Fun on the Farm: Ever get the urge to put an M80 in a cow pie and light the fuse?

[joeintexas]

Growing up on a farm you do tend to get "creative ". I had a cousin that would blow anything up that couldn't run! M80s, cherry bombs, firecrackers, you name it, it was in his vast arsenal. Watchdogs thread brought back scary memories. My guess is he(my cousin) is pulling wings off flies as we speak, or blowing up bovine poop!

 

[rog8732]

Judging from his tensed look, and clamped jaws, I'm guessing just before this incident; there was a partial conversation that contained the words: " I betcha a beer you ain't got the nads to stand over a lit M80 stuck in a cow pattie ! "

Those knee high rubber boots didn't protect him much from that "brown mushroom cloud" that slammed up into his chin.

I like seeing people do stuff like that; cause then I always KNOW, I'm not the drunkest/dumbest one in the crowd.

 

[30-30remchester]

Hmmmm. I guess that's what happens when you have time on your hands.

Nevertheless, that kid has a creative, although warped, mind.

When I was growing up, there was always at least one bozo in the bunch that enjoyed doing stupid things like that on a fairly regular basis. But you gotta admit, that kind of doodah keeps the rest of us entertained. Where else can you get comedy relief for free?

I does thunk Mule Packer was watching me and my buds growing up. And yes I blew up any cow pie I could find. Cherry bombs were our downfall. We would have 2 "man" teams. One man would put the cherry bomb in his wrist rocket and pull it back. The second man would then light the cherry bomb and we would have wars with other teams shooting them at each other. Good clean fun till I hit a neighbor in the ear just as the bomb went off. He went down and stayed down. Now what to do, we done kilt Randy. Being the rocket scientists we were, we all split up looking for shovels to bury him. It was a good thing it took a while to round up enough shovels. When we converged on the scene of the tragedy, Randy was sitting up, dazed. Our pea brains never thought that the parents would miss him or wonder why there was a large pile of dirt in their front yard. True story. When the cherry bombs were expended and we still needing to blow up gopher holes, we got into my dads dynamite. Now we had some real gopher getters. I blame my misguided youth on lack of a tv to watch. We had to make up our own entertainment. All this explosive experience was good however as for 22 years I used and was licensed to use explosives which I did multiply times a day over those years. And for Randy? Apparently no permanent damage as he has worked for me or my dad for 38 years. He is a bid different though. Someday I will have to relate the time we blew a man off a horse.

 

[jimmyj]

Narrow escape: The "Keysville Gang" was at a kid's house who was not in our "Gang". We were throwing "Cherry Bombs" and one of the "Gang" threw a cherry bomb over to a tarp covered "things". The boy who we were visiting started running/screaming to the main house. After the "Bomb" blew we went over and pulled up the tarp and discovered old boxes marked "Explosive/Dynamite" with a thick colored paste leaking out. Years later I found out this could have been NITRO !

 

[rburg]

Well, the boy is stupid. But judging from his boots, I'd say he's no stranger to the cow dung he's got all over him. I guess once you get used to it from head to toe, it doesn't make a whole lot of difference. I notice none of our posters have mentioned their experiences in getting a bit on them. As we get old, we tend to avoid close exposure to the stuff. I've read that you weren't born smart. Smart is what you get. I don't know if that lad will ever get smart, but I'm betting against it.

Its been a long time. The dirty FEDS have attempted to protect the fools from themselves, and any fun. We had an old guy down the road. He had sons we hung out with, and he was a bartender. He worked by the local professional baseball stadium. No one said it, but I just assume he sold fireworks out of the bar. And every year he'd supply us with something, sometimes more than once. Our favorites were M80s, cherry bombs and silver salutes. The loudest were the cherry bombs, but they weren't the most powerful. Those were the M80s. I haven't heard of or seen silver salutes in years. Don't know why, they were good, too.

A guy I know did get a "machine" that built smoke bombs. Dead ringers for cherry bombs, but the insides were just smoke. I asked the guy once if he'd ever experimented making cherry bombs, and he foolishly said "no". I mean, all he'd need to do is put some real powder inside and he'd be off to the races. It just pressed the glued up sawdust into a ball shape. I've got to go visit Charlie, its getting on near the 4th.

 

[LouisianaJoe]

When I was a teenager, my cousin Gary would roll cherry bombs in glue then BB's. He would pitch these near unwanted dogs pooping in his yard.

He and Charlie were close and I will let Charlie tell you some of the crazy things they did.

 

[pharmer]

Most every firework I have ever had has the same instruction: "Place on ground, light fuse, run away." Nobody reads anymore. Joe

 

[Old Seabee]

M-80

So no one ever hung out a car window with a ball bat or a bag of M-80's or cherry bombs , did a number on a mail box . Old Seabee

 

[Watchdog]

So no one ever hung out a car window with a ball bat or a bag of M-80's or cherry bombs , did a number on a mail box . Old Seabee

That's called "vandalism" and "malicious destruction of property".

It happened to my parents a lot...my mom's hand decorated mailboxes and dad's custom posts were frequent targets of punks whose parents never taught them to respect the property of others.

