn around and do it all again.

We finally got rid of him after several odd experiences.  Once in a while, when Becket was waking up from a non-drink induced sleep.  He would have a very frightening spasm.  Something about the breed I understand, but they can twist their neck just so and the bones pinch the spinal cord.  When that happened to him, his teeth bared, and the hackles on his neck came up, his head would tilt off level to one side or the other and only one eye opened all the way.

Mom was worried we boys would get chewed up worse than our usual bike wrecks and fist fights.  So that was that.

 

I found out many years later that Mom had wanted to get my brothers and I a skunk as a pet.  And no, it has nothing to do with the wise crack that is forming in your head.  She had read somewhere that skunks were extremely smart and even tempered pets once they had been “de-scented”.  Only problem was, by the mid-1960s it was already hard to find an animal doctor hat had any real world skunk “flowerifying” experience.

Go figure.  Must have had something to do with the chemical weapons ban after the World War wound down.

 

©Copyright 2015, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved

“Right Back at Ya, Doc”

Once in a great while I make time to go to a doctor.  In truth, I have little faith that the doctors I visit are invested much farther than the money that they will be able to collect from my insurance agency.  Proof of that I find every time I have an appointment.

 

This afternoon’s appointment was pretty standard.

I walked into the doctor’s office a few minutes early. 

They asked my name, and then demanded proof of my identification.  I try not to take offense, I am after all in my later 50s and while unlikely, memory loss can be sufficient already in one of my years that I might have gotten my name wrong on walking in the door.

Immediately following that formality was the “proof of insurance” routine.  On this one there doesn’t seem to be any concern about what name it is, as long as there is a name and a card of some sort.

Then the pleasant gal behind the counter handed me a clipboard with “a couple of forms” that she needed me to fill out.

Twelve pages later, I had written and rewritten my name, address, and contact information no less than 18 times.  I had checked boxes that indicated that I wasn’t allergic to anything known to man, and that at 57 and male, I wasn’t pregnant and wasn’t planning on it.  Next was a list on which I certified that I had nothing from an Abdominal Aortic Aneurism to my lack of Zygomycosis. 

Oh, and before the Alzheimer’s that their ID process is apparently concerned about kicks in; why is the word “Abdominal” in front of Aortic Aneurism?  After all, since the Aorta only exists in the abdomen, the only way there could be a Non-Abdominal Aortic Aneurism is if the Aorta was no longer in your abdomen.  In which case I would think there might be one or two other priorities before having me checking a box about where the aneurism actually happened to be.

 

But I digress.  After turning the forms back over to the gal at the desk, I sit back down to wait.  Pleasingly, for only a very short while before a young assistant calls me out of the waiting room and escorts me into an examination room.  There she asked me if I wanted to keep my clothes on, or wanted to disrobe and put on a paper gown.  I could tell from her diminutive instructions on wearing the gown that she likely wouldn’t know how to deal with my telling her it wouldn’t bother me to strip down and stand there in the all-together.

I am nothing if not a man of my times.  We grew up rambling, running, and in that world, a bit of naked was nothing unusual.  Communal showers in the raw at school beginning in the 7^th grade, bathing in cold snow-melt lakes in the Sierras, and the general hazing of youth all conspired to eliminate my worries about someone seeing me naked.  Not my problem if they do.  True, I surely am not the physical specimen I once was, but still, not my problem.

 

In any case, after she takes her leave and I strip down and don the gown, the doctor walks in.  He looks older than the last I saw him, but I guess since the appointment clerk advised me that it had been 14 years, I guess he is due.

He asked if there was anything specific and I told him that; yes, it has been a while since I was here and I have some spots I figure you should look at”.  So he decides to do an over-all skin check.

He starts by picking up a comb and working over the hair on my head.  “Hmm”, He says, “there seems to be a scar up here in your hairline, how did you get that?”

“Oh, that was from a rock my scoutmaster beaned me with when I was about 17” I say.

“How about these two right up top here?” he asked.

“Those are from a rake along about 8 years old” I replied. 

I’ll shorten this up a bit; the next several answers were “Hatchet”,  “Wood carving tool”, “Drill bit”, “Table saw”, "T-post", "Broken glass", "Rusty sheet metal", "Barbed wire", "Barnacles" and “Nail gun” respectively.

