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There are a few beautiful things in this world that fill my entire body with joy: Masters weekend, cheese fries, and destroying perfectly constructed things for absolutely no reason at all. It doesn’t matter if I am shooting a watermelon, attaching my sister’s dolls to a rocket, lighting random things on fire, or literally making a homemade bomb. There are a lot of myths out there about rednecks, and while many are alternative facts, one thing remains true: rednecks love to blow shit up. Don’t ask me why, because there’s no written proof to explain it. My theories revolve around three main points: seclusion, boredom, and humor.
It is much easier to blow shit up when you’re miles away from any civilization. Are you going to set off a chain of cherry bombs in a neighborhood? Probably not, unless you’re a really drunk college kid, and really drunk college kids and rednecks are synonymous at times. All it takes is a few guys down in the holler to think that they have diplomatic immunity. What happens down in that holler? Well, what happens in the holler, stays in the holler.
Sometimes rednecks just get bored, man. There’s no brunch in Appalachia. We don’t know what pure barre is and we only ride bicycles when we got our driver’s license taken away after one too many DUIs. There’s no point in going to the local watering hole when it’s twelve miles away, and the only patrons there are the state champion quarterback from 1983, his ex-wife, his other ex-wife, and his future ex-wife. Sometimes it’s too cold to fish, sometimes it’s not hunting season (or within the two-month buffer before and after hunting season), and sometimes the dish on the TV doesn’t work. So, of course, we are going to blow some shit up.
Put bluntly, blowing shit up is fun. Have you ever played with fireworks? I don’t mean the boring kind that you buy in the grocery store parking lot, I’m talking about the good kind that you adventure across state lines and spend an entire paycheck on, then cover them up in the bed of your truck with hay bales. When we have the annual Delph July 4th bash, I don’t plan a typical fireworks show that you’ll see at the county park. We start launching rockets at nine in the morning. We launch rockets attached to other rockets. We drop cherry bombs into buckets of water for no reason at all. We try to ignite three mortars in a mortar tube at the same time, then try to run off as fast as we can when the tube tips over. That shit will make you feel like you’re playing Call of Duty in real life.
One of my favorite homegrown explosions is the Works bomb. The Works bomb is nothing spectacular to look at, but it does make quite the “boom” if you use the right bottle. It’s basically tin foil and toilet bowl cleaner, but it packs a punch. Your neighbors will hear the boom. If your neighbors decide to call the cops upon hearing this boom, you could be charged with a felony. Just ask some Hokie football players from a couple years ago. Use at your own risk.
If any peers from my alma mater are reading this, I may or may not have been the individual that set off the Works bomb (which some of you claimed was a pipe bomb, others gunshots) the Thursday night before Spring break freshman year. Yeah, that was me. What can I say? Rednecks love to blow shit up..
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This. All of this. I feel like we’d scare 85% of the PGP population if they had to spend 3 hours with us “making our own fun”.
Also, only reason I’ve ever heard of barre’ is my buddy asked me to invest in a startup with him and his wife. My response: “So you want to start a business, that is just a room with a mirror and handrail for ladies to stretch. Take my money”.
One word: Tannerite.
Four words: Couple pounds of Tannerite.
I feel like my tannerite comments from last week inspired this column.
Suppressed ARs and tannerite. Jacked up pickups, mud and beers around a bonfire. Quite frankly, we have more fun.
Unrelated but does anyone else keep getting redirected to the App Store to download random apps?
It’s an issue our tech team is taking measures to fix today. Not sure what the problem was exactly but sounds like they’ve nailed it down.
Yes. It’s fucking annoying as hell.
Dry ice bombs
Came here to say that, only issue with dry ice bombs is you have to quick on the trigger they blow up fast.
One of my buddies from college made a bunch of works bombs in high school. He used to just fuck with his friends and vice versa but took things a little too far and saw “The Plano Bomber” story on CNN one day after baseball practice. His parents were less than enthused after talking to the FBI.
This brings back memories. You guys ever make potato guns? Damn those were fun.
The Works bomb created some of my greatest high school memories. Things got a tad dicey once alcohol entered the equation though.
works bomb + car muffler = amplified explosive sound, or so i’ve heard
Can confirm: intense sound. Also can confirm: Homeland Security will be there quicker than you can say “federal court subpoena” if it’s detonated in any area resembling suburbia.
I recommend the dry ice bomb to rookies for slightly less dangerous explosions.
In high school, I also liked what we simply called “bottle bombs”. You cut open a shotgun shell and extract the powder (NOT THE LEAD SHOT, YOU IDIOT) from any old shotgun shell you have laying around. Find a dry, empty soda bottle, and awl or drill a whole in the center of the cap just big enough to fit a firecracker fuse. For the fuse, using something slow and reliable, NOT the twisted paper they put on Blackcats. Place a small piece of plastic wrap in the mouth of the bottle to hold the powder in place, and screw the cap back on. Light it and get away.
The pressure that builds up in the bottle makes a pretty loud sound when it bursts. If you didn’t follow my instructions to NOT use the lead shot, congrats, you just maimed everybody in the area.