www.alphadictionary.com

I was young then, Katy, with a promisiing career as a pyromaniac.... I found that girls were much more interesting. Now I'm too old even for that.

William

you are never too old for girls as long as you call them, truthfully, women.

Katy, I meant girls generically. Actually, I have been married to the most beautiful woman in the world for the last 30 and 1/2 years and have never strayed, though my eyes may have wandered a time or two.

The story about the forest fire is true. It was 1962, I was 13 then, not 14, in a place called Barfoot Park, which is in the Chiricahua Mountains which are in Southeastern Arizona, and is part of the Coronado National Forest. (Yes there actually are forests in Arizona, you can ski there too).

The fire burned about 10 acres, which is pretty small for a forest fire. Maybe the Forest Service has records you could check to verify my veracity.

Anyway, there were a couple of girls involved, aged 13 and 14, and there was my older brother, then 15. We had gone exploring a little bit away from the picnic grounds where our families were parked. Well, it's a long story, but it really did happen. I think it was that fire that made me turn away from fire as a primary interest. Or maybe it was the girls, I don't remember now.

William.

But at least we can tell from your story that you continued to "play with fire"... as it were.

-Tim

. . . Who hasn't seen a Future Darwin award winner make a flame thrower with an aerosol can and a lighter?
. . .
Katy

Back in Boy Scouts, on camping trips, some guys used the fuel tank from a Coleman stove! I'm the kind who will squirt charcoal starter fluid onto a lit fire if I think it needs some more juice to get it going, being VERY careful to keep squeezing the can so the flame-front won't follow the stream back into the can!

I'm the kind of guy who's never done that. I'm too urban for that.

Brazilian dude

Do you remember blue carbon paper?

When I was young my parents gave me a chemistry set one Christmas. . . .

I was a disappointed young man when I realized that the set contained neither the proper chemicals nor did the booklet contain the proper instructions for making gun powder and other explosive mixtures, and of course you couldn't get those instructions from the internet . . . Heaven know's what would have happened if I had been able to make gun powder.

William

But you should have been able to find the recipe in a library or some other place. Sulphur, charcoal, and saltpeter (potassium nitrate). I tried to make some, but it didn't work too well.

Sadly, Oklahoma City showed what an amateur chemist can do with a truckload fertilizer. Also, some states are now restricting the sale of pseudoephedrine in larger quantities, even to the point of having over-the-counter Sudafed be sold by a pharmacist or from behind a counter, to adults only, because people are using it to make methamphetamine. Indeed, the Federal Government has also placed controls on pseudoephedrine because of the Comprehensive Methamphetamine Control Act of 1996 (MCA). Farm states also have problems in rural areas where illicit drug manufacturers steal anhydrous ammonia, used as a fertilizer, for methamphetamine manufacture. Alas, even farm life is less simple than it used to be. Ammonia rustlers, indeed!

* being so completely underwhelmed*
I saw MaGiver make a bomb with a bag of flour,
OTOH, when I fell in the well, spending a harrowing 30 minutes, my first thought (I kid you not), was What would MaGiver do? Not being, in fact, MaGiver, I did nothing effective. So who am I to be underwhelmed that you didn't make a bomb..

Katy

You fell in a well? Is that true or you're reciting a poem?

Brazilian dude

Oh my yes, it did indeed happen to me. And trust me on this one, There's nothing poetic about hanging in a well by one's elbows, It's all in my book....

Katy

Can I find that at www.amazon.com? What about a signed copy?

Brazilian dude

I thought there must be a typo or severe misunderstanding when I read

anhydrous ammonia used as a fertilizer

Not understanding how that would be possible, I searched the Internet and realized that such a hard to control use of a lethal chemical really existed in the US.

In Sweden, there are several projects running to even reduce the ammonia emissions from stable manure and similar sources. Pushing ammonia into the ground is as unthinkable as illegal here.

Contrary to what you might think, ammonia is contributing to the acidifying of the environment. (It is converted to nitric acid in the atmosphere.) We have enough acid rain without the added effect of ammonia.

BD, it's on one of my websites, it's under
my book can't remember if it's part one or two,
Christian Biblical Teachings
it's the short story called {i]time in the well[/i]

Katy
btw, I'm no fan of chemical-laden fertilizers, I prefer to use manure, and I'm picking up some neatly packaged stuff recently residing in assorted Lepus europaeus or maybe Oryclolagus cuniculus .

. . . I searched the Internet and realized that such a hard to control use of a lethal chemical really existed in the US.

In Sweden, there are several projects running to even reduce the ammonia emissions from stable manure and similar sources. Pushing ammonia into the ground is as unthinkable as illegal here.

Contrary to what you might think, ammonia is contributing to the acidifying of the environment. (It is converted to nitric acid in the atmosphere.) We have enough acid rain without the added effect of ammonia.

Lots of chemicals are lethal. Internet jokes about Oxygen Dihydride or Dihydrogen Monoxide notwithsatnding, a fraternity pledge in California died during a hazing incident recently in which he was forced to drink large quantities of water, which altered his blood chemistry and caused death by heart attack from an electrolyte imbalance. When will water, a major source of drowning, be declared a controlled dangerous substance in Stockholm?

When applied below ground in accordance with procedures, the NH[sub]3[/sub] combines with moisture in the ground to trap the gas in the form of NH[sub]4[/sub]OH, aqua ammonia, which is a base, not an acid. A farmer will not want to vent it to the atmosphere--that's a waste.

I liked the part where you said you were going to die a stupid death, hehehe.

Brazilian dude

Thanks, BD, all my stories were 'sposed to be funny, sort of along the lines of Patrick McManus, whose books I LOVE!

Unfortunately all the stories are horribly true!

Katy