Long ago when I was a teenager, my brother E was also a teenager. He was also very very creative! In shop class in our high school he made a cannon. Don't ask me how he did it or why the shop teacher allowed such a project, but he did do it.
One glorious summer day soon after he had made the cannon, the rest of us kids were lying on our backs on the lawn under the big maple tree up near the large rhubarb patch watching the gorgeous puffy white clouds floating by in the bright blue sky trying to identify their shapes...a camel there, that one was definitely the neighbor's nose. From our spot on the cushy grass we could look out over the valley past the end of our big white farm house.
E decided this would be the day to use the cannon for the first time. I was totally oblivious to what he was doing (oblivion being one of my less attractive character traits developed from an early age....). By the time he was set up and ready to go, I had become aware.
There he was, small cannon set up on that lush green grass and pointed toward the valley, and BOOM!! Off went whatever he had used to prime the cannon. What a fabulous success it seemed. For a moment. Almost immediately we realized that he had hit the telephone pole just past the house! Yikes! Being kids, it didn't seem like much of a problem until we went into the house to find we had no telephone service...
Kids will do the darnedest things. Sometimes they are successful, but with unpleasant results.
To my knowledge, the cannon was never fired again.
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