MISSILE AWAY by Peter Nolan Smith

MISSILE AWAY by Peter Nolan Smith During his youth my older brother was a a good student. He was the top of his class, but he was also a pyromaniac. On several occasions Frunk came close to burning down our house in Maine. After our family moved to a suburb south of Boston in 1960, my brother exemplied our nation’s fascination with rockets by devising missiles from our mother’s discarded hair spray cans, for the USA was not only seeking to win the race to Space. Its other goal was the nuclear domination of the godless Soviet Union and my brother conducted his experiments in a sandpit not far from our suburban development on the South Shore of Boston. Chuckie, my next-door neighbor, Frunk, and I taped the cans together and positioned the ersatz V-2 of Aquanet hair in a bonfire. Sometimes our rocket would explode in fiery, yet separate bursts of colored flames, but occasionally the strapped cans would arced into the sky at low altitudes spitting toxic fumes. None of us suffered injuries from these experiments, however we came close to setting the woods on fire and the town police warned our parents that we were a danger to the community. My father forbade any further msichief and we abandoned our emulation of NASA’s failed rocket launches. Even at my parochial high school I resisted the draw of the rocket club. They were interested in achieved height and not destruction, so I ran freshmand cross country in the fall of 1966. The five-mile course directed runners past an abandoned mansion. Our competitors were never forewarned that their runners had to leap a stone wall to cross through the estate, giving our team an edge and my school won two consecutive state championships in 1967 and 1968, however our dominance was challenged by a mysterious government agency’s purchase of the mansion in 1969. The men occupying the estate wore white shirts and black ties. They never left the building. We thought they might be aliens. Chuckie Manzi said that they were CIA scientists experimenting on apes for the War in Vietnam. That first practice the cross-country team passed the big house, listening for the shrieks of chimps. We nothing other than our panting lungs. Upon our return to the gym, our coach informed us that the grounds were off-limits to the cross-country team. “What about the wall?” “No more wall,” said Brother Jude. Two weeks later we lost our first race in years. “We want the wall.” We protested to Brother Jude. He was on our side as was the principal, who asked for special access from the men in black suits. The men in the white shirts refused their request. Every time we passed the mansion calling them ‘assholes’, then trained harder to regain our edge. Few of our fellow students cared about the track team. Our school’s football team was state champs. The cheerleaders came from the nearest Catholic girls school. They wore short skirts. Our only fans were the rocket club and their presidnet said that this matter was not over. No one from the cross-country team paid them much mind. They were nerds and the cross-country team worried that nerdiness might be contagious. We won our next race, although I barely beat out our rival’s 5th runner to score a victory. Afterward the rocket club glared at the distant mansion and the cross-country team exchanged a conspiratorial glance with them. Whatever they had planned was more than all right by us. The next day the school’s rocket club announced an exhibition of their missiles. The 60s was the time of going to the moon and the brothers proudly assembled the students in the field behind the high school. The principal instructed the collective classes to stand a good distance from the launch area, fro these rockets were not small. One of them was at least ten-feet long. After running a series of tests, the rocket club signaled that they were ready and soon missiles were soaring into the sky. Even the football team thought the rocket club was cool and the brothers beamed with satisfaction, thinking maybe one of these boys might end up at NASA. Off in the distance a few of the men in the white shirts were standing outside the mansion. The rocket club lined up this final missile, the ten-footer, with the mansion. The men at the mansion started shouting and then the president of the rocket club lit the fuse. The men in the white shirts ran for cover. The missile to cover the half-mile between the field and mansion in less than a second. The explosion was muffled by out applause. Afterwards the men in the white shirts complained to the brothers. The town police ignored the complaint, since some of their kids were on the track team and we regained permission to run through the field a week later and won the state championship for the third time in a row. No one ever said anything bad about nerds in our school. They were heroes, because they were dangerous. At least to anyone not on our side and that’s the way it should be when you’re young. ps my older brother was really pissed that he hadn’t been there.