Ashby

One of my lifelong friends was a guy who I'll call Ashby. He was a few months younger, but we grew up from toddlerhood to adulthood being friends. Ashby was a bloody genius in things mechanical, although in his early school years, it was thought he might be "slow". Turns out the kid couldn't read or write because he was half blind. Some glasses cured that problem, and then he took off.

By the time we hit high school, we were into some major adventures. Ashby could hot wire any motor, so we used to take a lot of unauthorized rides in his mother's black Cadillac or his dad's big old Buick. You'd be surprised at how the girls were impressed by those cars.

By the time we got to chemistry in high school, Ashby had a bee in his bonnet to make some gunpowder. The recipe was in the encyclopedia. So many parts sulfur, so many parts potassium nitrate, and so many parts charcoal. It was all available at the drug store. We mixed it up in a dish pan with a wooden spoon. OK. So what do you do with this dish pan of gunpowder? Well. You make a bomb. That's right, a bomb.

Now we weren't gangsters, but how do you know if you've made gunpowder unless it blows up. A man who lived across the street from worked for a metal pipe company, so getting a foot long 3 inch diameter pipe threaded on both ends and caps to screw on it wasn't hard. We took this and drilled a hole in the side near one end for a fuse port. The plan was to fill the pipe with gunpowder, have a cherry bomb inside with the fuse through the small hole, and cap it after compression with a ball bat. Then we would dig a hole, lean the pipe against the side, and place a railroad fusee so that it would burn down, light the fuse and WHAMOO!

OK. Where to dig the hole? Well, that brings up another topic. One that is likely long ago gone. High school fraternities and sororities were popular in the 40s and 50s. Ashby and I belonged to one. Our organization had rented a former night club outside of town that was a great place for parties and meetings. While close to the highway, it sat on the front of a huge wooded area that was totally wild. The terrain was a bit rolling, so we had a natural barrier between us and the "hole".

On a Saturday morning, we walked a few hundred yards into the wood, dug a hole about 2 feet deep, leaned the bomb across in one direction and the fusee in the opposite, lit it, and got the hell out of Dodge and over a small hillock. We had agreed that if there was a dud, we would leave and not return until the next day. Well, no dud. The thing blew up with a loud explosion and shrapnel flew through the trees. As soon as the commotion cleared, we ran over to the detonation site to find a 3 foot diameter hole.

To show how the grace of God protects fools, about two years later, a young highschooler in Knoxvile, TN blew himself in half making a pipe bomb in his parents' garage. He was packing the powder with a metal rod which sparked off a pipe edge. Glad we used a baseball bat of wood.