It’s Sunday morning and I am unusually excited to go to church. It’s not that we have a new pastor, or because I get to check out women in sundresses. No, it’s because of what will happen after church.
We’ve been collecting the plastic bottles, of varying sizes, for three weeks now and at last tally I counted 41. I’ve counted four times, excitedly hoping the number would miraculously increase, like when that dude pulled his magic and created a shit ton of fish and loaves of bread from a few, but I keep coming up with 41. Still, not too shabby.
We choose the balcony, one of my favorite places to sit during Mass because I get to pass the time by counting different categories of people. Crying babies: 3. Balding men: 17. How man times Father says “and my dear Christian people” during his boring homily: 23. Women I’d like to get to know in the biblical sen—“Go in peace to love and serve the Lord,” Father says. “Thanks be to God,” we excitedly call back. Yes, father, thank God! Church is finally over.
…
It’s a brisk fall day. Brush that we’ve been raking burns in a small pit 50 feet from the choppy lake. The coals are beaming bright red when my father throws an old aerosol can into the fire. “Quick! Get behind that tree,” he yells to me as he stations himself behind another. He’s giggling and I can’t help but join him. We wait, our giddiness building with each second. A sudden explosion rips through the air and scatters ash and embers. We look at each other and burst out laughing.
“That was awesome,” I hear myself say.
“That was NOT awesome,” my mom shouts from a distant window.
…
It takes practice to avoid a traffic jam after church. Unfortunately, for my siblings and me who are forced to attend church, we’ve been practicing every Sunday for as long as I can remember. We scoot through the accumulating crowd, speed walk to the car, and load in, driving straight to Morey’s Fish House. Apparently they haven’t heard the complaints from our neighbors about explosions rattling their windows because they are still selling us dry ice. Maybe it’s my paranoia, but I feel that the sales clerks, who smell rich with fish, eye us with suspicion as we pay for the large chunk of dry ice.
We make our get-a-way and drive back to our log cabin, the perfect location to blow shit up. Dad says that we have to eat breakfast before we start, so we begrudgingly obey, as the Ten Commandments tell us to, and wait some more. At least the food is great. Mom is a fantastic cook and knows how to do Sunday mornings right. Breakfast breaks and my brother and I gather all the necessary tools: a screwdriver to cleave smaller chunks off of the main brick, gloves to handle the smoking substance, and the plastic bottles. We start filling all of them 3/4 of the way with well water. It is a long process that makes us second guess blowing them all up. No, we tell ourselves, this is gonna be sweet!
As soon as we’re ready, we take our positions next to Dad. He’s kneeling on the ground with the screwdriver in his gloved left hand. “Let’s start with a small one,” he says, grabbing a 16-ounce Coke bottle, and we agree, blinded by anticipation and delight. He positions the blade of the screwdriver at the corner of the smoking brick and drives his free hand down on the handle, breaking a few chunks off. He quickly drops the screwdriver, picks up the small pieces, plops them through the mouth of the bottle, screws the cap on as tight as he can —fighting the pressure that is already spewing out the top— and rolls it onto a patch of grass 15 feet away.
If you’ve never seen a dry-ice bomb explode, you should steal yourself away from your boring adult life to enjoy the simple pleasure. The preparation. The execution. The waiting. The anticipation. And the explosion. It is tomfoolery. It is trouble. It is shenanigans. And it should be written into the script of every young person’s childhood, because, as long as you do it right, it’s pure and harmless fun.
We watch the smoky bubbles fizz off the tiny chunks and rise to the air trapped inside. Pressure builds and as it starts to expand sharp pings and pops from the stretching plastic ring out through the humid summer air. We wait, patiently, quietly, for the bottle to lose its battle. We’re smiling and in our peripheral we can see Dad doing the same. Our anticipation increases and our giddy nerves start to get the best of us. Words form in our mouths, pressing against our cheeks until they can no longer remain quiet. They burst from our lips and we’re saying things like, “I wonder when it will go,” and “Look at how big it’s getting!” Dad hushes us with a wave of his hand and we resume our silent waiting.
…
My father loves to shock people. His jokes are dirty and his innuendos are crass and both elicit a response from my embarrassed mother. His flair for the dramatic comes not in arguments or a full range of emotions, but in little surprises that bring victims to sudden anger, then relief, then laughter. You have to watch him closely around a campfire, because it’s a safe bet there are firecrackers in his pocket and he’s waiting for the perfect time to casually toss them into the fire, all to scare the hell out of anyone trying to enjoy conversation with a friend or the night sky of northern Minnesota or the dancing flames of a relaxing fire.
…
The bottle increases in size, ironing out every manufactured wrinkle, every intentional curve or indentation, until it is almost as round as a ball. With each ping of expansion we prepare ourselves for the explosion, holding our breath all along. Seconds turn to a minute and we wonder if it’s going to explode at all, or if it will—
BOOM! The shot rings out like a cannon, and we exhale with both relief and amazement. We’re high fiving each other, saying “Holy crap!” and “That was huge!” Dad joins in the celebration then walks over to collect and examine the chunks of plastic that used to pass as a container. We run to his side and “ooh” and “ahh” at the shredded carcass.
“Alright,” he says. “Let’s do another.”
