In my younger and more vulnerable years a few friends and I blew-up a watermelon. This was back before 9/11 when things like cherry bombs could be acquired during a day trip to a certain place in Washington. On a long-ago Fourth of July, we carved a hole in the side and shoved an m80 down its gooey, melon throat. I can't remember who's idea it was to toss the melon in a basketball hoop before lighting the fuse but the decision was both brilliant and stupid. I can still remember having my face grazed by flying bits of blazing melon. The remaining chunks still stuck in the hoop dripped down onto the court and left a stain. There may still be a mark on the blacktop of a certain Portland middle school. I never went back to check.

Low and behold, the opportunity to blow up another watermelon presented itself this holiday weekend. But, with nary a proper explosive in sight, a group of friends and I had to improvise. A Roman Candle wasn't going to cut it. We settled on a "one-shot" double mortar and added some sparklers to, well, make the watermelon look TOTALLY AWESOME.

Or at least like a half-assed prop from a '50s sci-fi movie.

This melon bomb was doomed to fail and we knew it but we proceeded anyway. After dark, we carried it to an empty lot beside the beach house we were staying in. A reunion of what we thought might have been retired newscasters was staying in a house nearby. They had spent the evening on a deck loudly talking with announcer-type voices and laughing the sort of stilted laughs you hear at the end of the 11 o'clock news. When we went to light the fuse, one of them stuck his head out a window and shouted "GOOD LORD" in a voice worthy of Walter Cronkite in his prime.

Oh, dear reader, if only you could have seen what happened next. The mortar blasted out of the melon, flew across the lot in a flash of red fire and landed a few feet away from me. The news guy ducked back inside and we didn't hear a peep out of him or his cronies for the rest of the weekend.

Ahhh, the thrill of danger and the agony of defeat and a near trip to the emergency room at the Tillamook County General Hospital. Not only had the poorly-secured mortar not done its job, the melon was left mostly unscathed. The explosion only managed to cause a crack down the middle.

Final score by the end of the holiday: watermelon: 1, us and newscasters: 0.

Regardless of the way the news guy acted, maybe these things are better left to reporters (and chemistry teachers). When it comes to quirky fireworks displays, there's some things bloggers just can't pull off, I guess. At least one corner of the brave new world of journalism remains theirs and theirs alone.

Labels: explosives

Every year for a nearly a decade I've spent the Fourth of July at Cannon Beach catching thrown candy at the town's annual parade and recklessly disobeying local fireworks ordinances. This year CBPD rolled-up right after three of us spent a good twenty minutes rigging a grand finale. In hindsight, lighting that fuse definitely wouldn't have been worth a $200+ fine and having all of our fireworks confiscated. Instead of breaking out a lighter, we scattered like cockroaches. The two cops waiting nearby quickly lost interest and we even managed to circle back around and retrieve our explosives later that night.

Us: one. Police and local wildlife: zero (sorry, seagulls. Tbbbbbbbt, coppers!). Until we meet again in '09, adieu.

Please enjoy these photos:

Labels: explosives, off-topic

There was a time when a person living in the Pacific Northwest could purchase high-grade fireworks. By "high grade" I mean "incredibly dangerous" and by "fireworks" I mean "something capable of punching a hole in the door of a bank vault." A treasure trove could be found by asking the right questions at fireworks stands scattered up and down a certain place in Washington that will remain nameless. I was woken up on the morning of Independence Day 2001 by a college roommate who had decided lighting an M-80 outside my bedroom window was a fantastic way to announce his return from a field trip up north.

His Camry was loaded with the sort of stuff that would have likely earned him a one-way ticket to Gitmo a year later. He'd purchased dozens of M-80s, a few M-160s and at least one M-250, which supposedly packed the same punch as a quarter stick of dynamite. A week or so later, we lit it off in a rural area outside of Eugene's city limits. The resulting boom shook the earth under our feet and created a two-story mushroom cloud of dust. It was awesome. After you've seen something like that, legal fireworks become an outright snooze-fest.

But this roommate had also somehow coaxed someone into selling him something even crazier: a cardboard cylinder loaded with mortar-shells, each packed with an m-80. This thing was half Roman Candle, half deadly weapon. A halfhearted, possibly intended as a joke disclaimer stamped on the side advised the user "not to point this device at police or military vehicles." None of us were willing to dare setting it off anywhere near civilization. I missed out on this one. It was set off in the middle of the Alvord Desert sometime later that summer, at least 10-miles from the nearest homestead.

Ahhhh, memories.

A good portion of my roommate's fireworks cache was later seized by the Eugene police department when the neighbors finally got sick of our household's evening ritual of firing bottle rockets out of hollowed-out bamboo chutes. These rockets would often sail over passing traffic, the apartment building behind us and/or the convenience store across the street. What can I say, it was a different era. Those were more innocent times. Stupider times. Times when running around a backyard with homemade bazookas wouldn't immediately result in getting your name on a no-fly list.

A few years ago, I went back to that same place in Washington and couldn't find anyone willing to sell me so much as an M-80. There was a time when the windows of my parents' house would be rattled every night between June 25th and July 5th by cherry bombs and other fireworks going off in the park across the street. That hasn't happened for years now they tell me. Meanwhile, I've been living in a neighborhood littered with undergrads and not once this summer have my ears been graced by the sweet, sweet boom of exploding flash powder.

Where have all the incredibly dangerous fireworks that injured dozens of Americans every year gone? Those sure were the days. *sniff*

Labels: explosives

I'll be out of town and far from the internet for the next five days. Until I'm back around these parts, here's a few iPhone photos (my sister bought one last night) of fireworks currently available at various stands across the Columbia River in Vancouver. This first one supposedly contains $1200 worth of pyrotechnics but retails for $599 at a stand near Blackjack's. For demolition experts operating on a budget, "Big Man" sells for a mere $149.99.

Not that I can afford any of them, even the third one down, which is supposed to be an airport. It's probably for the best that none of these places would let me start a tab.

Labels: explosives

For some, it's June 21st. For others it's Rose Festival or the first Widmer Hefeweizen of the season on a restaurant's porch or a trip to the coast. But another event marks the beginning of summer in the NW for me: super obnoxious radio ads for Blackjack's Fireworks, the gunpowder-fueled wonderland up in Vancouver.

It's been raining off and on over the past few days here in Portland. I woke up early this morning for work (yes, I work on Saturdays now. Or, as some would have it, Caturdays.).

The sun was out, the birds were bleeping and there it was as I headed into work: an ad for Blackjack's, now Blackjack's Pyrotechnics in the "BIG, YELLOW BUILDING." An annual obligatory stop for Oregonians in search of illegal-down-here fireworks, Blackjack's is an institution, as Northwest as microbrews, Packy the elephant or strip clubs.

"BLACKJACK'S! BLAAAAAAAAACKJAAAAAACK'S! DON’T SETTLE FOR FLY-BY-NIGHT FIREWORKS STANDS IN CIRCUS TENTS!"

I'll be making my annual pilgrimage up there after work tonight.

Labels: explosives