Tennis Ball Cannon (????) Ward??

I was cleaning out the basement tonight and came across something I made many decades ago...a tennis ball cannon. I don't know why I'd saved it all these years (and probably didn't even realize it), but I had. The memories came flooding back when I saw it though!

You see, it all started when this older kid up the street, Nelse, made this thing he called a "tennis ball cannon". He made all kinds of stuff, and as a kid I kind of idolized him. He was real secretive about the stuff he made, and this thing was double-secret. It was this crude assembly of a tennis ball can and a soup can. He'd squirt a little bit of lighter fluid in the soup can on the bottom, load a tennis ball into the top part and launch the tennis ball by lighting it. The tennis ball would go about 200' feet...and it was REALLY cool (at least to my 11 year old mind). Nelse was awesome!

So I set out to make a tennis ball cannon of my own. Nelse wouldn't tell me how he made his (he was like that), so I had to figure it out on my own. I tried all manner of tennis ball cans and soup cans, but couldn't make it work. Maybe it was because I was using BBQ lighter fluid, so I switched to regular lighter fluid. I could only get my tennis ball to launch about 10 feet, and it was a flaming tennis ball too, which was pretty hazardous. So, back to square one.

Well, I'd tried everything and I just couldn't get mine to work as good as Nelse's did. Dammit! So I got mad and made one I could put about a half a can of lighter fluid into and torched it off. It really didn't "launch" anything, but just exploded into a flaming bunch of parts. Once I put the fire on my pants out, it was time for "Plan B". So I called my crazy buddy, Ward.

Ward came racing over to my house right away (with his go kart). He was totally up to this challenge! I expected him to bring all kinds of gear, but this time he didn't. Ward said..."you've already got everything you need!" I had a lot of stuff, but I'll be danged if I knew how Ward knew what we needed and what I had, but he was pretty clever that way. Ward said..."remember when we cut those shotgun shells down and dumped that powder out into that jar...you still got it???" Hmmmmm....Ward might be onto something this time! We were about to make REAL tennis ball CANNON!!

We cut the top off a Campbell's tomato soup can (and fed the soup to the dog), punched some holes in the bottom of the tennis ball can, and then taped the crap out of the soup can connecting it to the bottom of the tennis ball can. I don't remember how many shotgun shells Ward and I had cut down that day, but it was quite a few, and we dumped all the powder we had into that tennis ball can. It filtered down into the soup can, and then we loaded the tennis ball. I was ready for launch!! "WAIT...WAIT!", Ward said..."we've got to wait for Nelse to get off the school bus so he can see this! We're gonna' show that butthead!"

We had a little bit of fireworks fuse strung together to give us time to get the heck out of there if something went haywire (which it usually did with Ward), but the plan looked solid...wait for Nelse to get off the school bus and light the fuse.

Well, here comes the school bus, and Nelse gets off, looking all smart in his school clothes (he was pretty smart). We lit the fuse (and ran around behind the house). About 15 seconds later I asked Ward, "Gee, it's been a long time, Ward, maybe the fuse went out...think we should go check it?" I think Ward started to say something right about the time we heard KA-BOOOOOOOOOM!! The shock wave rattled all the windows for a mile! A yellow streak soared skyward out to the stratosphere! It looked like Haley's Comet! No idea what happened to the tennis ball, it probably landed in the next County, or maybe even the next State. Nelse was standing there in his driveway, mouth agape, and when I came out from the bushes Ward was already out there taunting Nelse..."Nanner...nanner...nanner...you think you got a cool tennis ball cannon, do ya??? We made a REAL one!!"

I quickly scanned the area for evidence, and there was no sign of the cannon. I think it probably disintegrated, which was probably just as well...because there were already sirens off in the distance. Good thing Mom wasn't home. We got the heck out of 'Dodge' and laid low in the woods for a while. Mom said later she thought she saw a meteor, but it was going the wrong way. I just shrugged. "You and Ward weren't over here earlier were you?????", she asked. "Nope" (snicker)

It was kind of weird, Nelse pretty much stopped inventing things after that. I'm not sure if he was shamed by our superior tennis ball cannon or truly afraid of what our response to his next invention would be. I never heard from Nelse again.

But we had the best tennis ball cannon design...EVAR!!!

BTW...just in case you're wondering...the tennis ball cannon I found in the basement was just a prototype. The real one (never duplicated) is probably in pieces somewhere on the surface of the Moon.

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
BTW...just in case you're wondering...the tennis ball cannon I found in the basement was just a prototype. The real one (never duplicated) is probably in pieces somewhere on the surface of the Moon.

Lol.

Great story!

Boys being boys, I miss those days.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk
What a great story, I could come up with a few like that from my childhood.
Can I give you a small bit of advice. No matter how old you are never, never give in to adulthood. Always keep doing "childish" things.
When ever there are fireworks about I always turn into a 15 year old and I'm 67. Sadly it's always the same old story my kids and grand kids try to keep the fireworks away from me. It don't work. Long live gunpowder.

I actually drifted off like one of the goonies for a while reading that and zero doom porn

a reply to: crayzeed

Yeah, whenever Ward and I got together it spelled only one thing..."T-R-O-U-B-L-E" !!

Ward always said he was going to build a "nukular reeactor" one day. Fortunately, it was always just a threat back then (at least when I knew him). I remember back in 1994 when that kid in Indiana did just that in his Mom's backyard shed. I hadn't seen Ward in years by then and actively wondered if Ward had moved to Indiana at some point and changed his name.

Then there was the time Ward built what he called an "underwater kite". Oh boy, that one was a doosey! Dang near drowned his older brother and sank his dad's fishing boat with that little stunt!! ...