by Bob Thompson
Rocket Science
Sometimes, looking back, the realization comes that a decision made at a long-ago crossroads paved the path to your current situation.
Impatiently, I stood on the second step, bracing against the handrail as the big yellow school bus squealed to a stop between the two Gulf gas pumps in front of Granny’s grocery store. The entire ride home my mind had been busy plotting the final steps of my latest experiment in the Advanced Rocket Research and Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Finally, Bunk reached over and pulled the wornshiny handle that moved the long rod, opening the double doors for me to jump out. In three purposeful strides, I crossed the gravel parking lot and was on the rough concrete porch. I nodded to John D., Bud, and Humpy, who were sitting on the long porch bench, and threw open the double Bunny Bread screen doors, not stopping as usual to get a soda out of the cold drink box but trotting straight down the canned-goods aisle toward the back of the store. I was eager to get to my nearly completed project in the tool shed at the back of the store, my laboratory. I slowed to a walk as I saw what looked like a serious gathering. My whole family—Mom, Dad, and Granny—had their backs to me and were sitting in a semicircle of chairs around a white-shirted man on the old church pew under the hardware wall. Shovels, tiling spades, scoops, hoes, rakes, pickaxes, and sledgehammers, suspended on twenty-penny nails hammered in the back wall, framed the backdrop behind his head. And on the wall further to his right was the big wooden hardware bin from which I needed to get the supplies to finish my experiment.
Who was this guy? The only people from around here who wore white shirts on any day except Sunday were preachers or salesmen, and I knew all of them. Suddenly, it came to me: this scalawag was the dreaded insurance adjustor Mr. Burnley.
The letter from the insurance company had come nearly a month after Granny cut her finger in the meat slicer and filed her first-ever medical claim in twenty years of business. The letter had caused quite a stir in the family. It had stated that a representative, Mr. Burnley, would be inspecting the facilities to recommend safety precautions that might be taken to avoid such accidents in the future. We knew about Mr. Burnley! He was the polecat who showed up at Mrs. Beasley’s store over at Bandana after she broke her arm last fall. We all knew the story: after Mr. Burnley’s visit Mrs. Beasley’s insurance premiums had skyrocketed to the extent that she had to close the store. Granny had been so upset about it she couldn’t sleep.
I knew all I needed to know about this meeting and didn’t have anything to add to the discussion with this troublemaker. I had other business. Thankfully, the congregation was not blocking my access to the hardware rack. Moving around the side of the gathering, I stepped up on the other end of the bench to reach for a roll of solder that I needed for the last phase of my experiment. As I stepped back down from the bench with the roll, I heard Mr. Burnley say, “Now see what I mean? Suppose that young man had fallen off this bench!” All eyes turned to me. Great, now I was involved.
Glaring at this miscreant, I responded, “And suppose I don’t?”
In the stunned silence that followed I was sure that my sharp retort had succinctly captured the pent-up emotions of the whole family. But when I turned to my dad for the proud acknowledgment, the look I got was not what I expected; it was more like, “Don’t say another word! Leave.” Confused, I turned and tried to get out the back door as quickly as I could without making eye contact with anyone.
What a disaster! I had no stomach for this, anyway—I had pressing business in the Rocket Research Lab just on the other side of the wall at Mr. Burnley’s back. The lab was a part of the store’s back porch that had years ago been enclosed as a storage room and had evolved into a tool room and workshop. I had clandestinely conducted many experiments there, but this was to be my crowning achievement, maybe even earning me a college scholarship.
The project was conceived as the result of me rummaging through the items on the high shelves up behind the checkout counter of the store. The building had been in operation as a garage and hardware/grocery store for nearly a century and contained a gold mine of interesting old stuff, a museum open for the exploration of an inquisitive boy.
One day, on a particularly high shelf behind the cash register I found several dusty little round boxes with metal caps, smaller versions of a baking powder can but with strange names on them. Some were labeled “niter” and others “saltpeter.” Saltpeter! The name alone was enough to pique the interest of a prepubescent boy.
