I was born in 1957 and was the first child born to my parents. Three years later my brother Timothy was born and in three more years my sister Suzanne graced us with her birth. Mother stayed at home with us during our childhood and Daddy sometimes worked three jobs at a time to provide for us. We didn't have a lot of extra money but we were rich in family. As many kids growing up in the 60's now remember we may have had it hard, but we had it good. We did not have color TV at my home, but we enjoyed our black & white TV. Microwave ovens and portable air conditioners had not been invented but we did have fans in the house. To cool down in the car was to roll down all the windows and speed up to about 50. No cell phones...or even beepers. No computers and no hand held calculators. Our cameras had rolls of film in them. Cable TV did not exist. TEXTING was no such word! Back then people actually talked in person. Families taught values.

  We moved into our own home when I was about two years old. It was on Elaine Ave. in Taylors, South Carolina. Previously my parents and I had lived in a large boarding house with small apartmentsand prior to that the college apartments at North Greenville Junior College(now North Greenville University) while my parents were in school. They had to quit college due to my arrival (my mother would go back over 30 years later to finish). I have a few memories of living in the boarding house apartment with the Holcolmbe family who owned it. Mrs. Holcombe would give me pepermint sticks and she'd usually let me have more than one. Most of the actual memories of my early childhood are gone now but I do remember the sense of peace and safety.

  I grew up both physically and emotionally on Elaine Ave. I've got photos of my brother and sister as well as myself when we lived on Elaine Ave. and they do invoke memories of our early years. My dad would always take pictures with his Kodak Brownie box camera of us, particularly on Sunday when we were all dressed up and on holidays. Easter was a big picture day as was Christmas. Momma always looked so pretty. Daddy would take our photo as a group and then momma would take pictures of daddy with us. We didn't have a tripod so there were very few photos of the whole family unless Grandma was along. Back then alot of the black and white photos nearly had our head cut off. Kodak hadn't started advertising how to take better pictures yet. We usually sent our film off to a photo lab called Jack Rabbit. Triple-Print Labs came out with a special deal where they would send you a free roll of color film for every roll you sent them and they would print a 5x5 inch and two 2x2 inch prints from each negative. Daddy started to take a few more pictures and I guess by now I was taking some of the photos. I mention all this because I later became a professional photographer. My daddy taught me how to use a camera!

  As I said we didn't have a whole lot of extra money in the family so for Christmas we generally got one main thing and some surprises and candy. There was always some fruit and nuts in the stockings as well. One year I got a bicycle and it eventually provided freedom to a ten year old boy. I rode everywhere. Back then there wern't as many cars on the road and it was alot safer for bicycles than it is today. I remember crossing Wade Hampton Boulevard many times when I was ten years old. My next door neighbor got a chemistry set for Christmas and after he showed me his magic tricks of clear solutions changing colors and such I decided I wanted a chemistry set too. The trouble was Christmas would be nearly a year away and for a young kid a year is forever. I had seen on the back page of comic books where you could sell flower seeds door-to-door and get prizes. One of the prizes was a Chem-Craft chemistry set. This was my first step in the world of sales.

  It was probably about mid-March when my flower seed sales kit came. I sold flower seeds to everyone on my road. Then I hit Elizabeth Dr., Windemere and Cardinal. I was selling two or three packs to about everyone I met. I even ventured out to Botany Woods which was "the rich neighborhood" a couple of streets over. I did sell some in Botany Woods but not as many as I did in the other areas. Soon I had sold all the seeds and the big day was approaching for my chemistry set to arrive. My daddy came home from and told me he had a surprise for me. Someone from our church had found out that Southern Bleachery a local mill was giving away a couple of the 12x12 foot guard shacks. He had asked and they gave him one. He paid a man $20.00 to load and haul it to our house, for me. I would have my own laboratory...my own space. This was so cool. These buildings were very well made and had glass windows all the way around. They had electrical wiring and lights. Daddy buried an electrical cord out to the building and gave me power. A few days later my chemistry set came in the mail and I was now a real scientist. I hadn't turned mad yet. Everyone in the neighborhood thought I was so cool.

