Well here is one of those blowing up tales that didn't end well.

My older brother and I were up to no good one day and we got in to farmer Biggars' tool shed. We found a red metal can like a shoe polish can only square and taller. Inside were what appeared to be a couple dozen spent brass cartridges from a rifle. Inside was a waxy substance deep down where you could not see exactly what it was.

My brother got the bright idea of melting the wax out of the casings so we took the can home. No one was home so we went to the kitchen with our find. At our kitchen counter, he held one in his hand and put a lit match to the bottom. It got hot so he dumped them all out of the can onto the counter, put the hot one across the top and dropped the match in the can.

I was kind of short back then so I went to get a kitchen chair so I could get a better look at what he was doing. Right when I was setting the chair down in front of the counter, WHAM. The biggest noise I had ever heard and blinding light filled the kitchen. The cartridges were blasting caps and when the heated one went off, all of them went off.

The next thing I remember was wandering around in the front yard, temporarily deaf and mostly blind from the flash. My brother got a hole in his belly from part of the can. His little finger was about a half inch long and the next two were a little longer. His entire right hand was a bloody mess with skin and meat hanging off.

His right eye was almost blinded. Thank god his left eye was OK. All I got was brass shrapnel in the back of my right hand because it was hanging over the back of the chair and I was protected by the padded back. I got a few shards in my forehead where it was sticking above the chair back

I was digging shards of brass out of my hand for 20 years. The scars are still there but the powder marks are almost gone.

The caps blasted a hole through the heavy stainless steel counter top and the bottom of the can went through two metal drawers below. My mother found his little finger in the mixer bowl sitting on top of the refrigerator two weeks later when she went to make a cake.

His right had is barely usable and his right eye is worthless to this day.

I was a bad experience but it didn't deter us from fooling around with cherry bombs and such later on in our child hood