[ale] Engineering Archaeology

[Steve Litt]

Bob Toxen said on Sun, 25 Jan 2026 20:44:20 -0500

>The day before Halloween when I was 13, I was making smoke bombs for
>Halloween.  I mixed up amonium nitrate and zink dust with iodine to
>give it a rich purple color.
>
>I folded up a piece of paper into a small container, added some of the
>mixture, taped it shut, and tossed it into a large bottle with the rest
>of them.  I discovered that the mixture should be triggered with a
>match. I had forgotten that my father demonstrated the feature by
>dribbling a few drops of water onto the mixture.
>
>Well, after the bottle was filled with about 50 cubic inches of this,
>to my shock and horror, it sucked enough moisture out of the air to
>start the reaction, bursting into flame.  The smoke screen was so dense
>that it would do James Bond proud.
>
>I opened all of the windows of the house to air it out and then went
>outside with my brother to avoid choking on the smoke.
>
>I saw dense smoke coming out of all of the windows. I was lucky that
>none of the neighbors saw as they surely would have called the fire
>department.  But wait, there's more.  My town was too small to have its
>own police department so they contracted with the state police for
>this. (They were a really nasty bunch.)  They had made their annual
>patrol of the neighborhood only an hour before.  Phew.  My parents
>never found out.

I was an 18 typical teeny bopper ricer the summer of 1968, the proud
owner of the South Side Special, a 59 Plymouth Savoy that burned a
quart of oil every 50 miles. And like every stupid male, I used all
sorts of "mechanic in a can" products, and made great show of opening
the hood and taking off the air cleaner after parking.

One day I and my two buddies parked at MacDonalds in Glenview, so I
opened up the hood, took off the air cleaner, and poured an entire 16
ounce can of carburetor cleaner down the carb, when you're spozed to use
only 3 ounces. We went inside, had our lunch, came back out, and after
about three coughing tries, the engine barely started, coughing and
spitting out voluminous smoke. I backed out, drove twice around the
building, and turned right onto the street. My buddy started laughing
his ass off, saying he couldn't see the golden arches. Looking in my
rear view mirror confirmed it: The entire building, arches, and parking
lot were enveloped in opaque gray smoke.

Three weeks later we went back to the same Macdonalds. The store
manager saw me, grabbed me by the lapels, pulled me half way over the
counter, told me to leave and said he never wanted to see me or my
"f__kin Plymouth" ever again.

86'ed from Macdonalds. How low can you go?

SteveT

Steve Litt 

http://444domains.com