The doctor looked at me pretty serious and said, "you really need to stop this, all this scar tissue is not good for your skin".  Then he touched a spot in the middle of my back and asked,  “And just exactly how did you get this one”.

I asked him if it was the straight one or the “L-shaped” one.

“L-shaped one about 2" on each side", he answered.

“Oh”, that one", I said, "you gave me that one the last time I saw you, Doc.”  

© Copyright 2015, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved.

 

 

 

Things that go “Bang” – Part Three – Smoke on the Water

Back about the time these events were occurring there was a popular Rock band out of England named Deep Purple.  One of their most recognizable hits was a tune titled Smoke on the Water. 

That song’s lyrics actually relate a true story of a Frank Zappa/The Mothers of Invention concert held on December 4^th 1971 in the Casino Montreux during which an audience member fired off a flare gun and the resulting fires consumed the entire casino complex, spreading smoke out over Lake Geneva.  The members of Deep Purple were there intending to use the concert venue to record an album beginning the next day.  The following morning, in a different location, Deep Purple Guitarist Ritchie Blackmore created what Total Guitar magazine calls the 4^th best guitar riff of all time.

 

Our father used to often quote that “A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing” when referring to us boys and our adventures.  One of the more notably of those adventures began when Barry learned about Sodium Metal in High School Chemistry class.

Sodium, the key element of salt is actually a metal.  Refined into its pure form, it becomes a dull silver material that is very soft.  Easily molded and cut.  To store the stuff, you have to keep it away from both air and water.  So it is usually stored in a container filled with oil.

The really interesting thing about sodium metal to us boys was the aggressive speed of oxidation.  Unlike steel that rusts over a period of days and weeks, sodium metal when exposed to oxygen “rusts” in seconds.  And it is so aggressive at that oxidizing action that it will literally rip a water molecule apart just to get at the single oxygen atom that is there.

When it does that, three things happen all at the same time.  The sodium instantly oxides, the resulting chemical bond dissolution and reformation generates a bunch of released energy (heat), and the leftovers of the torn apart water becomes an accumulation of hydrogen atoms.

Hydrogen Gas and Heat. 

Have you ever see any pictures of the Hindenburg Zeppelin fire at Lakehurst Air Station in 1937?  If not, you really should google it.  There is even video footage of the thing going up in a raging fireball.  Yes siree, too much heat and hydrogen produces some spectacular and dangerous results.

Now I ain’t admitting to knowing nothing about how it happened, but not too long after Barry learned about sodium metal in Chemistry Class, a small bar of the metal came into the possession of us boys.  Understanding enough to know that it did spectacular things we set out for a bit of fun.

We took a few of mom’s empty canning jars, lids and rings and headed out to the abandoned rock quarries out west of town.  Our set up once we got there was easy, the results were tremendous. 

By punching some holes in the jar lids and filling the bottom half of the jars with rocks we created several “depth charges”.  All that was left to do was to slice a bit of metal off the bar with a pocket knife, drop it into one of the jars, screw on the lid and ring and toss it into the water.  The jar would hit the lake surface and disappear with a small ripple.  The weight of the rocks pulled the jar under and the holes in the lid let the water pour in inundate the sodium.  The water surface immediately went flat and glassy again.

Briefly.

Very, briefly.

 

Have you ever watched one of those old WWII movies of the navy at work in the Pacific?  You know; the ones where the destroyer is busy hunting an enemy submarine and trying to blow it up?  The movie always has a scene where you see a depth charge roll off a rack at the stern of the ship and then as the ship moves about 150 yards away all of a sudden the surface of the water “humps up” and a foaming white geyser shoots straight up in the air?

Those small homemade explosions looked just like that. 

I have to give Hollywood credit on that one.  While those shots may be the only ones that Hollywood ever got right about explosives, those shots are dead on accurate.  When our little charges detonated, the water would surge up in about a 25 foot circle, with a foaming geyser about 8” in diameter shooting up 20 feet or more.  You could feel the shockwave through your feet.  And hear a low, deep “kah-rump” sound.

And as the geyser water rained back down, there would be a thin, low cloud of smoke on the water.  Wafting slowly off into nothingness.

 

Now I can’t tell you if we were partially responsible for this next bit or not.  But at least it didn’t have any actual Vandermolen fingerprints involved. 

