A juvenile prank

[RadioHowie]

RH, You grow up in Central California? If so, my old man is looking for you!

HAHA!!!

No, all my damage and destruction was committed here in Cen. Fla.

:lol2:

 

[exskibum]

:lol: at all of your youthful stunts. We were far more civilized.

I grew up on an orange grove, and we used to have epic orange fights, building forts with orange boxes during picking season and hammering each other as hard as we could with thrown oranges. (Probably a big part of why I had such a strong arm in baseball -- used it more than once to keep an older and bigger "playmate" at bay so he couldn't do what he was threatening: kick my ass.) At some point, Irv, who lived behind me, came up with an orange cannon. It consisted of a length of 2.5 or 3 inch pipe that was surplus from some being used for fence posts or supports, a cap threaded on one end, and a hole drilled a couple inches up from the cap. Biggest firecrackers we could fit (Irv always had everything from ladyfingers to cherry bombs) were put in the hole with the fuse sticking out, then we'd load an orange of appropriate size down the open end, aim it like artillery and light the fuse. Amazing how far that'd go, even if it wasn't much use for shelling other orange box forts. I think that was what led to our other explosives exercises.

My parents had a bag of sulphur around for some reason, ammonium nitrate was an often used fertilizer that got added to the irrigation standpipes, charcoal came from ground briquets and I think we had calcium nitrate (?) from a chemistry kit. Somewhere we got a recipe (I think potassium nitrate was required but we couldn't get) and made something LIKE black powder from those ingredients, grinding it all together. Never tried it in the orange cannon, since it wasn't as reliable as firecrackers, but we had plenty of explosions in half buried tin cans out in the orange groves. Shrapnel issues never occurred to us and we got lucky that no one ever got hurt. Damn fun doing all that stuff we knew we'd get our butts whipped over, though.

I'm sure you guys also used to put cherry bombs in sling shots, and from friends' houses in the tracts late at night, have one guy light it while the one with the sling shot drawn back would then lob the lit cherry bomb at swimming pools 4 or 5 backyards away? Damn if we didn't do some stupid and dangerous stuff, but I don't recall trying to hurt anyone (well, except in the orange fights).

Kids!

 

[madmike2]

LOL at all of your youthful stunts. We were far more civilized.
Damn fun doing all that stuff we knew we'd get our butts whipped over, though.

Kids!

Yep...lived on a prune ranch in Santa Rosa then moved to the Sacramento area when dad went to work for Aerojet General (making really really big things that go "boom" if done incorrectly).

Plenty of farm land and construction sites around in my teenage years and we experimented with our share of explosive and flammable compositions that were mysterious and wonderful to us. As with others, we survived physically intact, if a bit mentally unstable.

HOWEVER....we did not take our mis-deeds onto the public thoroughfares nor aim our improprieties at others or their personal property...mostly. I will admit that a fire cracker wrapped in cellophane and stuffed into a grapefruit (or cherry bomb in a watermelon) does terrible things to a hated neighbor's front porch. :dribble:

Causing an innocent person to be injured was never our agenda.

 

[Geezer]

I also did some dangerous things when I was young and indestructible, but I always took my homemade rockets and things to a place away from other people and houses. Stretching an obstacle across a road is a whole different category, where they intentionally destroyed property and injured someone. Youthful curiosity is no excuse in this case.

 

[pjm204]

Agreed, I did a lot of dumb and dangerous stuff but I always did it on private property(friend's houses) and there were never any people around. We did stuff for our own enjoyment and that was it.

Model rocket engines anyone?

 

[jmdaniel]

Sometimes I think how lucky I am to be a 'child free nation!'

<---------

+1

 

[rogdeb]

I just hope they catch the little...uhm...well...you know the word!This isn't a practical joke, not when it causes the bodily harm and loss of property this prank did. The kids need to be held responsible, the poor misunderstood children.

Let's hope they are found and that the shadow of what they did follows them for the rest of their lives....like finding a job and their coworkers or boss are motorcyclists and find out what they did...or college professors...or doctor/dentist...or...

And that a good lawyer can open a case as outlined by exskibum and that it would go to trial.

One can only hope!

I'll say it for you Mike ----- "********" --- "Bastids" ---- although Arseholes are useful. those teens are not.

 

[rogdeb]

I did some truly idiotic things as a kid/teen, but the only ones who got hurt were ourselves

 

[kenporider]

Was the tape stretched across the road? How was it stretched "in a zig-zag pattern" if it was waist high?
I guess we have still another thing to be looking for out there.

I believe the zig-zag pattern implies that it was streched across repeatedly. That would make sense since one piece would probably break too easily. I did something like this to my brother once with black thread at ankle level like a trip wire.

I really don't understand what they were trying to accomplish, they must have assumed a car would hit it and not a motorcycle.