I Wanted To Be A Cowboy

When I was a kid I always wanted to be a cowboy. I would have been a good cowboy. When I lived on the farm I used to set up hay bales in the barn and pretend it was a horse and ride miles and miles. When we moved to town and got our first black and white 13 inch television I watched every cowboy and Indian show that was broadcast on Saturday mornings. Then on Saturday afternoons if there was a western movie at the local theatre, I would scrape up the 10 cents to go to the movies. No drink and no popcorn ... just the movie.

I was "eat up" with wanting to be a cowboy. I paid attention to every detail in the television shows and the Saturday afternoon movies. The thing that particularily excited me was when the cowboys were chasing the Indians or the Indians were chasing the cowboys. I also loved to watch the cowboys blow-up something with dynamite. I especially liked it when they would blow-up a shack on a hillside.

Well .......... I got a bright idea one day. I decided that I was going to make a bomb and blow-up the neighbors garage. It was falling down anyway and was an eye sore to the neighborhood. So I figured out that I would take 4 of my brothers shotgun shells and tape them together. Then I fugured out that I could use wax paper for a fuse.

I got all my stuff together and left to go to the neighbors across the street. I planted the bomb on the ground up against the back side of the garage. Then I proceeded to lay out the wax paper fuse across a vacant lot that was next to the garage. I layed it out and down into a ditch that was about four feet deep. The ditch would give me good cover to hide in and protect me from the huge explosion that I visioned in my mind.

As soon as I had the fuse layed down into the ditch I lit it with a match. The fuse burned up out of the ditch and the fire was on its way to the bomb. I dove into the ditch to take cover ..... and I waited. I waited. I waited. I waited and waited and waited for the explosion.

After waiting some more, I peeked up over the edge of the ditch and much to my surprise, the entire back yard was on fire. The grass was burning toward his house and I just knew it was going to burn his house down. I panicked and didn't know what to do.

As luck would have it, a neighbor lady was watching the whole episode out her kitchen window. She had called the volunteer fire department which took forever to arrive. They put out the fire and everything was under control. But the bomb never went off and I didn't have the pleasure of hearing the explosion that would have wiped the neighbors garage off the map.

Of course everyone in the whole town knew about my episode within the hour because news like that travels fast in a small town. My parents knew about it before they ever got home from work and I was in big trouble. My punishment was NO television and NO cowboy movies for a month.

I also had to go knock on the neighbors door and apologize to him for burning up the yard and trying to blow up his garage. He just smiled at me and then he laughed.