“Don’t let anyone tell you that oldies are not technically minded,” says Nola Scott of Estella. “I, aged 90-plus, taught my masseuse, aged 20-something, how to use Google camera on her smartphone.”
All these bangin’ takes on cracker night (C8) have led to numerous recollections of folks getting inventive with one’s fireworks, which will be today’s focus, starting with Joan Hayward of Narrawallee: “My father provided the highlight of cracker night for the neighbourhood kids. He’d fill a balloon with oxyacetylene, tape a row of Tom Thumbs to it, then as it slowly rose into the air, he’d light the lowest Tom Thumb. The result? Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! KABOOM! I swear the whole landscape shook.”
Peter Nelson of Moss Vale recalls that “when holidaying in Coffs Harbour in 1960, friends I was staying with showed me how to put a marble in a four-foot steel rod with a tuppenny bunger and watch the marble fly out at lightning speed. Could have killed someone.”
“Choko projectiles (C8) remind me of the 1950s when we Kogarah kids had an airgun but couldn’t afford the pellets,” says Rhonda Ellis of Lismore. “We’d shoot at each other using the berries from a privet hedge. Yes, it hurt.”
“Some 65 years ago, I discovered that toaster element wire wound around the fuse of a double bunger and connected to a car battery would light the bunger,” writes Peter Crowfoot of Normanhurst. “A friend and I buried a number of these wired bungers along both sides of a local forest walking path and ran wires from each one back to a hiding place. When suitable (i.e. non-adult) test subjects appeared and were in position, we connected the wires to a battery in random order. The result was pandemonium, as we had hoped. Note: no person was injured by this experiment.”
“Wendy Illingworth and her Madeiran boomerangs (C8) has provided proof, once again, of the adage that once you can fake authenticity, you’re on the road to success,” declares Marcus Daniel of Bellingen. “The next challenge is to fake sincerity, then you’ve really got it made.”
Regarding the possibility of aliens watching from above (C8) as we carry our dogs’ deposits around in little bags, Jack Dikian of Mosman thinks “should they be able to read our companions’ mind -– it would be ‘My name isn’t Rover, and I am not specially a good boy’.”
Column8@smh.com.au
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