Any other crazy kids out there?

[mikesto44]

Ah yes the adventures of our youth. I to had one of those Disney guns from the late fifties. But one memory I have is when my Dad bought my brother an me our Daisy BB guns. It put a whole new meaning to playing good guy bad guy with cap guns. Instead of bang I got yeah...it was ping that hurt...until I shot my brother between the eyes... We cooled it after that..! Yep no more head shots.. Still got that gun...

 

[godutch]

And here I was wasting my time with model rockets, a 4 foot length of 4" PVC pipe and some innovation. For some reason Dad got pretty ticked!

Redneck bazooka.

 

[Gvilleddie]

When we were lads we messed around making black powder. Made a bomb and tested it on a small wooden bridge in a public park. Blew to he@@. Oh well. I Guess our bomb was a little hot. Run for home.

 

[godutch]

It certainly was a different world we grew up in. I know we don't exactly have a lot of younger guys here on the forum but I can't help but wonder what they're thinking reading these stories.

 

[Marshhawk]

Yep. BB gun wars. No fair shooting above the waist. Worked fine. Welts sharpened your aim. No problem until my cuz was "laying down fire" and I peeked out from behind a tree. Odd. Saw the BB coming. Hit dead center of my right eye. Luckily I was wearing glasses and the lens took the hit -- a white mass of cracks. One touch and the lens fell out. Made up a story about how I wrecked my bike and my glasses hit the road. We laid off BB gun wars after that.
Another dumb thing me and my buddies did was build homemade napalm, inspired by all those Vietnam newsreels on the 5 o'clock news every day. Get a gallon glass A&W root beer jug. Stuff it full of busted up styrofoam cooler pieces and add gasoline to fill. Stick a rag in the top like a wick and light 'er up. It just burns like a lantern wick -- until you walk off about 50 paces and put a .22 long rifle round in it. Holy crap! Very impressive! And hard as hell to put out.

 

[SOLANCO]

About summer dusk uncle Fred would load all available kids in the bed of his pickup and drive us down the holler to the country store at the two lane for pop.
One time we were riding back up the holler afterwards and a snake dropped out of a tree into the truck bed. Wish I had a video of that!

 

[Bad Karma]

Yep. They used to call it "cranking": You put the bare end of the phone wire in the pond and crank the phone end. It created a small charge and......

Or, you ask the neighbor kid to hold the ends of the wires…

 

[flatcreek]

Reading all these post, I probably did about half of them.

 

[SwampBilly]

I also blistered up my friend with his own lever action BB gun for shooting at me with a pellet gun. He was a fat kid and standing in greasy pond mud so I got him at least four times before he made it to the high weeds. I thought he liked it since he kept calling my name all the while. p.s. Don't tell me you guys never had BB gun fights !

My brother once shot me in the head from the upstairs window that was open but through the screen with a daisy pumpmaster 670 I believe on 10 pumps.

He didn't think it was loaded and it was roughly a 45° angle and it hit me on the head and penetrated the scalp and the BB slid back about an inch and a half and mom took me to the doctor and the doctor said he could cut the bb out or it would come out on its own and of course I squalled like hell and the bb popped out like a zit maybe four or five years later.

Good times ! Then in our mid teenage years we had access to unmentionables and ATVs and we used to use both on supervised and somehow we made it alive today

 

[godutch]

My brother once shot me in the head from the upstairs window that was open but through the screen with a daisy pumpmaster 670 I believe on 10 pumps.

He didn't think it was loaded and it was roughly a 45° angle and it hit me on the head and penetrated the scalp and the BB slid back about an inch and a half and mom took me to the doctor and the doctor said he could cut the bb out or it would come out on its own and of course I squalled like hell and the bb popped out like a zit maybe four or five years later.

Good times ! Then in our mid teenage years we had access to unmentionables and ATVs and we used to use both on supervised and somehow we made it alive today

Those 'pump up's took things to a whole new level. 'Should've been disqualified in the rules of engagement. They were to be feared (unless your the one who had it).

 

[snakebit]

Or, you ask the neighbor kid to hold the ends of the wires…

I was already in enough trouble with them.

 

[springfield art]

Can you still count to 10?

Yikes!

 

[springfield art]

And here I was wasting my time with model rockets, a 4 foot length of 4" PVC pipe and some innovation. For some reason Dad got pretty ticked!

Funny how the model rocket company is now making our black powder! (Estes=GOEX)

 

[bpd303]

When my brother and I were young and foolish pre-teens we got into a lot of stuff. One year when my brother was 13 he got a chemistry set for Christmas. He would work up some of the most interesting concoctions with it. I remember one that when lighted it would burn like phosphorus. Anyway he concocted a mixture when cotton thread was soaked in it and dried it made an excellent fuse. He would cut a small piece and light it to time how long it would burn.

