BLACKENED IS THE END

   We were watching the news in 1989 about rioting in South Korea, and protestors were throwing Molotov cocktails. This was the first I had ever heard of them, and was mystified about the name. What did they have to do with the Russians if they were in South Korea? Why did they call them cocktails if you didn't drink it? My mom explained that they were wine bottles filled with gasoline with strips of fabric as the fuse, and were probably used by the Russians.

   We had some school holiday where my mom still had to work, and I asked Travis if he wanted to come over and make a gas bomb.  I had a fenced backyard, and beyond the fence was a drainage ditch -- essentially a man-made river for surface runoff into which rednecks would illegally dump tires, old refrigerators, car parts, lawn waste, etc.  The drainage ditch had a well-constructed dam. The garbage would collect on one side, and the water would filter through all this junk and come out the other side brownish-green. One time Jimmy Van Nostrand dove in there on a dare, but I digress. 

   On the other side of the ditch was a large redneck compound where a large extended family lived behind "no trespassing" signs in several buildings and trailers, and had their own automobile graveyard in the back of the property. Tall trees near the water were dying from the polluted water and we could literally push them over.  

   Travis and some other guys showed up at my house and called my bluff. The only wine bottles we had were sealed, so I emptied and cleaned a mayonnaise jar and gouged a big hole in the lid with a screwdriver. Blasting ...And Justice for All from a boombox in the garage, we poured gasoline in the mayo jar and ripped a t-shirt in half and stuffed it in the hole. Travis was like "I don't know about this."

   We walked out to the dam in silence and started arguing when we got there. Bobby and Jason were like "we're just here to watch" so me and Travis flipped a coin for who would light it and who would throw it. Travis lost and had to throw. We didn't want to destroy the dam, we just wanted to see the explosion, and discussed strategy. We agreed he should aim near the base of the dam where there was a huge wet slab of concrete that would be the most contained spot. Bobby handed me his zippo, Travis nodded, I sparked the zippo and the then shirt. The outside of the jar was sloppy with gasoline and Jason said "get rid of it!" and Travis threw like a girl and the jar rolled off his fingers at the completely wrong angle and lobbed through the air, exploding on the other shore of the ditch in a huge ball of fire, which was now burning the dam and the surrounding grass. We were momentarily unscathed, but then a shirtless bearded redneck emerged from a trailer in the auto graveyard across the way with a rifle pointed up. We took off running into the surrounding woods with the thing still burning.

   We stayed gone for hours, emerging from the woods into a subdivision we had never seen. We went inside one of the model homes to hide, and looked around for stuff to steal but there was only cardboard VCRs. We finally hoofed it home, and as we got nearer to our turf a carload of rednecks pulled off the road next to us and the driver said "If we had found you a few hours ago, you wouldn't be walking home. Don't pull that shit again."