One year my father had a load of sand delivered to fill in the yard because I probably made holes and dents in it somehow. Anyway when he was done there was a pile of unused sand approx. two feet high and five feet across. My best friend and I promptly dug out the center and created a fox hole.
We then built a tennis ball canon with three soda cans (steel with straight sides and pull ring tabs and no taper at the top or bottom), duct tape and lighter fluid. You used a can opener to remove the top and bottom of two cans and duct taped them together and that was the barrel. You then duct taped that to the intact third can which had a nail hole (touch hole) on the side about a half inch from the bottom.
You then shot a liberal amount of lighter fluid into the touch hole and whipped it around a half dozen times to vaporize the lighter fluid. Drop a tennis ball into the top of the barrel and light the touch hole with your lighter and the expanding gasses are primarily directed through to the pull tab opening of the bottom can and the tennis ball is launched about 50-75 yards straight up with a satisfying “thoomp.”
For added fun and risk, squirting the tennis ball with lighter fluid will produce a flaming tennis ball which is especially satisfying at night.
Anyway, we now have two 12 year olds on summer vacation who have dug a fox hole in the front yard and have a tennis ball canon, lighter fluid, a lighter and at least 50 tennis balls.
Our objective is a house around the corner two doors down and two doors to the right of our location. Our position is barely visible from their front door by line of sight as we have quite a bit of landscaping in front of us.
We create a rest in the rim of our fighting position so that trajectories with be more or less constant and repeatable. It takes about 6-8 shots to find our zero which results in a tennis ball traveling at a respectable distance and velocity finding the front door of the house. The owner opens the door, wonders what the half dozen tennis balls are all about, looks around and closes the door.
We immediately reload the weapon. We have a system where we take turns and one guy primes the combustion chamber, stands up to vaporize the propellent, drops in a tennis ball and places the weapon in the aiming gap we created in the sand wall. The person standing by visually confirms proper orientation and lights the touch hole. We get a “thoomp” and a tennis ball sails through the air and bounces off the front door.
The homeowner answers the door, this time he comes out and looks in the bushes for smart ass kids, walks around his front yard, looks up and down the side of his house, looks across the street and then goes back inside.
The moment the door closes we begin the reloading sequence and in less than a minute another tennis ball is inbound to the target. This time the front door flies open as the owners was standing ready with a “gotcha.” He quickly runs outside, runs to each side of the house and wonders how the hell these smart ass kids are running so fast that he can’t even see them seconds after they throw a tennis ball at his door.
We are at the bottom of our fox hole trying not to piss ourselves from laughing and trying not to laugh out loud so we don’t give our position away. We begin to prepare to fire another shot when the front door of the house suddenly flies open again as the homeowner jumps the gun believing he will get the drop on those smart ass kids.
When we stop laughing long enough to actually breath we immediately resume the loading and firing sequence and another tennis ball finds it’s mark on the front door. This time the owner comes running up the side of the house having gone out the back or side door and put himself in a position to catch “those damn kids.”
We come close to death from not being able to breath as he paces his front yard and once again checks his bushes for kids. As soon as he walks down the far side of his house to investigate that area we load and fire another tennis ball. As soon as it bounces off the door he is in the front yard and now he is trying the tactic of “yelling at us” as if he actually see’s us. Taunts of “Ok, get out of there…I see you” almost result in urination on our part.
He spends a good five minutes searching his yard, looking up and down the street and attempting variety of bluffs and ploys to smoke us out. He goes back in the front door and within 20 seconds flings it back open and quickly searches his property again.
He goes back inside and we observe him looking out the front window. We hold our fire. Minutes pass. Finally we see the curtains close and we immediately load and launch another tennis ball against the front door. The door flies open and declarations of “I see you” and “I know you’re in there” resume as the owner searches the same bushes he has searched several times now.
This continues for what was probably an hour and a half and the discharging of perhaps 45 tennis balls. It then occurs to us that we cannot leave our fox hole without risk of being observed by the guy around the corner. So we stick it out until dusk and when a car passes us in the direction of the target house we take advantage of the cover and move from our fox hole to some dense landscaping that permits us to enter my garage unseen.
Later that night, we conducted an operation to recover tennis balls and we successfully retrieved almost half of them, a few initially had overshot the target as we figured out our zero, others were just hard to find as they bounced everywhere. Not to mention they were the same color as the grass and bushes and it was at night.
We had plans to resume the fire mission the next day but for whatever reason we never did. I’m sure the homeowner was thankful we found something more entertaining to do.