  My memories are more vivid from eleven years old. When I was eleven I smoked my first cigarette. My friend Ike had found a pack of True filter cigarettes on the side of the road. He brought them to my house and we went into my lab and smoked all of them in about an hour. Yuck. I'm just glad he didn't find a carton! Other memories are going to bible class at the Riddle's home a few streets over.Mrs. Riddle taught the class and always had refreshments. Her son Steve was my age and in many of my classes. His brother Damon, who was a few years older, had a candy store and sold candy to all the kids on his street. I decided to copy him on my street. I didn't make much money because I gave out too much credit. I started cutting my neighbors grass for money and soon could afford more chemicals and labware for my laboratory. More science projects to come!

  One day while watching a new episode of "Star Trek" Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy were discussing the natural compounds available to make gunpowder: Potassium Nitrate, sulfer and coal.  This was pre-computers and pre google. A little research in the library confirmed these ingredients so naturally I could make my own fireworks, rockets and things that go boom! Trial and error provided many variations of a slow burning, massive smoke producing gunpowder. A final variation was saltpeter and sugar.  Saltpeter was the name the nitrate was sold under for medicinal use at the local pharmacy. The sugar was substituted for the sulfer and coal and caused it to burn quicker and was easier to mix. During this time I really progressed as a budding scientist. Lots of scientific projects in chemistry and biology. Frogs were terrorized by the sight of me. I even had a bacteria growing phase, no telling what I had growing in those petri dishes. Someone had given me several bottles of Agar, the material used to grow bacteria. I do remember wearing a mask and handling lots of dishes with hairy, moldy, smelly things growing in them. I took photos and recorded everything for my 8th grade science project titled "Bacteriology". The year previous I had done a science project on the effects of alcohol and had a glass setup to show how to distill alcohol. Both projects had recieved awards at the school and sent me to the local science fair at the Textile Hall. I recieved awards at both fairs.

  I remember reading a story on the front page of the "Greenville News" one Sunday morning about an explosion in Orchard Acres. It went on to tell about the child killed while making an explosive mixture of a weed killer with sulfer and charcoal. They actually named the chemical. I'd have to do a little research on that. Soon I had found that the chemical was a chlorate, much more an oxidizer than the nitrate cousin. A trip to Wade Hampton Hardware found this weedkiller for only 28 cents a pound. I quickly bought five pounds. I then stopped in the local A&P grocery store and bought a five pound bag of sugar. I would substitute the sugar in the mix. BOY this stuff really burned quick. Loads of smoke and lots of force. It would make a great rocket propellant.

  We tried several types of bodies for the rocket to no avail. The paper towel and toilet paper cardboard tubes simply burned up. So did the aluminium pepsi cans, The metal actually melted and burned. I tried bottles and several other substrates, but they were all consumed. The other kids in the neighborhood thought the smoke bombs were neat but these were not supposed to be smoke bombs! Then I found an old copper pipe and thought it just might work since it was a thicker metal than the aluminium cans. I jammed it into the ground to stop up one end of the pipe and to force the flames out the rear to propel it like a rocket. I layed the pipe on the ground and ran a trail of powder to it. We lit the gunpowder trail and ducked behind trees. THE EXPLOSION SHOOK THE GROUND. We ran over to the place where the rocket had lay. There was a crater about 6-8 inches deep and two feet around. No pipe. Cool. High fiving had not yet been created but alot of back patting was going on. Over the next month or so I probably detonated a dozen or more of these devices.

  During the summer between the 8th and 9th grade I landed a job with a neighbor on my street, Mr. Barrett. I had been cutting his grass with Keith a friend of mine. We cut yards together and split the money. Mr Barrett had approached me and said he had a job for me but he only wanted me. He was an inventor and had a really neat workshop. It had a keypad electric lock on the entrance. He had had a heart attack and was unable to do many things. He offered me $1.00 per hour. Seems cheap now but it was a fortune to me. I worked many times 50-60 hours a week so I was bringing in some dough. One thing Mr. Barrett did was build electric flashing lights for portable sign boards. At first he had me putting letters on the signs and later actually building and wiring these lights. He rented the signs to businesses all over North and South Carolina. He even paid me to go with him to deliver and setup the signs. This job kept me from having too much free time so I was unable to do much in my lab or play with explosives.

