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Back about 1960, at about 17 I was sorta the assistant manager of a small, local supermarket. I opened up one summer morning, and an hour or so later glanced out one of the large plate glass windows. Laying in plain sight about eight feet from me was a grenade, with the handle laying beside it...
I stepped aside, and waited a minute or two. Nothing happened, so I walked out to inspect it. Yep - hand grenade. Yep - pin pulled, handle off, igniter cap flipped. No smoke.
After a few seconds of consideration, I left it alone, and put a wooden crate over it to conceal it. Called the county police - they didn't have a clue what to do. I suggested the nearby military base, so the cops passed the hot potato to them.
In about thirty minutes, a couple of AP's showed up in a Jeep. I gave them the story. They looked at each other, shrugged, and one picked up the crate. After a few seconds, the other picked up the grenade and sniffed it - no recent powder smell.
After a few minutes discussion, we agreed that it was probably a souvenir that someone was playing with, and they panicked and dropped it when they pulled the pin.
To my amazement, the AP's cheerfully agreed that I could keep it. I'm not sure where it is in my junk at the moment. Things would be handled differently now...
Some posts are read out loud to our significant others for full effect.
She may think she'll feel safer in the Sprite, since it can't go much over 60 mph. Probably not. But there is a certain resemblance.
(Bugeye Sprite is on the right.)
Actually, she found it cute and thinks it would be fun shifting gears and zipping around the neighborhood. She used to like driving our red and white '62 Rampside (Corvair pick up truck - 80 Hp 3 speed 2700 lbs -rear engine air cooled).
Weird...something very similar happened to us last spring about a month after we moved into our home.
My elderly mother lives with our family. One day she decides to clean a storage area under the basement steps. "I found a bomb!"
I never took a picture, but it looked like this
It appeared to have been opened at the nose and contents withdrawn. I thought "cool...wonder if it's worth much?".
A few days later I come home from work and mom and my wife and two boys are standing in the driveway. Mom says "We can't go in the house. I put the bomb on the tree stump out back and called the police. The bomb squad is coming." It took me a moment to process this information...the thing was empty. It was 105 degrees (near a record high). Mom had to wait for the police officers to arrive to give them the details, so I said to my wife and kids "Ok kids...get in the car...we are going to McDonalds".
Forty five minutes later we return, thinking the situation is over. No. First we see all the neighbors standing in their yards looking down the street toward our house. Then we see the huge bomb squad truck, a few fire engines, and two police cars. And the road is blocked off. Our street is a circle, so we go around the other direction and come to another police car and a fire engine blocking the road...and see the guys in their bomb suits (looked brand new), huddled around the tree stump in our backyard. Where's mom? I don't see her anywhere. Then I see her graying hair...in the backseat of one of the patrol cars.
So we sit in the car and watch the bomb crew put the bomb in a container and take it away. At this point I'm thinking I really screwed up...this was a live explosive!
So after what's been well over an hour total the bomb squad goes away, then the fire trucks, and I see mom getting out of the police car and walking over to the house with the police officer. He says "Sorry this took so long, but calling it in was the right thing to do. We had to call in a munitions expert to identify it" I say "So it was live? What is it?". He says.."No, it wasn't live. It had been drilled out. It's a civil war Parrot Rifle shell.
I say "So why the suits and carefully taking it away?"
Our town is small. Not a lot happens here (think Mayberry). Officer says "Since we had a full response we decided to use this an opportunity to have a drill". I look over at my Mom and start chuckling..."Well...we've made a great impression on the neighbors, eh mom?"
Turns out these shells are very common around here. Th Parrot Guns came on late in the Civil War and were called rifles because they have rifling in the barrels. They were very accurate and could shoot a long distance. But fuse technology was still very crude and unreliable. A large percentage didn't explode (and this is why the officer was glad my mom called). The shells often penetrated the ground and many are still there...down a few feet. There have been several local incidents of shells exploding when farmers plow fields.
Later I checked eBay and found prices for shells in similar condition between $150 and $250. It wasn't returned to us.
I'm a fan of reality crime and forensics shows, there is one called Homicide Hunter, retired Colorado Springs detective recounting his career cases. There was an episode where he was called out to a garage explosion. The body was no more than a torso and they thought at first that the guy had been murdered. While investigating they found a drawer full of live grenades. This poor renter had apparently just moved in and decided to poke around the garage, some previous doofus apparently thought it would be a good idea to leave the grenades he stole from work behind when he moved out. They determined the victim had pulled the pin himself because they found his finger with the pin still in it in the neighbors yard.
Good move calling the troopers in. Every gun is loaded, every grenade is live. Glad you're safe, I'd check in extra early at the airport next time you fly just in case you've made the list!!!
I did a little searching. The submunition was a BLU-26. I found one for sale (a blue-painted inert item) for $15. $6 for shipping - imagine answering The Question at the post office.
So, I'm kind of confused here. It's a 'good' thing he reported it because it might be live. But - now that he's notified authorities it's a 'bad' thing because he might be on the no fly list?
Comparing a renter guy who pulled the pin on an unknown grenade and died, to a guy who found two inert grenades and a dud munition rattling around in a heat exchanger for maybe 30 years, seems a bit of a stretch.
Correlation is not causation, and there's little/none of either here.
No correlation, just a story of another moron neglecting to properly dispose of those coolio munitions he just had to have.
"Good" because keeping possession of an explosive that is "probably" inert seems like a really reckless course, especially when said munition is in a state of decomposition.
No fly reference was really just an attempt at sardonic humor. I'm mildly cynical not paranoid.
I didn't say he should keep it, I said it was a massive mistake to call the 'authorities' over a couple dead grenades and a definitely dead cluster bomblet.
Now since I'm being obtuse, here's what I would have done. Take 'em out to a nearby deserted place, set up on a post or something and fall back a few hundred yards and let the plinking begin!
But, that's me - and just because I still have my ***** doesn't mean anyone else should take this as advise, or encouragement. Nosiree, by all means call your local constabulatory and bend over and lube up!
she'll think it's cute to scoot around in the Sprite up until the moment a semi goes by from the other direction..or passes her going the same direction...something about being lower than the wheel bearing hubs on a big truck does that to them...my wife will no longer take any sort of drive in mine that involves any roadways with speeds greater than 25MPH...and don't have signs that read No Trucks over 2 Tons allowed.
02-06-2016, 05:09 PM
