It was a typical late 60's day in the Penland House, I had gotten home from school and just relaxed while I was waiting for Bob to get home from detention. When he got home, he quickly came up to our room to show me something new he learned in detention. He took a small piece of aluminum foil, wrapped it around 3 match heads, pointed it out the window and ignited it. To my astonishment, he had built a small rocket! Since Bob was always the "Idea Man" and I was the "Engineer", we decided to take it a bit farther. First, we tried a longer piece of aluminum, and more match heads, we even tried fins for stability, but the puny little "Fithhhhhhht" of those little rockets soon lost their glamour and we started looking for something to build a more substantial rocket motor. I soon came across the perfect starting point. Back in the 60's, Magic Markers, were about 3 1/2 inches long and were made from aluminum. There was a cap on the bottom that could be removed and then the felt holding the ink just slid out with a pair of needle nosed pliers. The tip got the same treatment, the opening for the tip was bent over, and I started cutting match heads off match books with a pair of nippers. In the mean time, Bob was building a mount for the rocket engine in the back of a 1:25th scale Firebird model that he had converted into a pickup truck. We had a 2 foot by 8 foot piece of plywood in our room that we used as a work bench and after seeing the little "Fithhhhhhht" of the small rockets and figuring that his truck weighed a lot more, we decided to see if we could power the truck from one end to the other with our small rocket. Soon the mount was complete and the magic marker was packed tightly with match heads. We lined up the truck on one end of the plywood, I lit a match and ignited the rocket. We learned several of the more important "Fine Points" with that. One, that several hundred match heads make a lot of smoke. Two, that by packing the match heads tightly causes a much more powerful, but shorter burn. Three, that as the match head burn, they eject the expended ones at the back of the rocket and spray them all over. Four, don't wear a nylon shirt when dealing with rockets. Fifth that these rockets have a great deal of power, as it picked up the model pickup truck and smashed it into the far wall, and lastly, this must be down outside. So now, after we stopped laughing, we were ready to get down to serious work. Since Bob and I both built 1:25th scale car models, we had lots of parts, but we still needed supplies. We searched the house for anything that might be useful. All the magic markers, the plastic pickup sticks that our little sisters had, and every match in the house. Well we built a couple of cars and rockets that evening, took them outside around midnight (after Mom and Dad went to bed), ran them down our front walk (they ran pretty well), swept all the match heads off the walk and went to bed, determined to get an earlier start the next day.
Right after school and delivering the Evening Bulletin newspaper, the next day, we ran up to our room and started packing more rockets and building more cars. We must have had 5 or 6 of them complete and ready to roll by the time Mom and Dad were in bed, so we carried our treasures quietly down the stairs and one by one fired them down the side walk. We had a great time, but, we were now out of matches, so we swept all the match heads from the walk and went to bed. The next day was Friday, collection day on our paper route, so after school, we collected for the paper, and then we met up on Brownsville Road where there was 3 small markets. Bob and I decided that it would look too suspicious if we went into the store and bought them out of matches, so both of us went into all 3 stores and bought 2 boxes of matches. 12 boxes in all. We took our treasure home and gathered up our work force (Dottie and Betty, we would have invited Margie, but she'd tell Mom), and started them cutting off match heads. We found that we could cut all 20 match heads from a book of matches in 2 clips with Dad's heavy duty nipper (kinda like wire cutters but much bigger and the edge is perpendicular to the handle). After we packed all of our rockets, we had plenty of match heads left and it was too early to go fire them off, so we looked around for more containers. What we found was an empty butane can used for refilling butane lighters so we carefully removed the end and started filling it with matches. We found that it would hold 2,000 match heads, but when we turned it on it's side to put in a car, the match heads fell out. We determined that what was needed for all the paper from the matches to be wet and then dry out and then they would stick together in a lump. But, if we used water, that would ruin the match heads. We thought a little and then decided to wet them down with lighter fluid and let it dry. That night, after Mom and Dad were in bed, we took all the other cars outside, fired them down the walk, watching the flames from the back of the cars, (especially cool at night) swept the match heads from the walk and went to bed with visions of grander schemes for our entire Saturday.
