Fun thinking about this.

I remember a fire department truck driving down the alley catching us red-handed with a 4-foot weather balloon almost full, getting ready to launch it with a dynamite fuze attached.

The truck stopped, we looked up, and the driver looked at us for a long time, finally said, "Don't you think you'd be better off if you stopped that?"

My friend let the gas out of the balloon, and we watched them drive away with the anxious elation of two 14 year olds who had just cheated death by the narrowest of margins.

These days we'd have gone to jail, and been considered major deliquents.

But all that was sandwiched in between sending balloons with messages, making crystal sets, one- transistor radios, two-transistor radios, backpacking, football, basketball, making thermite, and other more mundane activities. Parents didn't know about pipe bombs or weather balloons with hydrogen. Would have been grounded for life - Dad would have been tempted to cut off thumbs to keep out of trouble.

I feel sorry for the kids of today, with Little League organized by (and I think for) adults, and a paranoid society which regards a small pipe bombs detonated in one's own back yard as a major threat.

Arf