Dynamite & I Don't Mean Maybe

None of the other kids in the neighborhood had crates of dynamite and blasting caps in their garage... For some reason it didn't seem that strange to me. After all, my older brother of eleven years was a successful mineral collector, and explosives were simply part of his procurement of semiprecious stones. His mineral collection was as good as any I have seen both in or out of a museum. When I was about seven years old (just a tot), he taught my friend Albert and I how to make gun powder. We spent hours grinding and combining the ingredients, and when we were all done, we had a medium size peanut butter jar full of good old fashioned homemade gunpowder... just in time for the 24th of July festivities. Our family spent a lot of time vacationing in Panguitch during the summer, and found ourselves there on the 24th rather regularly. I was thrilled, and had great expectations about lighting off my jar of gunpowder. I assumed that there would be bright flash accompanied by a big boom, and the anticipation to find out grew as the evening approached. As it was getting dark, I took my jar of wonder, and placed it in the middle of the concrete walkway in front of grandma's house. I had made a hole in the top of the lid, and put a waterproof fuse through it, pushing it deep into the powdery filament. I lit the fuse, and ran back to my family who were watching from about fifty feet away. Finally, the fuse burned down, and ignited the contents, but there was no explosion, and no bright flash. Rather, the contents burned slowly, like a sparkler, and after a couple of minutes, it completely burned up, and melted the glass jar. In the morning, I picked up the melted jar and examined it. Pretty cool experiment I thought. Too bad Albert missed it.