When we awoke, we got right to work. I found that the lighter fluid trick had worked and none of the match heads fell out when turned over, and Bob found that the butane can would fit perfectly in his hearse model if he removed the back door. We packed all of our rocket engines, some with a tight pack for an explosive take off and some more loosely packed for a longer burn, built a few more rocket cars, and spent the entire day getting ready for our evening with rocket cars. With it being Saturday night, Mom and Dad weren't in bed until a little later, so we didn't get started until around midnight. One by one we fired our little rockets down the walk toward the street, thoroughly enjoying ourselves until we got to the last one, the hearse. We decided that we should probably point this one toward the house because of the longer expected flame so we went to the street side of the walk, put the hearse pointed toward the house and I reached down and ignited it. We were right, the flame was a bit longer, in fact, the flame went a little more than halfway across Weldon Avenue. A flame with a white core surrounded by blue, yellow and orange. When the flame stopped, the hearse hadn't moved. Now since neither of us had ever heard of Newton's laws, we decided that the problem was that the flame didn't have anything to push against like the little ones did pushing against the step, so we quickly went up to our room, filled the butane can, packing them tightly, we figured that since lighter fluid would burn, we'd try it wet but we wouldn't use as much lighter fluid, got it done in about 15 minutes of fast work, took it back outside, got a cinderblock from the cellar, put it behind the car, and ignited it again. This time the flame was turned by the cinderblock into a large semi-circle of fire about 12 feet in diameter, but, the car still didn't move, but now we had a pile of match heads by the cinderblock. So, we got the broom and was in the process of sweeping the match heads from the walk when we heard Mom say, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!??" We looked up, and there she was at the front door! So Bob, wearing his most innocent youngest son face, decided to tell the truth right from the beginning and said, "We're sweeping the sidewalk!". She called us in the house, and chased us up to our room where we pondered just how much she had seen and would this be our last night on earth, knowing that she was going to tell Dad when they got up in the morning. Well, when we woke up the next morning, we had found that Dad had to take Mom to the hospital overnight and that not only did we feel like we were the cause of it, all 5 of our sisters wanted to know the real story before they saved Mom and Dad the problem of killing us. So, with Dee and Ellie in tow, we loaded a few rockets, took them outside, fired them down the walk and showed them that we really had to sweep the sidewalk when we were done. We were sent back inside with Ellie in charge and Dee went to the hospital to see Mom. I think that after Dee explained it to Mom (Mom thought we were in a gang fight and that’s why we had the broom stick, not realizing that in Trevose, the most hardened gangs committed nasty crimes like littering and loitering) she accepted that we were really doing what we said (I think that was a first), and didn't kill us. We had one more night of firing our rocket cars, this time with Ellie and Dee watching, until we ran out of matches and put them away for posterity. We did have one more firing of a rocket though. After Mom got out of the hospital, it had snowed, so we set up a place on the picnic bench on the side of the house and I built a special "ski/surfboard" rocket car that could hold the butane can. We packed it, put a piece of glass behind it, had Mom watch from the window, and with Bob ready to take pictures, I fired the rocket. We learned our last lesson in physics that day. The firing was great, Bob had a photo of the colored flame from directly behind the rocket, orange on the edges, turning to yellow, to blue to a core white dot directly behind the sled. The sled once again didn't go any where but as we were approaching it, the sheet of glass we had placed behind it shattered into hundreds of pieces. We learned that glass cannot go from freezing to white hot temperatures and back again without some kind of damage.
So now, every time I see a rocket, or a ball of fire or a match head, it brings back fond memories.
Lesson Learned?
Never tell Mom the truth at 1AM on a weekend because as Mark Twain put it,
Truth is stranger than fiction because after all, fiction has to be believable