I looked up saltpeter in my treasured set of World Book encyclopedias, the Internet of its day, and to my delight discovered it was the main ingredient of black gunpowder, which had been a fascination of mine for a long while. I quickly pulled down the G volume of the dark red books and looked up gunpowder, where I found the mother lode, a very specific description of gunpowder’s components: 75 percent saltpeter, 15 percent charcoal, and 10 percent sulfur.
Holy cow! Granny sold bags of charcoal and I had already come across a cache of sulfur in earlier explorations. I had everything necessary to make gunpowder! We had been studying percentages in fifth grade and soon I had those percentages converted to the exact number of coffee scoops needed for each ingredient. If I could successfully produce my own pyrotechnics, it would save the family the expense and time of traveling to Missouri each year for our Fourth of July fireworks!
In the proving ground behind the garage, my first small batch had burned well and generated lots of smoke but refused to explode. Back in the lab intuiting Boyle’s gas laws, I reasoned that compressing the volatile mixture might yield a better result, so I cut old newspaper into firecracker-sized strips before carefully rationing a line of black powder into each one and, mimicking the old guys on the front porch, rolled the concoction into a facsimile of handmade cigarettes. Getting more proficient with each one, I finished by fitting a fuse extracted from a real Black Cat firecracker into each one. Again, the paper cylinders shot black smoky flames out the end, reminding me of rockets as they skidded across the ground—but they didn’t explode.
I was disappointed with my inability to produce an explosion, but with the Russians already launching Sputnik and being well ahead of the US in rocket research, I thought I might be able to help. In the interest of national security, I decided to become a rocket scientist. After several more experiments behind the garage, I concluded that a stronger, more stable and uniform casing for the powder was needed. I reasoned that packing it in a metal container would give me better nozzle velocity and control over its thrust. After much consideration of the materials available, I chose the spent CO2 cartridges that provided pressurized thrust for my BB pistol. They were copper cylinders about three inches long, round at one end and tapered down to a narrow neck at the other. Perfect.
The day before, using Dad’s electric drill, I had expanded the puncture hole in the neck of the empty cartridge to facilitate pouring in the black powder and to provide uniform flow for the expanding gases. To ensure straight flight, like that of an arrow or a NASA rocket, I used tin snips and pliers to fashion triangular fins from a Campbell’s soup can. With the solder from the hardware rack and my dad’s propane torch, I quickly set about attaching the fins to the lower portion of the fuselage. My creation was beginning to look like a real rocket, or at least what I thought a rocket should look like.
With the fins attached, the rocket body was complete; all I had to do was pack the powder into the missile and it would be ready for my first test firing. I had determined that the first ignition should be a bench test, with the missile held securely in the jaws of the vise mounted solidly onto the tool room workbench. I had been careful not to disclose to anyone the exact nature of my latest experiment, but I was pretty sure that none of the family, or the Russians, would look favorably on it. I figured with the family preoccupied with Mr. Burnley, it would be the perfect time for the test.
In fact, the family was hanging on Mr. Burnley’s every move and word. His inspection of the store with clipboard in ha
nd had been punctuated by long sighs followed by much writing on his tablet. His tour over, Mr. Burnley settled back onto the bench, studying his notes, completely unaware of the world-changing experiment unfolding mere inches from his seat.
He was regaling my family with anecdotes of his years in the business and explaining that “after a few years of thinking about safety and risk, one developed a feeling, almost a sixth sense, about what was most likely to occur in a given facility.” He bragged that he could notice things other people didn’t and that his job had made him much more safety conscious about the way he conducted his every movement. His caution extended to every decision he made, how he drove, where he stood, where he sat, how he talked to people, and so on. Then, with his sanctimonious lecture over, he started listing the potential disaster areas his inspection had discovered.
In the back room I was on the verge of my most spectacular discovery. With the rocket loaded and firmly held by the steel pincers of the vise, I inserted a fuse borrowed from a cherry bomb and started going down my preignition checklist. The final item was inspection of the shielded observation area, fashioned from a four-by-eight piece of three-quarter-inch plywood conveniently found propped up against the wall opposite the workbench. Intending to take refuge there after having lit the fuse, I had cut an observation hole and equipped it with a flashlight, notebook, and stopwatch.
