HEY!! Let’s Make a Pipe Bomb!

One Day in The 70s:

“Hey! Let’s make a pipe bomb!”

“OK” I said, “It’s not like anything else is going on today,” I thought to myself.

Summers in Winona, Minnesota were boring and hot; not Africa hot or Arizona hot, but hit you in the face with humidity like a frying pan hot. Sure, we may not see triple digits here that often, but that summer was spent mostly in the basement of my friend Jim’s house. He basement was cool, somewhat dark and it had a refrigerator…I had never seen a refrigerator in a basement before so I was in awe of its contents…beer…unsupervised beer.

It’s not like we couldn’t make a pipe bomb because his dad was always loaded for bear…literally, his basement was filled with pistols, rifles, ammunition, old plumbing pipes, fireworks, cheaply made Japanese radios and a their pet raccoon Bandit. Sure, everyone who has had a pet raccoon probably named it bandit for obvious reasons; it’s like people naming their orange cat Garfield or their beagle Snoopy, but it was the summer of’77 the movie ‘Smokey and the Bandit’ was becoming this blockbuster movie and people rushed to buy black Trans Am’s and name their pet raccoons Bandit.

His dad was a plumber, a hunter and an avid ‘get rich quick’ schemer, which meant every month, he would disappear for three days and suddenly pull into the drive way with a trunk load of car stereos, cassette players, illegal fireworks or any other type of merchandise he could get his hands on that would make him rich.

He died broke in a boiler explosion sometime in the ’90s, but he was a doer who once cut down his neighbors’ tree for ten dollars. We all gathered around to watch him fire up his chainsaw and slice that tree’s midsection like a vegetation surgeon; it wasn’t until that tree fell in the wrong direction, bounced twice off of the power lines before snapping them in half, cutting the power to a six block radius that he not only would be getting his ten bucks that day, but instead a citation from the police and a bill to bring the local power grid back up.

Bandit was chattering in the corner when we started cutting open shotgun shells by the hundreds; we poured the pellets into one bowl and the powder into another until we had at least a pound of explosives. We found a six inch pipe with cap screws on each end and began to load both the powder and pellets into the pipe.

“Do you have any tacks?” I asked,

“No, but we have some small nails,” Jim said pointing to the top shelf. “Why do you want those?”

“Shouldn’t we just throw some nails in the pipe just to see what happens?” I thought this made sense and it really didn’t take much convincing on my part to start emptying a small box of nails into the middle of the pipe, at least it might make the crater larger I thought to myself.

As Jim stuffed the pipe further, I put on the new Generation X album on the hi-fi console stereo system and skipped to track 4. Jim never really liked music, but as a depressed tween stuck in a small town in a body I hated, English Punk Rock spoke to me. A few years before, I had caught Roxy Music on Friday Night Videos and was mesmerized by the glam and music. I befriended some college guy at the record store and he let me listen to all of the new music coming from the UK. The Clash, The Sex Pistols, Generation X, Siouxie and the Banshees, The Cure, 999, Japan and other indie punk bands were making some waves in London; so while my local radio station continued to play smooth rock from the 70s, I was getting caught up in developing punk scene.

“READY!! STEADY!! GOOOOOOWHOOOOOOOOA!!! I yelled, “I’m not in love with television, I’m not in love with the radio, I’m not in love with the Kings Road, because I’m in love with Cathy MacGow wow wow wow wan!” I screamed.

“This doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Jim said, head down emptying more powder into the pipe as I kept skipping from track to track on the stereo system.

“Seven-o-clock they stand in rank for thirty bus uptown, and later in a downstairs room she pulls her lover dow wown, In ecstasy but they can’t make a sound case her mother might come down…Having fu-un…In South West Six, Discovers teenage sex…WHOA OA AH KISS MEEEEEE…DEADLLLLLLLLLLLYYYYYYYYYYYYY….TONIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!

By this time I was dancing close enough to Jim for him to get uncomfortable, “What are you a faggot? Get away from me and help me with this, I’m going upstairs to grab some sodas.” He said all annoyed.

“Get away and help me with this?” I yelled up the stairs, “That doesn’t even come close to making sense.”

