"Mud Balls"

Standing in our driveway I swung my twelve year old leg over the seat of my baby blue Fuji ten speed. I kicked off with my feet and began my short trip to my friend John's house. With my wide denim bell bottoms draped loosely over my Frye boots, I was styling. Life was good. I pedaled my under appreciated Fuji hard and turned right onto Carol Ann Drive. Ten speed bikes were the bike of choice in the late 70's. I think they might have been about the only bike they made back then, other than a Schwinn Crate or something. Many summer nights were spent sleeping over at someone's house, either inside or out in a tent in a back yard. John had a family tent we would put up a couple times a year. It would sleep about a dozen or so full grown adults and ideally would have taken about that many to put up. John and I would lift and pull that heavy canvas never knowing for sure if we would be successful until it was completely up. We would wait until everyone was asleep then fly down the deserted streets at break neck speeds on our bikes. A lot of times we would end up miles away at the Kenwood Mall at 1:00 in the morning where we would pedal up the five or six floor parking garage [I forget exactly how many floors there were] then we'd fly down side-by-side totally blind to any cars coming up the ramp. Life was good ! To this day, I can ride my bicycle at night and smell the exact same summer air I did back then. I had just crossed Furman Road when I heard the first BOOM! That had to be a cherry bomb! Only cherry bombs were that loud that far away, I thought. Turning left onto John's street I heard the second BOOOMM ! Louder! I was just turning into John's driveway when the next blast hit my ears. BOOOOMMM ! It was coming from John's backyard. I parked my bike and walked through the gate to find John sitting Indian style behind a small carbide cannon. BOOOMM! Carbide cannons obviously used carbide to fire. You would put a couple inch's of water into the bottom of the cannon, then the carbide crystals would drop into the water creating an explosive gas that would ignite when a flint on top created a spark. Like I said.. BOOOMM ! John had a perfect pyramid of little mud balls sitting next to his cannon.  A mud ball shot lazily out of the barrel when it fired. The blast was far disproportionate to the speed of the mud ball it fired. "What the hell are you doing John?" I asked. "bombing the Hefners"... he said.  The Hefners were John's sworn enemy for no apparent reason. Maybe it was because they had a couple boys, older and bigger than John. That was probably it. I wondered back then what the Hefner's thought of this bizarre behavior going on at their neighbors house. " I pictured Mrs. Hefner cooking breakfast in front of their kitchen window when one of their kid's would say "what ya looking at mom?" "Oh.. that crazy boy behind us is shooting little cannon balls at us...that's all... now eat your breakfast" she'd say.  After a couple more shots we figured out that the mud balls were a little too small letting the blast sneak out around them. "Make the balls bigger" I said. "So they barely fit in the barrel". John picked up another mud ball from the pyramid gingerly with two fingers, kinda like a French chef would pick up a piece of fine chocolate for an expensive dessert. He pushed it into the barrel, hit the plunger that released the carbide crystals and struck the striker. Wump ! is all we heard. "What happened"? I asked. I don't know. John reached down to unscrew the carbide releaser, striker thingy still sitting Indian style behind it. When the cap came off a blue, orange flame shot up out of the one inch wide hole completely engulfing his hand and continuing up about six feet into the air. Awesome.. Life was good ! The mud ball kept the blast from escaping out of the barrel, but still did not come out ! It was still stuck ! At some point we ended up on John's front porch trying to use a stick to get the said "ball of mud" out, when an older kid from down the street showed up. "What are you guy's doing"? Tom asked. We told him we were shooting off the cannon but failed to tell him it still had a mud ball stuck in it's barrel. "Can I shoot it"? he asked. "Sure" John said. He told Tom how to put the carbide into it, then when asked how many times he should push the plunger down releasing the carbide, John said, "hit it about ten times". John usually hit it three or four times at the most. As Tom was preparing to hit the striker, John and I exchanged glances... The striker was hit but nothing happened." What's the matter with it"? Tom asked. I don't know, John lied..."Try taking the top off of it". He began doing this with his face directly over the opening. Now, John or I could have said,"stop" or" don't" or something but we said nothing. Tom opened the cap and a blue orange flame shot up hitting him square in the forehead traveling around both sides of his head, meeting again on the back side of his head then traveled another six or eight feet straight up into the summer sky...John and I fell down laughing... I can't breathe, hysterical laughter.  After about twenty seconds of hearing us laugh at him, Tom turned back to face us... his eye brows were gone! Almost gone.. Where they were, there were little flumes of smoke traveling upwards into the air above Tom. John and I were going to die laughing, right there on his front lawn. I could not breathe !! I wasn't exactly laughing anymore, I was just laying on the ground preparing for death to take me. Tom stormed off and eventually we composed ourselves. We took the cannon into John's house and put it back on the shelf in his bedroom from where it came. Mud ball and all. Chapter 2- John had a great idea moments later..."What if we put water in a Clorox bottle then dropped carbide crystal into it, screwed the top back on and lit it with a firecracker fuse. Luckily John had all of these materials. Moments later John and I were standing over top a Clorox bottle with a red firecracker fuse sticking out of it in the middle of John's backyard.  I'll say "we"  but really it was John who put almost the entire tube like container of carbide crystal into the Clorox bottle. He lit the fuse and we stood there over it daring to see who would stand there the longest when I finally said "BOOOOOKK". The phrase "book" was used as a verb and meant to go real fast "back in the day". We ran about twenty feet then did our best Pete Rose head first slide into the grass. Our feet to the blast. When it went off it felt like someone stood over me and hit the bottoms of my feet with two sledge hammers ! One on each foot... then we heard the dirt falling back to earth and hitting the aluminum awning on the back of John's house. Pieces of dirt were everywhere. On his roof, in his drive way, and God only knows where else. The blast was like ten cherry bombs going off. It was mind blowing. As we stood to inspect the small crater it left in John's yard I noticed that my right leg was alot shorter than my left...The two inch heel on my right Frye boot was gone!! We found it about five feet past the spot we were laying and to this day John swears it was blown off by the blast. I'm not so sure it didn't come off while I was running. No one came out to see what happened, no parents, no police, no Hefners.. Nobody. Just another summer day at the Frohlich house... We said are good byes awhile later and I rode my baby blue ten speed back home carrying my Frye boot heel in one hand. I remember my Dad saying he would drop off the boot at the local shoe repair shop the next day. I also remember not getting those boots back from the cobblers for along time. One thing's for sure, that guy would never guess in a million years what caused the heel to fly off that boot. And to this day, as God as my witness, my right leg is one quarter inch shorter than my left...