My neighbor's dad worked at the airbase, he had a job working on landing gear. He had taken the nose wheel off a bomber or something and made his son a truly beautiful cannon out of solid chrome steel, designed it to accept the huge ball bearings that were in the hub, about .75". The kid comes over to my house and says look at what my dad made me, I looked it over and said "Lets fire this sumbitch." My dad had bought a .375 H&H when we went to Alaska back in the early 50's, I knew where there was a box of shells. I grabbed three of them and busted the heads off with a pair of pliers, poured the powder down the barrel of the cannon, saving a bit for the touchhole. We packed some toilet paper down the hole and rolled a ball home. We then took it up into my car port, everyone was gone so it was empty, we had an old vise in the tool shed and we clamped it into the vise. "What are we gonna shoot with it?" my neighbor says. I rummaged around in the shed and found an old black and white spattered canning kettle, layed it in front of the shed, took the cannon and vise back to the entrance of the carport and aligned everything just so. I handed the book of matches to my neighbor and said "There ya go!" He said "Its your idea" I took some of the remaining powder and poured it down the touchhole, squatted behind the cannon and struck a match, reached down and touched it to the touchhole. I remember a huge explosion and being bowled backwards, rolling down the driveway, my face burned and I couldn't hear anything, I looked at my neighbor he was pointing at me and shouting something I was deafened. Fortunately I had been wearing my dad's old aviator's sunglasses, my eyebrows were singed off and I had a bright red face, no real damage. We went over to the cannon is was fine, although loosened from the vice. The canning kettle had rattled around the carport a bit and had two perfectly round holes in one side out the other, the 1/2" plywood door of the shed had a neat hole in it and since nothing was in the way so did the backside of the shed, I don't think the ball slowed down until gravity took effect a quarter of a mile away. I was always making gunpowder and rocket fuel, we mixed up something once that sent a column of fire and smoke as high as a telephone pole. Got some pretty bad burns a time or two, once set some "rocket fuel" off in the house on mom's stove, got burned hauling the pan out the house but saved the house, we cleaned up all the mess and noone ever found out until we moved years later and mom found cinders up on the top shelf. We used to have bottle rocket wars, duels at 10 paces, chase each other with roman candles, everybody had burns and cuts and bruises...I always thought we were normal, my little brother tells me otherwise, saying that he was normal.
