Fun With Acetalyne 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
y father recently told me a story of how he used to pass the long summers of his childhood. He lived on a remote farm in rural Illinois in a small town that you could drive from one end to the other in 30 seconds. He told me that he and his three brothers used to steal the bread wrappers that my Grandma Daisy threw away, and fill them with acetalyne gas from the torches usually used for welding. Now, as we all know, acetalyne is extremely combustible, and my father and his merry band of reprobates would fill about five or six bags full, trail a line of gasoline from one end to the other of their half-mile driveway, place the bread wrappers at strategic intervals, light one end of the gasoline, and run like little girls.
Well, one day, my dad got ambitious. Being the indestructible teenager that he was, he decided to go for the big one and steal a 50-gallon trash bag from his dad, my grandpa. He had his three brothers dig a hole in the ground about seven feet deep and about three feet across. They filled the trash bag with acetalyne, wasting three welding torches in the process, fit a long magnesium (I think it was magnesium) fuse into the top of the bag, and buried the trash bag in the hole.
Now, my dad's first lapse in judgment was the fuse itself. He was unaware of how fast it really burned. He lit the fuse and just stood there, admiring his handiwork. A few seconds later he realized what it was he was looking at, and estimated he had roughly five seconds before it blew. He ran for the fallen tree my uncles were using for cover, and tried to leap behind it.
y uncle Craig described it this way: "Suddenly there was a really white flash, and I saw this black shadow above me. It seemed almost frozen. Then I heard the explosion, we all hit the deck, and I realized that big shadow was your dad."
I truly hope my father did not pass his Darwinian genes to me.Submitted on 10/31/2002
Submitted by:
Jason Boyd
Reference:
Personal Account, 10/31/2002
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