“A Short Blue Mountain Plinking Story” – There You Go, Tom!
A Short Blue Mountain Plinking Story – There You Go Tom!
Here’s a short, but mostly true, Blue Mountain story. As you may know, Blue Mtn was once a target range. Military people (and civilians) used it for a practice range and shot off ordinance there, an activity that certainly wouldn’t be allowed close to a city now days. It wasn’t nearly so close to the city back then. As kids we occasionally messed around on Blue Mtn with our .22 caliber rifles, shooting at almost everything, except each other. Hiking up a little trail one day, I suddenly noticed something blue where I had just stepped. When I say blue, I mean like propane bottle blue, with just the tip of something visible in the dirt. I think I shouted to my friends, “Hey! Look at this,” which they promptly did. After a good bit of discussion involving such idiotic things such as “Let’s dig it up,” one of my older friends objected, much to their credit.
I think we might have exposed a bit of it by that time and it was obviously something we didn’t want to take home. Actually, I think one of us did want to do just that. However, packing our .22 rifles, we, of course, came up with a better idea. Removing our little band of plinkers farther up the hill, away from the object, we then began shooting at it. As I said, I think we shot at pretty much everything (plinking). After firing several times and seeing no results, someone again suggested we should now get a better shot, from a little closer, or maybe just dig it up. “Let’s shoot at it some more”, came from somewhere, and so we did – but with a different result this time. In fact, about that time I believe one of us was on the way back down the hill toward the object. If I remember correctly, he was knocked down when the blast occurred. (Strangely, I think I can remember this same friend getting hit by a car while walking in deep snow on the way to school one day).
“Holy crap”, I’m sure I promptly said somewhere here. I’ll have to ask my friends sometime if I’m remembering this correctly. Funny how different versions of events can enter into the picture.
Anyway, a little farther down the mountain someone had parked a vehicle within sight of this little affair. I think they had earlier exited their car and were busy doing something beside it about the time of our not so expert marksmanship. When the ordinance went off, they quickly mounted up and left the area. I think there was some smoke in the air at this point. That’s one of my clearest memories of this event. When we finally did make it downhill to where the object had been, a nifty little piece of trail was missing; of course, now with nothing blue in sight.
Another friend of mine, Tom Donovan, recently averred to me that I was almost as good a B.S. artist as he is. Not quite, probably, because he’s good, (he’s written several books) but this is true as far as I can make it. There you go, Tom!