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Posted by Ballpark Frank (24.237.94.196) on 12:31:22 07/06/14
In Reply to: Boom! posted by Lynnette
Lynnette,
I can identify with Randy's fervor for hoisting that anvil with gunpowder.
A long, long time ago, when I was in between high school and the U.S. Army (wasting time, pretending to be a college student), a group of male friends and I would celebrate the Fourth by dividing into two teams, each team member armed with a gross or two of exploding pop bottle rockets, procured from Rocky Mountain Fireworks in Denver. We developed crude homemade launchers, essentially a couple feet of aluminum pipe, with one end tamped down. We would light the fuse, drop the rocket into the launcher, and aim it at our foe. We had a favorite place to conduct this frivolity, a large pile of rock in Boulder Canyon. We could hide behind boulders, fire a rocket, and duck down to reload. Of course, pop bottle rockets tend to have a mind of their own, and our aiming was incredibly inaccurate. One evening, I arrived late, and the battle had already been joined. I sat in my car, and watched the streaks and explosions emanating from spots all over the 80 or 100 foot high rocky mount. Some of the rockets would graze the side of a boulder, which would redirect the rocket in some undesired direction. It was quite a sight. Actually hitting a human target was a very rare result.
One evening, our group descended on the old Holiday Drive-In theater, on the east side of Boulder. The manager was a member of our group, and he invited us out after they closed. One team gathered down by the drive-in movie screen. The other group fanned out across the area where vehicles would perch on slight grades, with the poles next to them, providing the speaker for movie audio. At one fateful time, someone made a direct hit on the other team's "ammo dump". Suddenly, several gross of exploding pop bottle rockets were going off simultaneously. Many of them never made it into the air. There was this big golden glow, and we could see several of our friends silhouetted against the flames. We came dangerously close to setting the movie screen on fire. Needless to say, that was the last "battle at the drive-in"!
Ballpark
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