eli, the barrow boy

growing up in a small town often involves trying to come up with ways of entertaining yourself and others. my friends and i had quite a few adventures along the way, some serious and others with just the potential for jail time, though none ever materialized. in hindsight, the lack of jail time probably had to do with the chief of police being one of my track and field coaches, and the fact the he was often a dinner guest of my grandparents. Chief Grover was a good guy to have as a friend.

one afternoon my friend eli from the swim team and i were bored and were trying to find something to do. without much money for gas, we figured we would stay around town, which was convenient because we were already there, and didn't need his parents permission to go there. first problem solved. the second problem of what to do, which seemed the more pressing at the time, was soon easily solved as well. we would build a cannon.

eli's dad was many things at different times. as far as i know he is currently an insurance salesman, one of the few successful gentlemen of this occupation in our small town. however at this point i believe he was still somewhat involved with his former occupation as a snap-on tool salesman. this former financial dalliance of freds proved a major boon to our mission that day. we had at our disposal a basement full to over-flowing and an two story garage full of tools and materials with which to build our ticket to coolsville.

guns are passe in a town where you can check in your hunting rifle to the main office at the high school. seeing a 17 year old high schooler walking down the hall in cammoflage carrying a thrity ought six is no less ordinary than sitting in the parking lot of the knechts auto parts store on friday night trying to pick up on volleyball players and cheerleaders. we had to find a way to make shooting machines more interesting. eli's house was a good place to start. with our abundant resources, and incredible drive to blow something up, we set upon our task.

instead of lead, we would shoot gourds.

friends had potato guns. simple little tubes, rigged with removable end caps whose barrel you would stuff full of a potato which we travel about 200 feet with a good wind when the hair spray in the ignition chamber was lit at just the right moment. we figured we could build one of these in about half an hour, and therefore wouldn't be good enough to help us pass the time. pumkins. "pumkins were the new black" we said to ourselves, without actually using such a 2001 phrase in the halcyon days of the mid to late nineties.

we managed to cut a 12in diameter pvc culvert pipe into a length that we figured would work. we were stupid then, and too focused on making the thing fast enough to shoot it during the daylight to do the math though. regular potato guns were usually about four, and at their greatest glory five feet, in length. we figured the 6 feet would be plenty for the thing to launch pumkins, so that's how much pipe we cut with the hacksaw. i don't know how much you know about guns, but the length of the barrel makes a huge difference in how far, and how true, a bullet can travel. if our cannon were a gun, it would be a derringer firing .50 caliber shells. good for a real short distance where your margin of error doesn't matter because your target is so close.

anyway we started building the thing and we actually did a couple of things in a bigger and better way. somehow we employed a thought process to the ignition when we couldn't manage it for barrel length. people usually propelled their spud guns with aqua net hair spray and some sort of open flame put through a small hole in the chamber. this would not provide enough lift or spark for us though. we found a couple of old, really sweet electrical bbq starters in the basement, and went to work wiring them up to our cannon. we build a handle, and put the double ignition buttons where a guns trigger would be. as far as beauty, a mossberg double-barreled shotgun, this was not. but the thought behind it was great. more spark, more better burning. now we just needed a fuel source.

propane sounded dangerous, plus there's no hiding a big white canister when you are trying to be covert. answering "hey boys what are you up to with that propane" with, " oh just trying to find the gigantic commercial outdoor stove you have, mom!" doesn't really cut it. so we had to pick something else. our pile of pumkins taunted us as the moments ticked by, and we just had to blow them out of our cannon LIKE FIVE MINUTES AGO AHAHAHAHAHHAHGGGGGG

searching through the garage, we cast aside regular old gasoline, some kerosene, and a bunch of other highly-flammable solvents and junk. we eventually found ourselves in front of a large blue barrel in the back corner under a tarpaulin labeled 'ether'. this was an exciting a previously unknown sensation, much like a first near-miss car accident, or seeing that cute girl in the hall during lunch hour.

the liquid wouldn't do though as it would just not really affect that quick ignition we wanted. we took some and poured it into a regular run of the mill spray bottle though, and we had ourselves some ether in as close to a gaseous state we could get. perfect!

by this time it was getting dark. it was sometime in september or october, and though indian summer was still keeping us in t-shirts - goose fleshed fairly often, it had gotten dark pretty quickly. this darkness was crucial to concealing our location should our pumpkin do some collateral damage on its earth bound dance with gravity. due to our travel limitations, and the fact that this sucker was a electrical, meant that we pretty much had to stay in the back yard. fortunately, eli's parents spread was pretty comfortable. it occupied about half of the block it sat on, sharing the remainder with the Wood Products Credit Union of which i am a member.

we took the cannon out behind the garage, in the relative concealment of some low trees and shrubs. loading the first round was without incident, and we managed to spray a bunch of the ether into the back without getting light headed before we screwed the end cap on. time to fire. we propped the leading edge of the cannon up on the top of the fence and fired. the motion on the eclectic triggers was wonderful, the little click*click*click of the starter like an overture. then a low sound more felt, like being kicked in the stomach, and a WHOOOOSH *POP* of the pumpkin leaving the barrel. we pretty sure we got some good distance because we didn't hear anything after that. our best guess was that it landed on the other side of Hwy 99, in the train yard about 300y away. not to shabby!

firing had been pretty easy, though eli had fallen over onto the ground from the recoil, but at least hadn't been hit in the face by the butt end of the barrel or anything. we decided to reload, and this dear friends, was nearly the death of us.

we stuffed another pumpkin into the barrel with a broomstick who's end was wrapped with a rag and some duct tape. a very civil war sort of implement, ya know if it weren't made of plastic. after loading the gun again, we decided we needed a snack. we set the gun against the back of the garage and went inside. we hadn't gone more then four feet when we heard the sound of plastic sliding down wood siding, and then the low stomach kick & pop of the ignition of the gun. the handle with the ignition switches has been caught on a water faucet when the gun settled down the back of the garage and there must have been enough liquid residue of the ether to make it ignite. we stood and stared as the pumpkin leapt up over the roof, and started to reach the point where it would pull a U turn. because of lack of a proper amount of ether, this didn't take very long. about 50 feet up, the pumpkin spinning rotations slower and slower, gravity took over. it was time for eli and i to make it to the porch. running as fast as we could, we made it to the porch just in time to watch the pumpkin disappear behind a row of trees on the side of his parents property.

all hell breaking lose sounds a lot like the shattering sky-light of a credit union.

it was now time to hide the gun. running down the stairs to the basement with a cannon was awkward, but we got it down the steep steps, and slid it into a ratty crawlspace behind a workbench. we stacked a couple boxes and threw some junk on it, and it looked great. about this time we could hear the sirens. they were almost beautiful, muffled by the ground and stacks of boxes in the basement. we made our way upstairs and started watching a movie as all the cops in cottage grove, about four cars, roared into the parking lot of the bank. we kept our cool. agreements were made, oaths sworn and lips sealed. they would never catch us. and they never actually did.

we had a hard-won private enjoyment the following wednesday when our weekly town newspaper came out. the lead story covered a three hour standoff, with guns drawn and a hostage negotiator, between the cottage grove police department and a smashed pumpkin lying on the floor behind the counter of the Wood Products Credit Union. no officers or hostages were wounded. damages to the bank we reported to included 1 glass skylight (broken) and the cost of renting an industrial carpet cleaner to remove the remains of the illicit gourd.