There I was, trying my best to light a dynamite fuse at my grandfather’s coal mine!

What’s the stupidest thing you have ever done? This was mine. I was around 7 or 8 years old and our family went to visit the Thornhill Coal Company in Missouri just over the Kansas line, where my grandpa ran the steam shovel. Until recently I could fly over the site and see the boom from that machine still lying on the ground.

Speaking of “booms”, I spotted an orange fuse protruding up from a pile of rocks, and I happened to have a book of matches in my pocket. What’s a boy going to do? Those flimsy matches never worked as well as the wooden ones, and it’s a good thing. I tried several times to light that fuse, but the breeze (from God!) kept blowing it out before the fuse ignited. Otherwise, that would likely have been the end of the Jones line.

I used to make my own gunpowder using flowers of sulfur purchased at the drug store, potassium nitrate from the same store, and ground charcoal which I accumulated from burned wood. I was interested in rockets, and although my mixtures produced an appreciable flash and lots of smoke, they did not burn fast enough to power a rocket (a good thing for the neighbors). I was a chemist from the start.

Moving on to Nevada High School, there were lots of experiments to be done in the chemistry lab, some after hours. It is still amazing to me that the doors of that lab were left unlocked, I think even on weekends. I think I had a partner (accomplice) with me when we placed some cotton in a glass funnel and treated it with pure sulfuric acid and also nitric acid, which resulted in “gun cotton” that burned in a flash. We also gave some iodine crystals the same treatment, producing what I called “nitrogen triiodide”. I don’t know the official name, but when it dried out it would explode with the touch of a feather, producing a purple cloud!

Later during my teen years, I walked into Johannes Hardware store with an un-named buddy and we noticed that they had dynamite for sale! It’s hard to believe, but we walked out with 10 sticks, 10 blasting caps, and 50 feet of fuse! Peggy, the clerk, knew me from when she was a clerk at Cottey Corner Grocery store on west Cherry Street. She did ask what we planned to do with it, and I lied that “we needed to blow a stump out of the ground” – at my house across from Cottey?? She let us buy it.

Thankfully, we did not do any damage with it, but mainly used it to “play Army”, as we would bury some, light the fuse, and then run a safe distance away and crawl toward it! My friend Tom (serious clue here) did eventually make a career in the Army!

Well, I no longer deal in explosives and am thankful to be here to write these episodes. God bless you all, and stay safe!