I just saw this online and brought back many childhood memories. In case you are not familiar, you light up the end of the coil and it would produce a smoke that will keep mosquito away. I am not fond of the smell, but it works and I rather have a bad olfactory night than Yellow Fever. But the other use we had for it as children was as timing device for fireworks….the explosive-only kind.
I don’t remember now, but we even had the rate of burn for that think and would break pieces according our needs. We would attach the fuse of a martillito (M-80) with tape and then seek a target. The coils were so widely used nobody gave a second thought to the smell and nobody was the wiser. We would be blocks away from the target waiting to hear the boom! and laugh our asses off.
My crowning achievement with this timed device was at school when I tied three M-80s to a length of coil and left it in the boys bathroom timed so it would go off when we were all in our respective classrooms. If I recall correctly, the time was more or less 30 minutes and it was one of the longest 30 minutes I lived back then. The three explosions went off almost at once and people poured out of the classrooms to see what was that all about, me included.
What was not expecting was to see somebody coming out of the bathroom. It was another kid from school who I guess he needed to go and the teacher gave him permission. The poor bastard’s eyes were wide, he looked dazed… and was still holding his member in his hand which led me to assume he was taking a leak when the three devices went off in the heavily tiled enclosure. Other than a heavy ring in his ears, he was unhurt.
The Brothers at the school had a mayor meltdown, locked everybody in the classrooms and the teachers were told to search each and every bag and pat down every kid till evidence was found. But none was to be found. I had suffered an experience before which I will not share in this pages and I had nothing on me that could incriminate me.
Yes, I was an evil prick when I was in High School. There are reasons for it and again, they won’t be shared.
WARANING: don’t use the coil as a timing device. I just shared a story and does not mean it is legal to do the same nowadyas nor I am encouraging it.
Those worked back in the day, so did a cigarette… 10 minutes on the cigarette to burn down and light the book of matches it was pushed into… Not that I ‘know’ how to do that… 🙂
My Dad was in the Royal Engineers, I could tell you stories, like the time they blew up a donkey.
M-80’s. Heh. I’ll just plead the fifth on this one.
Fireworks were verboten in Michigan when I was a kid. So we played with the next best thing, gasoline. There was that time I burned my eye lashes off. That was in the 6th grade. Since we lived on a farm, we had a 200 gallon overhead tank to fill the tractor up. Nothing like a ready supply.
Sometimes I’m amazed that I made it out of high school. I was expelled from chemistry, I argued that it was a small explosion. No sense of humor, the Principal and Superintendent. They stuck me in 1st year typing. Nothing better than being the only boy locked in a room with 30 girls.
Much of the stuff we did in high school would get us expelled and likely declared a “terrorist” in today’s environment. Even if the Chemistry Teacher, Dr. V was supervising. It is ridiculous.
Ten years ago a classmates high school senior child was suspended for two weeks because he helped his friends streak the HS Football game. I guess he made the mistake of listening to his Dad’s stories, and didn’t realize today’s school administrators are humorless drones. Their parents did convince the police not to charge them at least.
If you have kids, warn them.