  Toward the end of the summer my folks sold our home on Elaine Ave. they had bought a farm from my grandmother in Tigerville. It was a 28 acre farm with lots of room for kids to play. I had my own building behind the house for my laboratory. It was bigger and would be great for my experimenting. I only had a couple of weeks til school would start. I was going to Blue Ridge High School as a 9th grader. I would have been at Eastside High or Wade Hampton if we had not moved. I didn't know anyone at Blue Ridge except my cousins. I think I met Kim the second day we lived in Tigerville. He lived across the river from us. His dad owned the local general store. He showed me all over the fields and rivers. I told him I could make bombs and rockets but I hadn't brought any of the dangerous chemicals in the move. He may have believed me but I didn't have anyway to actually show him.

  Soon I purchased more of the weedkiller and made a few of my homemade fireworks. I used a pipe about 2 inches round and placed it under the bridge at the river. I had it fashioned like a roman candle. It should spark and shoot balls out. Kim was with me, boy would this impress him. I lit the fuse and we jumped behind the posts supporting the bridge. BOOM! The thing blew up. He thought it was so cool. Then I noticed the twisted remains of the pipe laying two feet from where we had been. We could have easily been killed. It wasn't our time. We didn't realize it then but God had our lives planned.

  School started and I started to advance in my science classes. The teachers gave me run of the lab during study hall so I could prepare for a new science project. While in the lab I found several new chemical with oxidant warnings on them. One was a powdered peroxide that said keep away from water. I decided to mix some up with some other items and show off that night after church. Some of us walked home after church and this would make for a cool surprise. I got dressed and while Daddy was getting his shower I slipped out to my lab and put the can with the chemicals in my inside coat pocket of the CPO jacket I was wearing. It was early Feburary and was still real cold outside. When I came in, trying to act normal in front of my brother I had just walked over to the oil heater in our bedroom and stretched my arms out over the stove. Boy that heat felt good. Then it didn't.

  The can inside my coat exploded. I remember a rushing sound as the flames went down the thick sleeves and licked my flesh. Oh God help me get this coat off and put out the flames. The bed. I can roll on the bed and put out the flames...oh no, the beds on fire...got to put this out without momma finding out. I'm burned but I can hide that, I've got to get the fire out and clean up this mess before anyone knows. God please help me. What is that terrible smell? Someones going to notice. Oh my brothers in here too. He's in his underwear. Don't let him get burned. Tim don't tell anyone. God help me. I'm so sorry...I'll never do it again. Please don't let them catch me. Please forgive me. Then daddy wrapped in a damp towel burst into the room. The powder had burned up by now but he had to get the clothes off me and put the fire out. He tore the jacket off of me and tossed it to the floor. The bed wasn't burning anymore. Everything would be OK, everything would be back to normal. Just some melted cloth on my arm...no thats my arm. Raw flesh...really raw, and the smell what is that smell? Next the pain set in. The adrenalin had worn off.

  Momma's on the phone with our family doctor. Thinking she was over-reacting he told her to bring me to his office. Remember this was the 70's and Doctors still made house calls and met you after hours in their office. Daddy had quickly got dressed. Momma had wet a bath towel and wrapped my arm and side with it. I was on fire all over again. the pain was tremendous. I screamed most of the way to the doctors office, riding in the back floor board because it was cooler. Momma was praying and crying. Daddy was praying and crying. I was just screaming. I thought i was dying. I think daddy could have out ran any race car driver alive that night. We pulled up to the Dr. office and he came out to meet us at the car. He immediately gave me a shot for pain and sent us on to the emergency room at Greenville General Hospital. The pain was still tremendous. I felt like I was still on fire. At some point more morphine was administered and I went to sleep.

  Well the next few days were a blur since I was being pumped with all kinds of pain medication. I soon found out that the pain was'nt over. i had to go through what was called debreedment of the wound. They would actually lift me with a hydraulic lift into a big vat of water and peel off all dead skin. This was very painful. Then they would coat the area with Silvadeen cream. I spent the next 28 days in the hospital with first, second and third degree burns on 15% of my body. At fourteen 15% was alot. I got my name in the "Greenville News" for the first time. A month later I went back for an operation to free up movement in my arm. It was growing together from the burns. Another operation and some physical therapy would follow for months. Later plastic surgery. I was really missing alot of school so the chemistry teacher Mr. Britton became my at home tutor. I passed the 9th grade that year with the help of many and the Grace of God. The plan had not yet been revealed.

  To be continued....