I visited one of my oldest friends on my last trip to Cumberland. Unfortunately he was hospitalized and not in good shape. I didnt like seeing my fellow North End Alley Rat hurting. The small talk turned of memories of growing up. For those that dont know Sam Bennett, he is one of the most creative, imaginative and downright gifted builders/designers of anything you can think of. Case in point: The late fall of our 7th grade found us bored. Sam took a trip to the library on his own and came back with an ever so slight mischievous grin. That was a lot for Sam, he seldom showed any emotion. He pulled out his little note pad and pencil that he always seemed to have with him and nearly exclaimed; I found out how to make gunpowder, all we need is some stuff. I was doubtful and said something like, well thats good but I dont think ABL will give us any of the stuff. He grinned and ran down the list of stuff. We can do this, we can buy this crap right in stores! We figured we didnt want to raise any suspicions so we split up. I went to Southern States to get one element. John went to the hardware store for another and Sam headed to the nearest drug store for the Potassium _________ (Im not going to divulge or secret recipe). We met up on his back porch. I asked if he had any trouble getting the Potassium _______. He said No, I told them my sister was constipated and my mom wanted it for her. Sorry Teresa, we had to do what we had to do. We noticed that the stuff John and I had was sold in ounces and pounds, the stuff Sam had was measured in grams. All we had was an old kitchen scale graduated in ounces. Back to the library to find a conversion table for grams to ounces and vice versa. Mission accomplished. Who says a kid cant get something useful from a library? We had to figure out what to put it in to make a bang. Sam figured out how to drill a hole in a buckeye and hollow out the insides while keeping the shell intact. We also picked up some fuse cord so we were on our way. We mixed our first batch and went up on Shriver Ridge for a test deployment. All they did was make a lot of smoke, no bang. Never one to give up, Sam said we just needed to tweak the amounts a bit. The second batch was a little too strong and auto-ignited in our mixer. Thankfully we did little bits at a time and only lost an eyebrow or two. We had used all the Potassium____________ so Sam headed out for more, to a different drug store. We didnt want to raise suspicion. The third time was a charm, they were loud and would blow little holes in the ground. Success! We never got to make any more gunpowder. Either thru Divine protection or smart pharmacists putting the word out, they would not sell us any more Potassium____________. They either knew what we were up too (with missing eyebrows) or figured no kid could be that constipated. Heres to you Sam. You are a creative genius whose still waters run very deep. Get better. I have this idea for using an electro-magnet and a can of spray deodorant to make a hadron collider and Im going to need your engineering skills to make it happen.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 21:55:44 +0000
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