Wish I could have caught the little so-and-sos who were doing it. They'd have learned how a mailbox could become part of their wardrobe.

 

[Wyo]

We used M-80's and cherry bombs to fish when I was a kid. Friend of mine's dad had a fireworks stand so we had virtually unlimited access to explosives. We would string 8-10 of them together, lash the package to a big rock and chuck it into the irrigation canals that surrounded town. Floated up all kinds of stuff, sometimes carp and suckers that ran up to 8-10 pounds or so. Believe me, when you live in a little town in northern Wyoming you learn to make your fun any way you can.

 

[shouldazagged]

I wish I could have caught the little so-and-sos who were doing it. They'd have learned how a mailbox could become part of their wardrobe.

Or their digestive tracts. The lower portions.

I had a friend--this is absolutely true, and he's still alive in his eighties--who cooked nitroglycerin in the garage beneath his parents' house, which was on a steep hill. He would pack it in sawdust to make dynamite and we would go out and blow up...stuff.

He made mercuric fulminate, the active ingredient in the blasting caps of the time. He would load it into gelatin capsules with a few BB's for weight, and we would fire them from one of the old Wham-O Sportsman slingshots.

There were other examples of adolescent idiocy, but I'm not sure the statute of limitations has passed.

 

[pittpa]

Where was the guy holding his beer?

Hold my beer and hand me the tannerite


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[meaneyedcatz]

I never used an M-80 but I found out about exploding cow pies with a 22 cal.
NO, I'm not dumb. It was at a safe distance. (decades ago in my youth)

Well since I was impressed with the results I high tailed it back to the house for my 50cal black powder Hawken. The only thing that remained was stained steaming grass.

 

[EQGuy]

The old home place was between an almond orchard and a hill. During the season blue jays would ferry almonds from the orchard to store up on the hill. They would normally stop to rest at the top of a Lombardy Popular in the back. My brother and I hatched a plot in that we would tape a firecracker to a section of aluminium .22 cleaning rod. I would pump up the old Benjamin and place the rod into the end of the barrel and we would wait for an almond stealing jay to come flying by. My brother would light the fuse and we would send some flack up after them. It was great entertainment. They would normally drop the almond and fly away. One time we had the firecracker explode directly behind this unlucky jay. He dropped the almond and headed for the ground. He then flew up to the hill while no more than a foot or two off of the ground. It was really quite amusing.

 

[Marshwheeling]

Fun with cow pies

Never blew one up, but I used to ride dirt bikes on a cattle ranch in the Cheyenne River Breaks of South Dakota. One game we played was to roost a cow pie at the guy riding behind you. Direct hits were rare. It took exquisite timing and some luck.

Every once in a while, we would find big puffball mushrooms growing out of the cow patties. If these were white through and through, we would cut them into steaks (after washing the mushrooms of course) and fry them up in butter. That was the closest we ever came to eating fresh vegetables. We mostly ate steaks and roasts with spicy ranch beans, washing it all down with whiskey and lemonade.

 

[rburg]

My neighbor about 25 years ago was a fireworks nut. He was kind of different, but to his credit he had a blonde wife who was really built well. Thats about the only thing that made sense to me. Along about early June, he'd start visiting the fireworks stands. He spent his entire post office paycheck at them. Of course they loved him for it. We moved off the hill in the winter of 95-96 but that next summer he came running down to get me to come up and see what he'd done (if it'd been me, it'd been his wife). He got a case of these aerial things. Each shot 3 exploding balls up about 30 feet or so. Nice power, they'd shake the windows a little. So anyway, he was outside at dusk which was maybe 9:30 or so in June. And bats were diving at his artillery. One got to it just as it went off. So yes, he shot down a bat. I'd have left right away, but his wife, Tina, had slipped into something comfortable and she came outside. To me, that was a lot more interestng than fireworks.

It didn't do any good to try to explain to him that bats ate mosquitos. Guess it didn't matter to him, living up on the hill and not down on the flatlands were 'skeeters were kind of prevalent. Or maybe he got a better breeze than we do. Doesn't matter, he's moved away so the area is quiet and lacking viewing pleasures.

 

[steelslaver]

So no one ever hung out a car window with a ball bat or a bag of M-80's or cherry bombs , did a number on a mail box . Old Seabee

Some kids were making a habit out of baseball batting mail boxes on my sister's road. I used some 8" pipe and 1/4" plate, ground and sanded the welds to make nice duplicate of a normal large mail box. Painted it up pretty with flowers and stuff on the sides. She found the shattered bat beside the road. I bet that guys hands stung for a week. Mail box was fine. Its out on the post iin front of my house now. Waiting waiting waiting............

 

[brigeton]

Lack of entertainment on the farm doesn't make you any dumber. Look at all the videos on tv with kids doing stupid stuff on skateboards or jumping off roofs, etc. I'd wager most have never seen a cow.

 

[snubbyfan]

And that's how to make money on YouTube.
Also why I'll always be poor.

 

[BAM-BAM]

Hmmmm. I guess that's what happens when you have time on your hands.

What you end up "**** faced"?????

I always thought it meant something else!!!!!!!!!!!!