One day we got the bright idea to make a device (bomb) to see if it would explode. We took one of grandmas canning quart jars and filled it with some of grandpas black powder, cut open paper shot gun shells shot & powder, some of that stuff that was like phosphorus and I don't know what all else. Then we wrapped it all up with tape, old news paper soaked in a flower & water mixture, of course the fuse stuck through a hole punched in the lid. It was about the size of a football. BTW we were latch key kids as mom & dad both worked jobs.

Anyway across from our house was a huge field and in that field there was a Florida cherry tree/bush. We carried the thing over to that bush and my brother figured the length of the fuse to allow us to get safely away and he lit it. We ran back to the house and hid behind mom's '53 Plymouth in the carport, she had just come home and was inside getting dinner started.

We waited and waited but no boom. He wanted to go over there and check the fuse but being a little more cautious than he was, I convinced him to give it a little more time, in the meantime dad came home and mom called all of us in for dinner.
Just after we all got washed up and seated, there was the loudest boom we had ever heard and the blast cracked some windows on our front porch of course everyone in the neighborhood joined us outside as the fire and police arrived.

The cherry tree was gone and a crater about the size of a Volkswagen was where it had been. We never admitted to knowing anything about it, but grandpa who lived on the next street over kinda figured out what happened when he was missing some of his black powder he kept in the unlocked garden shed. He never did rat us out though as no one was hurt. Pretty sure mom & dad suspected too because Denny's chemistry set disappeared shortly after that.

 

[boberator]

Dad told me about those. All mine were synthetic apparently. Pop worked at Uniroyal for a bit part time in INDY before moving west to resume law enforcement career. Synthetic tubes won't even do for a sling shot.

The red ones were real rubber and made good bands. Lots of stretch. They still had the red ones in 1982 in South Africa. They were long gone by then in America as far as I knew.

 

[Josh Canuck]

At age 16, just coming back from a flea market in another town where I bought an INERT Mills hand grenade, I was almot home when I passed in front of the local bullies. They were 5 or 6 of them and they began harassing me. Getting this crazy idea, I took the grenade out of my pocket, pulled the pin and released the lever and just tossed the grenade to them. I NEVER saw them run so fast to their beloved Harleys! I told them calmly that "next one won't be inert". They never bothered me again. Darn thing is I could have gotten jail time for this. Can't remember what I did with the grenade but now, trying to find one for less the 40 bucks I paid in the 70's would be futile. They fetch more like 400$. Lol! Anyway, people are less afraid when you collect percussion or flintlock muskets so... Here I am. Lol

 

[Buckskinquin]

When I was 14 I got a Kentucky pistol. Bought it for $15. Had powder but no ball. So I raided my dad’s 16gauge buckshot shells and dumped the buckshot down the bore. Packed it with paper I guess and shot holes in the neighbors old aluminum shed.

Then we’d take the powder from the shotgun shell and add it to an M80 and reseal the M80.

I was dumb but lucky

When I was 6-12, we would buy salt Peter and sulfur from a small store. Proprietor’s name, “Sparky”! We had a kinda formula for black powder, he’d even ask, “ You boys makin black powder? “. Went on for quite sometime, until we packed it in a pipe with screw on ends. Post mushroom cloud and vibrated village, our experiment’s license was rescinded by our mothers. Late 50’s and early 60’s were awesome! No fingers lost or any injuries, yeah, we were lucky.

 

[snakebit]

Funny how the model rocket company is now making our black powder! (Estes=GOEX)

Never tape a model rocket to a gas can, ignite it then shoot the can with a .22.. not under trees anyway.

 

[Bad Karma]

When I was 6-12, we would buy salt Peter and sulfur from a small store. Proprietor’s name, “Sparky”! We had a kinda formula for black powder, he’d even ask, “ You boys makin black powder? “. Went on for quite sometime, until we packed it in a pipe with screw on ends. Post mushroom cloud and vibrated village, our experiment’s license was rescinded by our mothers. Late 50’s and early 60’s were awesome! No fingers lost or any injuries, yeah, we were lucky.

We usually had actual dynamite stored on the property. Grandfathers and dad used it for blasting stumps, rock removal for pipelines, etc. All of us kids knew darn well there’d be hell to pay if we ever messed around with it.
Besides, my maternal grandfather wasn’t above blasting a tree or something just for fun on the 4th of July… we got a lesson in the power of dynamite and he got to have a little fun.

 

[godutch]

The OP hit pay dirt with this thread.