Corvan has been carrying two sticks of dynamite since the early chapters of the Medallion and that mirrors my personal fascination with explosions that began when I was 8 years of age. My parents decided that my sister and I should learn to play the piano. Our piano teacher lived out across the Goat River in a farming settlement known as Canyon, which, true to its name was adjacent to the canyon where the railway trestle crossed the river.
My sister was more advanced in piano lessons, so her lessons lasted much longer than my half-hearted attempts at rudimentary tunes. My piano teacher would rush through my lesson, then turn me over to be tended by her son Bobby so she could turn her attention to my sister until our father returned to take us home. Her son Bobby was in his mid-teens at the time, and he lived in the attic of their farmhouse. He had cut a secret door though the wall of his clothes closet and had built a secret laboratory under the eaves where he would conduct experiments. It’s amazing the house never burnt down. I was enthralled to be in a secret laboratory. I could hardly wait for piano lesson day to come around and for my bumbling attempts to be over.
Bobby was a creative genius, and had many inventions scattered around the farm. In the field out back, he had a dugout fort where we played soldiers. Bobby like things to sound authentic so he created his own pipe mortars using his father’s 12-gauge shotgun shells. I don’t recall if he removed the pellets first, so it was a good thing the cannons pointed straight up in the air. In the enclosed bunker, they made an incredible racket going off.
In his high school science class Bobby had learned how to separate hydrogen gas from water using electricity. Hydrogen is lighter than air so at his school lab they had used a battery to trap a small amount in a upside down beaker. As the beaker was turned upright, they set the hydrogen gas on fire as it escaped. Bobby however, upsized the experiment in the family barn using a metal washtub full of water, an empty pickle jar and a cord plugged into power outlet. Bobby held the wires under the water on the end of two wooden sticks, directly under the pickle jar. My job was to hold the big handle of the main power breaker down as it kept tripping. We watched as the water bubbled and gas rose up to replace the water trapped in the jar. Once it was full of gas Bobby had me shut down the power, then he screwed the cap on underwater to keep the gas trapped. Jar of hydrogen in hand, we set off down the road to the nearby railway trestle bridge. Upon arrival, Bobby set the jar against one of the supports of the bridge, poked a small hole in the lid, stuck a fuse from a firework into the hole, lit it and we ran like mad to hide behind a large boulder. The fuse reached the lid of the jar and simply sputtered out. Our hydrogen bomb had failed to take out the canyon river railway bridge, but it was a valiant effort and as we were taught in science class, you can still learn from a failed experiment.
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After we moved to Prince George, I created my own workshop out in the garage where I decided to manufacture some dynamite. We didn’t have the internet to look things up but there was enough information in our World Book Encyclopaedia to figure out the basics. My prototype included gunpowder from my brother’s shotgun shells, a tungsten wire from a broken lightbulb, an electric slot car transformer and one of the control plungers from that same race car set.
My test detonation took place on the street outside our garage. I ran long wires out to the curb and placed my small test stick of homemade dynamite off to one side, just under my mother’s rosebush. Back in the garage I lowered the door halfway down and then, with on hand on the plunger and the other ready to drop the overhead garage door, I scanned the street. All was quiet. I pressed down on the plunger and was duly impressed with loud retort that rattled the windows of the house across the street and took out most of the roses. I was immediately jolted to reality when a heavy chuck of my ordinance barely missed my ear and thudded into the garage door, next to my head. I believe the dent from that near miss is still in the metal door to this day. Dropping the door to the ground, I quickly reeled the wires back inside just in case the police showed up to investigate and reports of a gunshot on our quiet street.
In the Cor Series, Corvan’s two sticks of dynamite will be used to great effect, inspired by my own secret experiments.
