The summer I was twelve I got to go stay with my Grandparents in Salem, Oregon.\u00a0 They were my Dad\u2019s folks.\u00a0 The ostensible reason for the trip was so that I could pick strawberries.\u00a0 I could earn a lot more picking strawberries than I could delivering newspapers.\u00a0 My brother took over my paper route while I was gone and we all did well.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My Uncle John had picked strawberries, beans, and who knows what else every summer since he was twelve.\u00a0 He was in the big time now, working the night shift in the cannery.\u00a0 He was home for the summer after his freshman year at Oregon State.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I worked five days a week and had the weekends off.\u00a0 Grandma and Grandpa went away for the first weekend.\u00a0 I slept in a very nice bedroom they had set up with some Japanese screens in the unfinished basement.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
On Saturday morning I was sleeping-in when I heard someone creeping down the stairs, suppressing laughter.\u00a0 I went on full alert. \u00a0I heard a thump and a funny noise as something landed on the bed next to me.\u00a0 It was a cherry bomb!\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
By the time I got upstairs they were gone.\u00a0 Jay\u2019s car was parked on the street but they were not to be found.\u00a0 That was fine with me.\u00a0 I took a big russet potato out of the pantry and shoved it up the tailpipe of Jay\u2019s car with a broom handle.\u00a0 It was a Mercedes Diesel.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The gods were smiling.\u00a0 John still had cherry bombs.\u00a0 Over spring break he and some college buddies had gone to Mexico.\u00a0 They had returned with a treasure of cherry bombs and the Holy Grail – M-80\u2019s.\u00a0 He had been telling stories of what they had done with them in the dorm.\u00a0 The best part of the deal was that HE had initiated the hostilities.\u00a0 All I had to do was find them.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t take long.\u00a0 They were in an old fishing tackle box.\u00a0 There were M-80\u2018s too.\u00a0 Since it was war, I had no reservations about confiscating the enemy\u2019s entire supply of ammunition.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I waited until Grandma and Grandpa got home, reserved a pocket full, for training purposes; and buried the tackle box under the garbage cans.\u00a0 I had discovered a lot of other interesting stuff while conducting the search.\u00a0 A case of Coors Beer was tactically re-located so Grandma would easily find it.\u00a0 There was other contraband that went to good use.\u00a0 I was sure to stay under the sphere of my grandparent’s protection when John was around. \u00a0 I knew the enemy would resort to torture and beatings.\u00a0 I could take it but preferred to avoid the drama.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 I got pretty good at it.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t very long until the ducks abandoned Mill Creek for the duration.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My buddy and I had a great time.\u00a0 We had plenty of viable targets.\u00a0 Before too long the Police patrols increased; we had to cool it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After a certain point we came to an impasse.\u00a0 I returned most, well some, of the stash just before I went home.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When I left, Jay\u2019s car was still parked next to the house and hadn\u2019t moved since the potato was stuffed up the exhaust pipe.\u00a0 A potato can take several weeks to shrivel up and blow out once the engine starts.\u00a0 It can be tough on batteries.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The summer I was twelve I got to go stay with my Grandparents in Salem, Oregon.\u00a0 They were my Dad\u2019s folks.\u00a0 The ostensible reason for the trip was so that I could pick strawberries.\u00a0 I could earn a lot more picking strawberries than I could delivering newspapers.\u00a0 My brother took over my paper route while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":136,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions\/136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}