Well, okay, maybe we did a bit more than put frogs in sleeping bags....

One summer I was on the camp Staff. Another staff member, 18, had a black powder rifle and had made a quart (32 oz.) of his own gunpowder. However, it burned really, really dirty because he'd added too much charcoal and it fouled his rifle badly. Still, he didn't want to give it up.

The latrines were outhouses, and the urinals were slanted troughs that ended in a pipe. Ed (not his real name) spread his quart of homemade black powder along a dry urinal, stuck two wires in the end and ran them to a magneto.

Along comes a young Boy Scout who is obviously going to use something other than the urinal. Ed waited thirty seconds and cranked the magneto.

He acheived a lovely mushroom cloud effect as the smoke exited the vents at ceiling level (since the powder wasn't contained it didn't explode, but "flashed"). The Tenderfoot stumbled out, black from head to foot from soot, pants around his kneeds, stammering "The la-la-latrine exploded!"

Ed also shot a (camp owned) arrow through a metal latrine screen. The noise was immense. The camp director was in the latrine. Ed set records for the mile run.

No, I wasn't Ed. I was a city wimp. Ed was a farmboy who drew a 65 lb. recurve bow (I do only 45).