A couple-three years later when I was in Physics and the teacher pulled out the sodium metal to show how it reacted Harvey and I were sitting in the back of the class and I told him about the times Barry, Jeff and I had gone blasting in the quarries and the arroyos around town with that stuff.  Apparently that sounded like a grand time because Harvey decided to pinch a bit for his own fun too.  Problem was that old “little bit of knowledge” quote was hanging out waiting to ambush someone.  For once it wasn’t me.

Right at the end of class that day Harvey snuck into the Chem Lab reagents room and slipped a piece of sodium metal into a pocket of his North Face down jacket.  I remember trooping out of class behind him wondering exactly what he had in mind. 

Right after Physics we both had Psychology together, so out of the science building, across the quad and up the stairs in the main building we went.  Kind of curious to see what was going to happen, I just followed along behind, trying not to be close enough to get any DNA on the situation.

So there we are in the class listening to Mr B drone on about something or other that seemed perfectly senseless to me.  I mean after all, if the guiding light of your field of endeavor is a character as screwed up as Ole Sigmund was, there really is not much credibility that I can give your profession.

After a while, I notice that Harvey is beginning to squirm around in his seat a bit.

Then a bit more.

Then, suddenly, he leaps to his feet and begins beating the tar out of his right side coat pocket with both hands. Fast, really fast. Fanning and slapping away, until a short block of smoking metal melted its way through his pocket and dropped to the floor.

Everyone in the class sat stupefied by that performance.

You may not know this, but an old wood floor has a lot of moisture condensed on its surface in the best of times and it had been raining earlier that day so all the shoes had drug in a bit with them.  That blob of sodium metal sucked all that moisture up off the floor and it began to spin and dance around under the desks just like one of those whizzer fireworks that you can buy on the 4^th of July.

As it spun and collected water, and dumped heat and Hydrogen, a small flame flickered up on the surface just about the time it spun out into the main isle down the center of the classroom.

Mr B reacted instantly.  He was a quick thinking man.

The difficulty was, he was applying soft science to a hard science problem.

Now, in any other circumstance, it would have been just the right thing to do.  Unfortunately, as he grabbed his habitual double mega sized icy drink off of the desk and sloshed it on the spinning ball of flame, the situation devolved from ugly to down right dangerous.

After an hour or so, the smoke and the water that had been streaming out of the classroom windows and down the main stairs subsided.  The fire trucks rolled up their hoses and departed, and the school administrators had successfully shoed most of the kids off home.  The 90 year old wooden upper floor of the classroom was in need of replacement along with some water damaged hallway as well, the smoke alarms and fire extinguishers needed to be retested and recharged, and Harvey’s father had arrived as summoned.

Harvey didn’t get to walk in the graduation ceremony later that year, but thanks to the fact that his father was a local professional and generously donated to not only repair the damage but fund a couple long sought after improvements, he did get to graduate.   

© Copyright 2015, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved

Things that Go "Bang" - Part Two - The Marble Cannon

Did you know that the invention of black powder is credited to the Chinese over 750 years ago?

Or that it took the Chinese close to 100 years before they learned to use it as an implement of war?

 

Well, not so my brothers and I. 

One summer while playing mountain climber in the garage, one of us kicked over a number of boxes and in so doing unearthed a heavy wooden crate. Digging into that wooden crate we found some strange looking tools, a cloth bag with come birdshot, a few bullets, and a can with gunpowder in it.

Now, we might not have recognized the reloading tools for what they were, but the gunpowder was instantly recognized.  Not only was it recognized for what it was, it was recognized for what it could be.

It could be hours of joyful destruction, that’s what it could be.  Not that we thought of it that way, and luckily not that we ever destroyed anything of consequence with the stuff, but destruction in a can is what it really was.

Unlike the Chinese, it didn’t take us long to make the jump from “Hey, we have some powder here” to “Hey, we can make a cannon”.  Maybe a millisecond, perhaps two, but definitely not three.

 

Unfortunately Mom and Dad were due home from work at any time, so we carefully replaced the can in the wooden crate and carefully restacked the knocked over boxes to mask the fact that we had found the gunpowder.

Next day we biked down to the Carnegie Library to do some research.  Times then weren’t like they are now.  The Internet has made most any information immediately available and even better, you can watch videos of people make almost anything.  Heck, this was back even before the Anarchists’ Cookbook had been published.

