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When I lived in Japan, we had our first unfettered (except for lack of money) access to fireworks. I was into slingshots too, at the time, and was quite adept at making them out of wood from the right shaped tree branch, and the bands from sliced up old inner tubes.

I must say-there was a lot of similarity in the process of making a sling shot from scratch, and making a kite from scratch. There was a lot of the same kind of trial and error, though, with the slingshot, it was far more painful and dangerous.

First, I didn’t have the right kind of inner tube slices, and the damn things would snap and hurt like Hell. but once I got the bands down right, and figured out how to securely attach them, that was when I nearly put my eye out (if it hadn’t been for my glasses)

I could never do a safe test before actually trying it for real-I was far, FAR too impatient. So after a few broken straps and straps that wouldn’t stay attached, I fixed it, loaded up a rock, and pulled it all the way back an arms length to my eye.

The damn wood snapped, and came back and nailed me in my eye and forehead. It cut my head and broke my glasses, but my eye didn’t get hurt.

Anyway, with my first access to fireworks and right in the middle of learning all about how not to make a slingshot, the two things, fireworks and slingshots, seemed to go together just like peas and carrots.

There was a playground down the hill and across the street from the back of my house, so I went out there, lit up a smoke bomb (a little sphere about an inch across with a thick fuse coming out the top) loaded it up, and as soon as it started smoking, would fire it over the road into the playground (which was empty)

What I didn’t realize was that those smoke bombs not only emitted smoke, but a shower of sparks, too, through the little hole where the fuze had been. Well, I was able to shoot one far enough to leave an arc of red smoke in the sky before it landed in the playground, still belching smoke.

And sparks.

That grass was dry, and pretty soon the thing was on flames from end to end, with fire trucks coming up the street.

I ran into the house, up the stairs, and cowered in my bedroom, peeking over the windowsill at the firetrucks, knowing for sure there would be a knock on the door. But there never was.