“Shut up!!” Jim screamed from the upstairs kitchen.

“Soda?” I’ve never heard anyone, let alone any of my friends…okay, singular…friend…call it soda. “Why did you call it soda?” I asked when he handed me a can of JollyGood pop; a cheap knockoff of whatever grape or orange pop was in the ’70s, plus it had a joke on the bottom of the can, so you had to finish it, you know…just to see the joke. I think it was a local beverage, like LaCroix water was until they changed packaging in 2016 and suddenly it was everywhere.

“It pisses people off when I say ‘soda,” he said.

“Good point” I thought to myself.

He was proud of himself for that one, but from then on, I only referred to a refreshing sugar based drink as ‘soda,’ and yes, it really pisses people in Minnesota off.

I was tired, hungry and I either wanted to go home or I wanted an explosion. My needs were going to be simple that day, besides, it beat lying face down in my air-conditioning less room listening to my parents talk about what may or may not be wrong with me.

“Why are you always sleeping?”

“Why don’t you have more friends?”

“Why are you dressing like that?”

“Why why why why shut the fuck up,” I wanted to say, but instead I just kind of stared blankly at my mom when she wanted to go through this line of questioning. It’s not like I was out getting in trouble or doing drugs, I was just listening to a lot of music that no one understood, and that made me feel like I had an inside joke.

“Done!” Jim said.

We marveled at our work, we had actually made a pipe bomb in the basement of my friend’s house, it was kinda impressive. “Who does this?” I thought. We were both grinning until I pointed out that we forgot to drill a hole in the pipe to insert the fuse.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!!! We forgot about the fuse.

We started yanking fuses out of the mounds of fireworks in the corner of the room and tied them together. “It’s gotta be at least a foot long in order to give us enough running time when one of us lights this thing.” I said. “One of us? You’re lighting this thing.” Jim said.

“Whatever, how do we get this thing connected to the inside of the pipe? If we don’t figure that out, then day over.” I said.

Bandit was still just walking around pooping these little round turds that looked like rabbit turds and eating them. “I’m thinking she’s hungry if she’s eating poop.” I said pointing to the animal.

“It’s a ‘he’ and who cares, we need to figure out how to make this work.” Jim was agitated and what did it matter if the raccoon was a ‘he’ or ‘she’ I thought to myself.

I thought maybe we just clamp the device into the work benches vice grips and drill a hole into the pipe, I mean, what could possibly go wrong with drilling metal with metal on top of a pound of condensed explosives, pellets and nails?

“DUDE!! This guy calls himself Billy Idol! Idol as in I.D.O.L, as in a teen idol, not Idle like I.D.L.E, like my life feels like it’s in idle.” I yelled holding up the back of the Generation X album. “Check out his hair! I’m totally doing that to my hair.” Now how in the fuck does he get his hair like that I thought to myself. It wasn’t until 2005 when I interviewed Billy Idol and Steve Stevens for an instore play segment that would play in almost 1,500 Sam Goody stores, that I learned how he did that to his hair. I’ll never tell.

Jim didn’t care about music or Billy Idol, he just wanted to finish our little project before 5:00 O’Clock…when time freezes for all of Winona and you are required to go home and eat supper at the dinner table with your family. It was a strange ritual that every kid in the town knew all too well; at 4:30 you got on your bike and headed home like a zombie for this elaborate meal prepared dutifully by our moms. Dads would get home at 5:15pm on the dot and supper [not dinner] was on the table with the kids waiting at the table to eat. My father was a religious man, so grace was said at every meal.

“God is good, God is great, let us thank him for our food, Ahmen.” And we would all dig in.

We were already coming up on 3:00pm and we had finally gotten the hole drilled into the pipe without incident. Now, the fuse was inserted, held into place with Silly Putty and it was show time.

We got on our mini bikes and rode back to a place we called ‘The Hills.’ A few years earlier, The Army Corps. Of Engineers dredged out a huge section of the Mississippi River and deposited the sand in a place that used to be a swamp. Now you have dunes of river sand that eventually hardened enough to build a road that easily connected to a street named Pelzer where the grain elevators were located. After the construction, the flotsam and jetsam of materials were dumped in a two mile area; this area known simply as ‘The Hills’ was where we road our motocross bikes, mini bikes and go karts legally.

