A slow fuse? Personal account. 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
When I was a young boy, I, along with all the boys my age shared a fascination with explosives. Anything that made a pop or a bang was to be revered and of course the bigger the better. We had firecrackers, m-80's, homemade cherry bombs, tennis ball cannons and incendiary devices. All objects that our parents feared and we adored.
One day while playing with our tennis ball cannon's (Several beer cans which back then were steel taped together with the top and bottoms cut out and a liberal amount of lighter fluid) when we noticed a chipmunk sitting on a rock wall near the patio. Oh my, cannons were aimed and fired to no avail. The little guy sat and laughed at us. No way could we let this pass. We charged and he retreated, diving into his little hole in the dirt. Aha! We have him now!
In poured the lighter fluid and was touched off. Poof. Small flame. VERY disappointing. It was at this point that the bulb went on above my head. Hey, my dad has some black powder in the basement. We can blast him right out of there! Many nods of agreement occurred and off I raced. Sure enough, there was a large can of black powder. Running back to my friends the thought struck that I really didn't want to be anywhere near this when it went off. Alas, one brief moment of near sanity was not enough. In my bedroom I grabbed a sparkler left over from the Fourth of July and dashed back outside.
The fire in the den was out, but we patted it down just to make sure. We poured powder in, great mounds of it. When the entire can (about half full originally) was in the hole, it was time for ignition. Everyone stepped back and I reverently stuck the sparkler down into the opening. The plan seemed sound. Light it and run, the sparkler would burn down slowly and ignite the powder.
This is where reality stepped in. Ever see slow motion in a film when something terrible is happening? Sometimes it works that way in real life too. As I held the match to the top of the sparkler, some nagging voice at the back of my brain was screaming for an escape. I looked down at the sparkler and saw the first spark ignite. Here is the slow motion. The spark began to fall. It only had to go 3 inches or so, but I swear I ran through every dirty word I knew as I relized what was about to happen to me in that brief instant in time. The spark struck the pile of powder and the world turned white.
The hole channeled the explosion quite nicely and aimed it pretty much directly at my face. There was a WOOSH sound, a boom,a burning sensation and silence as I realized I was no longer kneeling at the chipmunk den.
My friends crowded around me and were nice enough to put my hair out. I stumbled to a mirror to get a glimpse of the damage. Not a bad effort. No hair from the front of head to midway towards the back. No eyebrows. No eyelashes. Face is an interesting color of red with little white dots where blisters are forming. Ouch, OUCH!
Perhaps without this incident I would have done better on a future attempt, but perhaps I did learn something after all.......
Submitted on 05/01/2002
Submitted by:
Dave K
Reference:
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