The rest of our morning is filled with the same except Dad gradually lets us in on the action. We plop the pieces down the tubes, we wrench the caps tight, we roll them onto the grass, wait, and explode with joy when the earth rattles with deafening blasts. We try the bottles standing upright, propped against a tree, and even throw a few into the lake.
Occasionally we encounter a bottle too tough to break with only dry ice and water.
“Hey,” he calls out to me. “Grab the BB gun.”
This just keeps getting better and better, I think, as I run into the house to grab my trusty Benjamin Sheridan. I open the door and jump down the stone stairs to the picnic table Mom has been nervously watching from. I load a pellet into the chamber, pump it full with as much air as I can muster, jam the gun into the crook of my right shoulder, and hold the barrel in my left palm, resting it on the picnic table. I aim and wait for the orders from my commander to take the shot.
“Let her rip,” he says.
I take a breath, steady my aim, and fire. A split second later the explosion rips the air and we all yell with bliss. I get a high five from my dad for my good marksmanship and we load another, building to our grand finale.
…
Anytime you live in or around nature, you deal with pests. It could be mice crawling through your cupboards, moths attacking the clothes in your closets, or ants infesting a kitchen. Sometimes it’s a squirrel that finds its way through a hole in a screen or ducks that fall down the chimney. Of all the pests we dealt with at the cabin, my Dad’s favorite were wasps because he got to utilize what he knew best: fire.
For the ground wasps it was as simple as pouring some gas down the hole, stepping back and carefully lighting it on fire. We’d step back a few feet incase the angry insects started coming out, and then run back a few more when they did. Quick and easy.
When a hive found its way under the eaves of the cabin, a more complicated operation was called for. We needed fire to light the paper hive, but how would we get it up there? My mother wouldn’t let us invest in a flamethrower (what a bitch, right?), so Dad’s idea involved a bundle of gasoline-soaked rags primitively fashioned to a long stick.
One day the nest is at the crest of the eaves and we were having a difficult time reaching it. We could open the closest window and light it from there, but then the crazy wasps would find their way into the loft. Since we couldn’t reach it with one stick, we duct taped two sticks together, lit the rags and carefully brought the ball of flames to the beehive. It was an unsteady endeavor, wobbling with every jerk, but we somehow managed to hold it still enough to set the hive ablaze. He seems younger, my Dad, anytime he is lighting anything on fire. And that day he left his mark on the cabin, in the form of a large, charred blotch of black above our highest window. Anytime I looked out that window I was reminded that eliminating pests was a messy business. But it could also be fun as hell.
…
We’ve been saving one bottle, a big bottle, for the end. In another life it held two gallons of the sweet juice of cranberries. Now its sole purpose is to warn the natural world of the power we humans are capable of.
We station ourselves on the dock because Dad decides to throw this one in the lake. He loads it and wrenches the cap on, closing off all hope for the bottle. He heaves it 10 feet from the dock, creating a massive splash on the calm lake, and we wait. And wait. And wait. It expands until it’s as large as a small beach ball and after a minute goes without another ping from stretching plastic, Dad, once again, calls on his sharp shooter.
I feel I should tell you a couple of things before we go on. One: my BB gun resembles a sawed off shotgun. It is wooden and stout, the air chamber coming right up to the end of the short barrel. Anyone who had this gun pointed their way and had no idea it was a BB gun, would probably find their legs quickly leading them in the opposite direction. Two: we hate jet skiers.
Jet skiers gained the same reputation on our lake as mosquitoes. They were annoying. With their loud, rhythmic engines they kept calm at bay, and morning sleep short. We hated them and they knew they were hated, yet they didn’t care enough to change their ways.
As I take aim from the stone steps that lead down to the dock, a jet skier comes in from the left. He’s about three hundred feet from shore, but in short time he’ll been right in front of us.
Dad waits until the unsuspecting clown is within range then says, “When you’re ready.” Just as the jet skier is right in front of us, I fire the shot and the bomb explodes, a massive detonation, the biggest yet, that sends shock waves across the lake and blows water 15 feet in the air. The jet skier lets go of the throttle and shoots a scared glance up to see a family looking at him and a kid holding what looks to be a sawed off shotgun pointed at the water. He jams the throttle to full speed, jetting away without a second look back.
We all roar with laughter.
…
My favorite story from my dad’s childhood came when my grandfather was out of town, leaving his auto shop in the untrustworthy hands of his boys. My 16-year-old dad and his brothers were itching for some trouble so they laid out a scheme involving a brick, a cane pole, an empty 50-gallon drum, gasoline, rags, balloons, a tank of acetylene gas and a tank of oxygen. They filled the balloons full of the highly flammable gas mixed with oxygen, put them all under the drum, propped it up with a brick, wrapped the gasoline soaked rags around the cane pole, lit it and carefully pushed the contraption under the drum.
He says the drum rocketed a hundred feet in the air and the explosion rocked the entire town. People poured into the street to see what the hell had happened. The Nazis and Japanese had already been defeated so they were crossed off the culprit list. Maybe it was the communists? But upon looking up the street they saw it was just my pops and his brothers. “Damn boys,” they probably said as they shook their heads and went back to their home-cooked meals.
READ the epic conclusion of the "Tom Foolery With Professor Pops" trilogy by clicking here.
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