Gunpowder and Match Heads
When I was a kid, my dad had this small, brown leather suitcase that looked like it was made in the nineteen-thirties. It was probably two feet long by a foot and a half wide and eight inches deep. Not very big, but it was stuffed with all sorts of gun collecting accessories. There were 22 caliber bullets and forty fives and a couple of antique pistols and a container or two of gun cleaning fluid inside. There were also polishing brushes, old hunting licenses, assorted bullet casings and a can. A red and black rectangular tin can that was about the size of a Bible. And inside this can was… GUNPOWDER!
My dad also had a couple of flintlock rifles, so he used the gunpowder to load them. He’d pour a little gunpowder down the barrel, then a hunk of cotton wadding followed by a lead ball. He’d ram it all together and when he squeezed the trigger, hopefully, the hammer would hit the flint, create a spark and ignite the powder, just like it was done during the Revolutionary War. My dad didn’t shoot his flintlocks very often, so there was all this precious black powder just sitting there, calling out to me day after day. “Stee-eeve. I’m bored. Come light me. I want to burn something.” It was usually too much for me to resist. Okay, it was always too much to resist.
There was one time in particular, though, that I was “playing” with the gunpowder when it nearly got the best of me. That was during the spring of my eighth grade year.
Behind our house was a small woods with plenty of nooks and crannies that us kids had carved out. Old, abandoned forts could be found in a tree or under some brush. Most were just old plywood that was haphazardly nailed together, with a large cardboard box for a floor. I remember one was painted dark green. I imagine this was supposed to camouflage it. It didn’t work. There were also plenty of ant hills in the woods. One in particular.
It stood about three feet high and was probably about four feet in diameter. However, there wasn’t an ant to be found. I don’t know if they moved or if they were underground or where the hell they were, but they weren’t on this hill. I’d seen enough ant hills by then to know it was, indeed, an ant hill. I saw a documentary about fire ants in South America and they would constantly be on the move. The thing about them, though, is that they eat pretty much everything that can be eaten in their path, so they have to move to find more food. The ants in the woods behind my house were those little brown ones that don’t require too much food, I believe.
Anyway, I had placed a nice little pile of gunpowder, about two or three tablespoons full, I’m guessing, on the top of the hill. My friend, Jeff, was with me that day and he was curious, but not nearly the pyromaniac kid that I was. I was crouched over the gunpowder and Jeff was standing right behind me. I pulled out a handful of match heads and an empty book of matches from my pocket. Oh, the match heads. See, I didn’t have the whole matches, just the little, red heads.
I pressed one of the match heads against the sandpaper strip on the inside of the matchbook with my thumb. I had become quite adept at lighting match heads using this technique – dragging it across the sandpaper and letting it fly off the edge. They usually burst into flames. Usually. On my first try that day this didn’t happen. Instead, the head just crumbled against the sandpaper and a tiny, little puff of smoke came out. I looked over my shoulder at Jeff, who was now standing four or five feet behind me. I didn’t think anything of it because I was focused on the task at hand. If I remember correctly, I was probably better in science than Jeff, but at this moment he was displaying a much better understanding (and respect) of both chemistry and physics than me.
I pushed another match head against the sandpaper and let it fly towards the gunpowder and, with a little pop and a puff of smoke, it burst into flames. Now, the next few moments were a bit of a blur for me. I don’t remember if it was the “fwoom” sound of the gunpowder igniting or if it was the flash of bright light. What I do remember is that my reflexes weren’t faster than the blast of fire that covered my face. I had turned my head maybe an inch when it hit me. Fortunately, I was a geeky, glasses-wearing eighth-grader, and it was that pair that probably saved my vision.
I took off my glasses and the lenses looked like someone had spray painted them battleship gray. I think I swore and then looked back at Jeff. His expression was part concern, part fear, but mostly amusement. I could see he wanted to laugh, but Jeff was a good guy, so he merely smirked. Now, if any of you has ever smelled burned hair, you know it’s not pleasant, especially when it’s your own. I scraped some of the gray off my glasses with my fingernail. Jeff started laughing. I guess he wasn’t always a good guy. But by then I was laughing, too. Then I panicked. My parents were home – I couldn’t let them see me like this. I brushed my hand over my face and felt the little sand-like remains of my eyebrows. Fortunately, nothing hurt. Aside from the singed hair, nothing bad happened.
I needed a plan. Jeff was one of those kids who easily talked to adults. He liked to joke with my dad, yet he was polite and respectful. My dad liked him a lot. I told Jeff to go in the house ahead of me and distract my folks, talk to them, ask them questions. Anything. When we got to the back door, I prepared to slip behind Jeff, head down the hall and slide into the bathroom. As soon as we went inside I saw my dad standing in front of the kitchen sink. I found out later, much to my relief, that my mom had gone shopping. Phew! Jeff was on my dad like a stripper on a lottery winner and I shot down the hall.
I locked myself in the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I laughed. It was a nervous laugh, but it was also funny. My face was the same color as the lenses on my glasses – battleship gray. This was 1974, so my hair was more of a mop than hair, and the front of this mop had been melted into a hard… burned hair mass. What a mess. My eyebrows were just two strips of melted hair. I had to take a shower and there was no way to disguise that. I never took a shower in the middle of the afternoon for no reason. What reason could I come up with?
I ended up taking two consecutive showers to get all the stink and burn off of me that afternoon. I don’t remember what story I told my dad, but he bought it. Or he may have just given me a break. Fortunately, he didn’t notice any difference in the mop of hair I had and my large-framed aviator glasses completely covered my eyebrows. I’ll tell you, things just fell into place that day. Well, after the gunpowder incident, that is. Oh, and the gray film on my lenses washed off quite nicely, I must say. I was out of the house before my mom got home and I have a feeling my dad didn’t “bother” to mention to her that I had taken two showers. Good old dad.
The next day at school I received more compliments on my new “haircut” then I’d ever had. I told some of my closest friends what had happened and they got a big kick out of it. Jeff told everyone else. I thought about going to my barber and showing him the haircut that had elicited so many compliments and seeing if he could recreate if from then on, but I had already pushed my luck enough that week. So, I’ve never had a better haircut.
I haven’t talked to Jeff since 1987 and often wonder how he’s doing. The ant hill, I imagine, has long been grown over with shrubs or perhaps a nice tree and I don’t light anything with match heads anymore. Unless I have to. Oh, some of you are probably wondering what I was doing with a pocketful of match heads in the first place. Well, that’s a story for another day. Thanks for stopping by. I’ll talk to you soon.
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Steve Mancini is co-author of the best selling satirical novel “Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend“
Tags: Add new tag, Childhood, Gunpowder, Port Huron