Everything was in order as I began the countdown. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, strike the match, two, one … ignition! The fuse sputtered and smoked to life and I dove for cover behind the plywood, started the stopwatch, and watched through the peephole with pencil and notebook in hand as the fuse burned its way into the cylinder. Following a short pause of nothing happening, there was a loud pop as the engine roared to life.
“Initial flame two foot long,” I scribbled in my notebook. “Lots of black smoke. Ten seconds—flame three foot. LOUD!” That was my last entry.
The whole room seemed to shake with the roar of the engine. The copper rocket body started to glow and stretch. I had calculated a fifteen-second burn, but now we were at double that and the flame was not showing signs of diminishing. Black smoke filled the room, making it hard for me to see and breathe. Suddenly, like a wet watermelon seed squeezed between fingers, the rocket came squirting out of the vise, shooting across the room, ricocheting off walls, tools, and ceiling at all angles, roaring and billowing smoke till it slammed into the wall directly over my head—the other side of the same wall that Mr. Burnley was leaned up against. The angle of impact did not allow for deflection and evidently the sudden stop compacted the remaining fuel into the nose of the rocket. Whatever the cause, all I saw was a blinding flash of light and heard an explosion that sucked the air from my lungs.
I must have blacked out. The next thing I knew a light burst through the black smoke. Someone had thrown open the shop door and I heard Dad and Bud coughing and yelling. “Robert! Robert, are you in here?”
“I’m over here. I’m alright,” I answered, crawling toward the light through the thick choking smoke.
“There he is!” I heard Dad yell as he threw aside the plywood and scooped me up, carrying me out onto the back porch and then into the store.
The scene in the store was chaos. My mom and grandmother were kneeling over Mr. Burnley, who was lying prone on the floor, surrounded by displaced hand tools jarred off the hardware wall. They both looked up and gave me that Thank goodness you’re okay! What have you been up to? look.
It seemed that Mr. Burnley’s sixth sense had deserted him this time, allowing him to position himself in harm’s way. Among many other things, the blast had dislodged a scoop shovel hanging directly above the insurance man. Luckily, it lay undamaged beside him, its fall cushioned by his head. I don’t think that the hardware wall was on his original list, but it was certainly on his final and lengthy report, as were several references to unauthorized experimentation and hazardous materials handling.
Sometimes disaster is an opportunity in disguise.
Dad and I took great care to make improvements on everything on Mr. Burnley’s long list, and although the premium increase demanded by his company was prohibitively expensive, the agent from a competing company was so impressed by the safety changes we’d made that he quoted us more coverage for less money—with the stipulation that the Advanced Rocket Research and Jet Propulsion Laboratory be deactivated.
In engineering school, I did take a few graduate-level aeronautics classes, but in the space of time that it took to get the degree, we’d already landed men on the moon and I had other paths to follow.
Motorsports
Vroom, vroom. The new dirt bike bounced across that pasture field at breakneck speed. John was having a great time—the calf not so much. This was their third time around the field, and I could tell he was scared and getting tired.
Coming up fast on the barbed-wire corner, the calf again made a wide turnaround and headed back up the field. This practice was making John a better rider; he expertly twisted the handlebars, leaned to his right, stuck out a foot, downshifted with the other, and gunned the bike. When the spinning back wheel slid around, John let off on the gas momentarily to regain traction and resumed the chase in the opposite direction.
The calf, wide-eyed, with his tongue hanging out, was looking from side to side as he ran up the center of the field. Suddenly, something registered in his head as he saw his mother pacing back and forth at the hole in the fence he had escaped through. With renewed energy and purpose, the calf barreled across the pasture and back through the hole into the field with his mother. John followed, sliding to a sideways stop next to the fence. Smiling, he killed the motor, pulled the bike up on its center kickstand, and got off, loosening the cover on the bike’s tool kit to retrieve a pair of pliers to splice the barbed wire back together.