So we looked in lots of books.  Not for instructions to make a cannon, although there might have been some in the library somewhere.  But because while we had a need for the information, there was no way we were going to let that gray-haired nosy librarian know what we were up to by asking her for instruction on how to build a cannon.

So we looked at lots of pictures.  Pictures of Knights and castles, Civil war paintings, and battleships. We looked at pictures of anything that lobbed a projectile using gunpowder.

All that “book learning” got us headed down the “right” track.  Now the local constabulary, assembly of preachers and priests, school teacher’s union, and the gaggle of busybodies might not agree with that.  But, right or not, we had the beginning of a plan.

So it was off to Stark’s Bargain House an old scrap yard down between the railroad tracks in town.  We just knew we would find a big old cylinder that we could use as a cannon barrel there and some round balls made of metal to use as cannon balls.

Old man Stark had bought up an old humped back corrugated metal “Quonset hut” that was backed up to the Western Pacific tracks down near “Joe’s-ville” and gathered together all the stuff that people had wanted to throw out but were too lazy to drag out to the dump on Vasco road.  He had old rusty washers and dryers, Refrigerators with sprung doors, buckets of hinges and nails and railroad spikes.  Metal bed frames in the yard, and musty books and fabric inside.   Lanterns, and stoves, rotting rubber wheels and broken bikes; yep, that there place simply had everything a true blooded boy need back then.   

I remember finding a great big old piece of pipe there, must have been at least 6 inch stuff.  And long.  Long enough that if we could have afforded it, we probably would have not been able to afford the hernia care required after dragging it home.  But we couldn’t talk him out of that for our pocket change.  And even if we had, he didn’t have any 30 pound cannon balls that would fit it.

Dejected, we left the “emporium of the possible” with our tails dragging and our hands in our pockets.

 

Back to home we started digging around the house and finally realized that we had some marbles that were just about the right size to fill a piece of pipe.  And as luck would have it, we found a short piece of the right sized pipe and a single metal pipe cap in the supplies dad had on his workbench.

The next day, we carefully drilled a hole near the end of the short piece of pipe, close to the threads.  Then we wrenched on the cap, and found some wood to make a “gun carriage” out of (see I told you there was some book learning involved here, if nothing else, we learned the term “gun carriage”).

Then gunpowder, cannon, and marbles in hand, we set out to find a firing range.

Now the key to a good firing range when you are testing a completely unscientifically designed destructive device is fairly simple.  You need a long stretch of fairly flat ground, some way to determine where your cannon ball is going to land, and a big pile of dirt.

The dirt pile serves two purposes; first, it is to act as a backstop to hold the cannon in place.  Second, and more importantly, it has to be big enough to hide behind.

 

We found just what we needed.  Out south of town an old grape vineyard had been torn out to make room for a bunch or tract homes.  The field had been cleared and mostly leveled.  There were a number of piles of dirt, and as luck would have it, they had flooded a large area with a thin layer of water that would allow us to see the marble splash down.

To my child-sized memory, the flooded area ran for a half mile or more between our cannon dirt pile and South Livermore Avenue.  In truth it was closer to a quarter mile.

Barry charged the cannon with a liberal pour of powder and pushed the marble in place with a stick.  Then he set the cannon carriage down butted up against the pile of dirt and poured a pile of gunpowder over the touch hole and a trail away from it about 10 inches.  Jeff and I took cover, staring carefully downrange. Barry lit the end of the powder trail and threw himself behind the pile of dirt.

 

A little knowledge about how much powder constituted a proper charge would likely have come in handy that day.  But even without that, the cannon went off.

The dirt pile behind it may have slowed it up some, I suppose, as the cannon ramped up the front wall of the pile and launched itself backwards into space.  The thing must have been tossed a good hundred yards or more.

The4 sound was deafening.  The smoke was astounding.

And that marble?

I have often wondered about that marble.  Never saw a ripple in that big old pond of water.  So, either the marble cleared the pond, crossed South Livermore Avenue and ended up on Old Man Baranus’ place somewhere (embedded in the side of his barn is a distinct possibility).

Or we just plain vaporized that dang thing.

 

 © Copyright 2015, Marty Vandermolen, all Rights Reserved