We used to buy what we called “rocket fuel” from the local Army-Navy surplus store. 10-pound bags for a quarter. It was the contents of artillery shells that looked like rabbit pellets—small green cylinders with holes running longitudinally through them. We would stick a pin through the center hole, wrap the pellet in tin foil, using the pin to form a rocket nozzle, and twist a nose cone on the other end. Then we’d remove the pin, hold the pellet by the nose cone with a wooden clothespin and hold it over canned heat. When the pellet ignited we’d toss it up and release the clothespin. That pellet would shoot like a rocket about 200 feet in the air.
Pretty soon we were wrapping two, then four, then six in the foil. Eventually we had cylinders about 2 1/4” in diameter and about a foot long. Talk about a fireball! And we lived!
Yes, we lived, amazing.