We dug a small hole in the dirt and placed our homemade explosive in it; I calculated that we had at least 5 Mississippi’s until the bomb exploded, giving us enough time to dive for cover when I yelled five.

The fuse was lit and the running began.

“One Mississippi!” I yelled.

“Two Mississippi!”

“Three Missi…!” was the last thing I remembered.

When I woke up, my feet were at the edge of a very large crater that the bomb had left behind. I was lying face down covered in dirt and debris when I saw Jim speeding away; fast and far enough away for him to be a cloud of dust. He had a Honda CR125 Elsinore bike that was faster than my Suzuki 75, so it took him no time to get out of there…assuming he was never knocked out from the blast or just made it further than I did on the third Mississippi.

In the distance I heard sirens, so I knew the cops were coming; in our neighborhood, if you were caught, you took the fall and ratted no one out…today was not the day I was going to stick to a stupid neighborhood code.

Suddenly I was Pablo Escobar yelling threats at the back of Jim’s ever disappearing mini bike.

“I AM NOT TAKING THE FALL ON THIS!” I screamed.

“IF I GO DOWN, YOU GO DOWN!”

“I SWEAR TO GOD AND EVERYTHING HOLY THAT I WILL KILL YOU, I WILL KILL YOUR FAMILY AND I WILL BURN DOWN YOUR HOUSE AND WHEN IM DONE WITH YOUR HOUSE, I WILL TORCH THE FUCKING NEIGHBORHOOD!!!”

I kept going while propping up my bike and trying to kick start it.

“YOUR DAD…DEAD!”

“YOUR SISTER…DEAD!”

“I WILL POP BANDITS HEAD OFF HIS SHOULDERS, STICK MY HAND UP HIS SKULL AND USE HIM AS A HAND PUPPET! I’LL HAVE HIM TALK ABOUT ALL THOSE ILLEGAL FIREWORKS, AMMUNITION, AND JAPANESE RADIOS!!!”

“I WILL PUT ON A PUPPET SHOW JUST FOR THE POLICE USING ONLY BANDITS HEAD!”

My bike started in one kick and while I put my helmet on, I kept mumbling about how serious I was about my threats. He pissed on Generation X, he pissed on Billy Idol, called me a faggot and now I’m taking the hit for building a bomb?

Not.fucking.today.

So if I knew the police, they were going to come down second street because it lead directly to ‘The Hill’s;’ they would also block off the farthest west access trail on Pelzer street caging you like an animal. It’s not like they were going to have any guns drawn, but they had seen my orange Suzuki so I had to think of a third escape route that was midpoint between both access points but didn’t have a road for the police to block.

“McConnon,” I thought to myself. McConnon was this huge ugly aqua green cement block industrial building that produced something, but what we never knew. Later I found out that they manufactured DDT and Agent Orange, but now in 2017 they discovered that all of the sand that was dredged up so many years ago was the exact sandy composition used in fracking. McConnon went from supplying things that pollute the air to things that pollute the ground water; what a business plan.

Separating the trail and the McConnon building were railroad tracks, so I cut through the waist high weeds, and just as I shifted into 4th gear, I accelerated enough to hit the rock incline of the tracks and jump over them. It wasn’t as if it was this amazingly successful Evel Knievel jump over twenty buses at the coliseum, but more of an Evel Knievel jumps over the fountain at Caesars’ Palace and becomes entangled in his bike until he hits the wall kind of jump.

It was a minor setback, but the engine on the bike was still running and now I had free and clear ride home. I could see my house and as I cut through five of my neighbors backyards, I slide up to our back porch door and quickly stuffed my bike in the garage.

“Suppertime!!” mom called.

I heard the Mr. Softee ice cream truck down the street, that dude always came at 5:00 p.m. Why does he come at five when he knows everyone is eating I thought to myself. A few years later I learned that he was selling drugs out of the back of the truck which explained both the odd time and why he was always eating pizza instead of ice cream.