John’s dad, Marvin, and I had been watching the whole episode from high up on the barn roof in the next field where we were putting the roof lath on a new tobacco barn, and I could tell from Marvin’s clenched jaw and narrowed gaze that he had enjoyed the impromptu rodeo about as much as the calf and his mother. The action over, he muttered a few choice words under his breath as we went back to nailing the oak boards across the rafters in preparation for metal roofing.
It wasn’t long before we heard the motorcycle start up again as John finished the fence repairs and returned to the barn to resume the far less exciting task of finishing the barn roof. The motor stopped below us and after a few minutes John came climbing up the ladder. His father didn’t look up as he maneuvered across the rafters, but as John was strapping on his nail apron Marvin, red-faced and pointing a gloved finger at the boy’s face, growled, “I thought I sent you over there to get that calf back in, not run him half to death! Why, you run ten pounds off him and made him so skittish I’ll never be able to get close to him. And his mother, she’s so upset she’ll probably go dry and we’ll have to hand-feed that calf with store-bought formula. I tell you one thing! If I catch you on that bike again today, I’ll sell that damn thing. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir.” John nodded, breaking eye contact and looking down as he started back to work, hammering the twenty-penny nails through the oak strips into the rafters. The lecture was over, but a high-wire tension lingered on the roof through the rest of the morning, stifling normal workmen’s banter. John and I were close buddies, but I had no desire to get in the middle of this dustup.
After lunch, we finished nailing on the lathing strips and started the more difficult task of nailing the five-ridge tin on the steep 6/12 roof pitch with lead-headed nails. With the steep roof and the smooth slippery tin, we couldn’t work without sliding off, so each of us had a rope looped several times around our waist then run up over the ridge beam, down the other side of the barn, and finally tied off to something solid on the ground. That was dangerous enough, but the scorching afternoon sun burned bare skin and blinded us with its reflective glare. Rivers of sweat ran off us, ma
king hammers hard to grip and the tin even more slippery. We were drinking lots of water, and about the middle of the afternoon the green Stanley work jug was empty. Marvin turned to John, addressing him for the first time since morning. “I want you to go to the house and fill that jug up, John, and don’t be piddling around. We gotta get this roof finished today.”
“Yes, sir.”
Pulling himself up to the top with his anchor rope, John unbuckled his nail apron and made his way along the ridge to the ladder and started to climb down. Just before his head disappeared out of sight, he stopped and said, “Dad, uh, it’d be quicker if I took the motorcycle?” The way Marvin’s head snapped up and the look on his face were more than enough to reiterate the morning’s threat. John ducked his head and started down.
We kept nailing. About the time John would have reached the ground, I heard the tractor start up. I thought, “Well, that’s a good idea. If he can’t take the cycle, the tractor is the next-fastest thing.” As the tractor started, I heard a gasp from behind and twisted around to see Marvin down close to the edge of the roof. He was on his knees, bolt upright, stiff as a board, with panicked eyes as big around as cue balls, the blood drained from his face. He looked like a man suddenly confronted with a terrifying revelation, and immediately I knew what it was. His anchor rope was tied to the drawbar of that tractor.
He started to say something, but it caught in his throat as the rope suddenly jerked him forward up the roof. He grabbed at the utility knife in his tool pouch just as John pulled hard on the throttle, and the knife went flying. Closer to the ridge, I pulled myself up and stood yelling and waving my arms, but John, looking straight ahead, didn’t notice as he puttered along toward the house. The other side of the barn didn’t have tin on it yet and I scrambled down the oak strips to the edge of the roof. There was little doubt Marvin was going to get seriously hurt if he went off the roof. I looked back to see Marvin coming over the ridge. He was fighting and scratching to hold onto something—anything. It reminded me of someone pulling a tomcat backward by the tail. His arms and fingers were bloody from the effort as he now began grabbing the oak lathing strips on this side of the barn. But even when he got a good hold on a solid piece of wood, Marvin’s strongest grip was no match for the tractor.