Sensory deprivation

A long time ago when we were the totally non-socialized critters known as pre- and barely teen-age boys, we were the masters of warfare. Our fathers were vets of WW II and Korea, Ike, and then Kennedy were our Presidents, Cuba fell to Castro, Khrushchev vowed to bury us, the French were regularly being handed their asses by the Vietminh, and we were learning the fine art of the IED.

We were the most deadly creatures on Earth; no sense of mortality, mostly immune to pain, if you caught one smiling at you, check the chair before sitting down. Boards full of nails tend to make one say regrettable things.

There was a sort of unwritten rule to not use BB or pellet guns on each other, however it was a rule, therefore subject to being violated. Being told quite often “you’ll put an eye out” by our parent-things fell on deaf ears. After all, we were barely teenage boys and totally immortal.

Have I mentioned in the past that we were bereft of brains?

...and the IED! Ah, such memories! High powered explosives were forbidden (you know where this is going, don’cha?), dynamite was regularly used in stump removal on farmland, in pond building, lots of agricultural uses. Boys have different uses. It is better than worms for fishing. Much better!

We had watched our fathers, uncles, and grandads set charges and, in our rudimentary brains, developed some sense that dynamite was a poor choice in our attempts at world domination. However, there were alternates, lots and lots. We would go over the state line into Mississippi and buy good old M-80’s! Wonderful things, even better than cherry bombs!

Cherry bombs were quite handy and I invented a new way to use them. I was quite proud of my ‘invention’ and we used it frequently. How we made it through those years un-blinded still eludes me.

You see, a cherry bomb was a neat little spheroid of black powder surrounded by a red casing that had lots of golf-ball indentations, just right for BB’s. A little Le Page’s mucilage, then rolled around in Mom’s baking pan full of BB’s, let dry, then another coat of Le Page’s to hold them in place, and voila! ...a frag!

The woods were alive with the sounds of full-blown jungle warfare quite often. Every now and then one would go off close enough to produce a pantful of pain, more often they were timed to manufacture a cacophony of copper-clad chaos from the clouds and cries of pain from cranial collisions created confusion! No eyes were ever cursed with the little creations contributed by the creatures of calamity.

Sorry Johnny & Jack, I couldn’t help myself! ;o)

...back to the title of this painful period of pre-adolescent perusal.

One of our favorite ‘games’ came about due to the wisdom of our county commissioner’s decision to install storm drainage in our very rural habitat. Totally useless of course, however the commissioner’s brother-in-law was the owner of the construction company concerned with the creation of said criminal confiscation of tax-payer contributions.

I gotta quit this crap!

The long stretches of culvert were just right for us boys to scuddle through from ‘bunker to bunker’ (junction boxes where the culverts joined) and we used them for tunnel warfare. No cherry bomb frags, at least we had some sort of sense. We did use standard fire-crackers and the sound of Black Cats crackling became common.

Yeesh.

One afternoon I was creeping from one ‘friendly’ bunker to the next when a manhole cover behind me was raised and a salute was tossed.

It wasn’t a Black Cat. ...or even a disaster like a cherry bomb frag. It was a M-80, a quarter stick of dynamite. Since I was betwixt and between bunkers, all I could do was curl up in the fetal position and wait for my painful demise. It wasn’t pretty.

Every since that day, I’ve been a little claustrophobic. Rooms need windows. I like to be able to see a door, opened if possible. Closed closets give me the creeps.

Before carrying on with this concatenation of confusion any longer and you feel the need to commit me to the care of people even crazier than myself, I quit!

...to be continued