The summer I was twelve I got to go stay with my Grandparents in Salem, Oregon.  They were my Dad’s folks.  The ostensible reason for the trip was so that I could pick strawberries.  I could earn a lot more picking strawberries than I could delivering newspapers.  My brother took over my paper route while I was gone and we all did well.

 

My Uncle John had picked strawberries, beans, and who knows what else every summer since he was twelve.  He was in the big time now, working the night shift in the cannery.  He was home for the summer after his freshman year at Oregon State.

 

I worked five days a week and had the weekends off.  Grandma and Grandpa went away for the first weekend.  I slept in a very nice bedroom they had set up with some Japanese screens in the unfinished basement.

 

On Saturday morning I was sleeping-in when I heard someone creeping down the stairs, suppressing laughter.  I went on full alert.  I heard a thump and a funny noise as something landed on the bed next to me.  It was a cherry bomb!  Uncle John and his buddy Jay, ran back up the stairs while I flipped the thing off of the bed just before it went off.

 

By the time I got upstairs they were gone.  Jay’s car was parked on the street but they were not to be found.  That was fine with me.  I took a big russet potato out of the pantry and shoved it up the tailpipe of Jay’s car with a broom handle.  It was a Mercedes Diesel.

 

The gods were smiling.  John still had cherry bombs.  Over spring break he and some college buddies had gone to Mexico.  They had returned with a treasure of cherry bombs and the Holy Grail – M-80’s.  He had been telling stories of what they had done with them in the dorm.  The best part of the deal was that HE had initiated the hostilities.  All I had to do was find them.  It didn’t take long.  They were in an old fishing tackle box.  There were M-80‘s too.  Since it was war, I had no reservations about confiscating the enemy’s entire supply of ammunition.

 

I waited until Grandma and Grandpa got home, reserved a pocket full, for training purposes; and buried the tackle box under the garbage cans.  I had discovered a lot of other interesting stuff while conducting the search.  A case of Coors Beer was tactically re-located so Grandma would easily find it.  There was other contraband that went to good use.  I was sure to stay under the sphere of my grandparent’s protection when John was around.   I knew the enemy would resort to torture and beatings.  I could take it but preferred to avoid the drama.

 

One of my favorite pass-times was to drop a cherry bomb in Mill Creek so it drifted into the ducks downstream before it went off.  I got pretty good at it.  It wasn’t very long until the ducks abandoned Mill Creek for the duration.

 

My buddy and I had a great time.  We had plenty of viable targets.  Before too long the Police patrols increased; we had to cool it.

 

After a certain point we came to an impasse.  I returned most, well some, of the stash just before I went home.

 

When I left, Jay’s car was still parked next to the house and hadn’t moved since the potato was stuffed up the exhaust pipe.  A potato can take several weeks to shrivel up and blow out once the engine starts.  It can be tough on batteries.