Childhood Memories

Like the protagonist in the book I mentioned a couple of days ago, River Season, I grew up in a small Texas town.  Gruver, in the panhandle of Texas, was very similar to Jim Black's Archer City.  One of the few chores I remember being required to do, was taking our trash to the barrel.  In the pre-environmentally conscious 1970's we burned our trash in the barrels.  That's what made the job worth doing!  I think all young boys are pyromaniacs at heart.  

I had a little sister, Lori, who was still eating baby food in the old Gerber jars when I was at my pyromaniacal trash burning peak.  Mom made sure I took the lids off the jars when I put them in the barrel.  One day I finally got curious enough to ask why.  Well, mom must've missed the mommy class that told about boy's pyro tendencies.  She said that if the jars were sealed, they would explode when they got hot.  With visions of mushroom clouds in my head, I ran to tell my best friend Bobby the wonderful news.  Bobby and I were a dangerous combination.  While I would come up with all kinds of destructive, dangerous theories, Bobby was a do-er.  I might plan and revise for months and never actually execute the plan.  I was happy just visualizing the massive explosions we could create.  Lori had at least three meals a day.  One meat, one vegetable, and a dessert at each sitting.  Now she wasn't a big eater, but we could count on collecting at least six jars a day.  Six jars times seven days (we burned just once a week and Don Evans emptied our barrel every other week)would be 42 jars!  That would be one heck of an explosion.  Again, being the planning type, I argued that we could stash jars in the garage and collect an extra week's worth jars. We could create an explosion that could be seen in Spearman, or maybe as far away as Guymon!


Well, like I said, Bobby was an action man.  He knew that if he let me collect jars for two weeks, I would convince him that four would be even better.  After four weeks, I would have visualized the explosion thousands of times and probably chicken out.  So at his insistence, we took the paper grocery bag full of baby food jars and lids out to the alley.  I started the fire while Bobby started putting the lids on the jars.  Well, a little not so common sense and caution came into our 11 year old heads in the meantime.  We decided to put just half the jars into the fire at first.  No sense in burning Hansford county down.  Once the fire was going really good, we folded down the top of the paper bag half full of jars and tossed it in and ran and ducked behind the pile of dirt left behind when the railroad track was laid.  We waited and waited and waited.  Finally there was a pop, then another pop, then another and another.  Each pop was followed by a ping as the metal lids smacked against the side of the metal trash barrel.  Not exactly the Hiroshima-like explosion we were going for, but still kind of cool.


By then, even I was getting a little braver.  I suggested that we toss the remaining jars in one by one.  Just for fun, you know.  So we, well actually Bobby first, with me following a little behind, started tossing jars into the burning barrel.  Pretty soon we had about a quarter of the barrel filled with Gerber baby food jars.  Pop, ping, pop, ping.  Then pop, pop, pop, pop, it sounded like the Jiffy pop popcorn on the stove top.  Then the red hot strained pea lids started raining down.  It was funny until I had visions of hot lids landing on the dry grass and setting the great plains on fire.  I was sure that our fire would burn all the way to Kansas.  Bobby's dad would tease that I was too cute to go to jail.  I didn't know what that meant and I didn't want to find out either.  For once, I was the quick action person and grabbed the cut out top of the barrel and risked life and limb putting it on top of the barrel.  I couldn't cover the whole top, or it would fall in the fire. I had to angle it across the top so it blocked enough of the opening that the lids stopped flying and started pinging again.  While I ran around stomping on hot lids, Bobby laughed until he was rolling in the dirt.  But he wasn't as cute as me, so he wasn't afraid of prison.