Beginning - Chapter 2

   The short, thin man was dressed in well worn white leather sneakers and old but not battered jeans. A dark burnt orange earth-toned pocket T shirt tucked into his zipper fly jeans and all secured with an ordinary leather belt. The white lab coat over it all completed the effect started by his goatee and ending with his receding hairline. All he was missing was the round horn rimmed glasses and he would appear to be a "chemist" in a line drawing in a dictionary. And when you looked up "chemist" in the dictionary? The drawing looked pretty much like him. Well, except for the glasses. He didn't have small round horn rimmed glasses, and this was specifically because he didn't want to look like a chemist, he wasn't trying to look like one. He actually was.

   He was heating a mixture of something up in a huge beaker, and a magnetically driven bar in the bottom of the beaker was spinning slowly, gently keeping it well mixed. This would all have been obscenely expensive a number of years back, but the internet brought with it cheap Chinese lab equipment that was usable for a short time. A professional user of the equipment? Would soon find it dead or dying with daily use. Whereas a home user, providing they knew what they were doing, might see a lifetime of small home use out of the device.

   This man's setup at his hobby shed off the end of his backyard? Had started out with the bare minimum, and whatever didn't cut it had been replaced over time. Moving "up" a step or three in quality, used but certified, he had slowly fleshed out his home hobby lab. God bless the Chinese, but the odds and ends that were made affordable like never before were everywhere.

   Every laboratory needs for instance a lab power supply. Capable of several amps, at a wide range of voltages. Usually a whole bank of them. Now the home user can get away with one although two or even three is preferable. One big one and two or more smaller units. The combination of the Chinese and the internet had reduced these formerly thousand dollar units for even entry level models? To a 35 dollar head unit with built-in wonderful modern display and controls. A cheap, monolithic, dedicated electronics unit sealed in see-through plastic that you simply soldered the marked tabs to your own dials and connectors.

   This man had a small rack of them, naturally. He had gotten a deal on a thick stack of 3/8" Lucite panels delivered to his house on a truck off of a pallet for next to nothing what they were worth new. The man had a stack of thick see-through plastic panels, and buckets of small stainless hardware that made as many lab power supply units as he could fit in anywhere that might be useful.

   Likewise, the cheap modular digital controls allowed the man to change a toaster oven into a small PCB production unit. The cheap one-board computer, that you once again soldered the couple of power wires that drove the toaster oven, into marked tabs on the cheap head unit with built in wonder display. This cheap, as- dependable-as-you-assembled-it approach allowed the man to have, well, damned near everything that he could want. All he had to do was browse the internet enough, to figure out how more stuff was put together.

   Now, pretty much any man's hobby, if a big and deep enough hobby… there are always entry level setups, and the "pro" setups you see online in pictures and movies posted, and you simply slobber over them. This setup wasn't quite in the slobber range yet? But it was very respectable, and while it might not make one slobber? It was prone to make you watch it, and wipe your lip preemptively a few times, just in case.

   A smart home lab setup? Knows where to put the extra dollars, and where its fine to skimp and DIY to get by. For instance, all the zillions of clamps and jigs? All home made. They were, after all, just something to hold something else just so. The test tubes, Erlenmeyer flasks, and all the glass hardware everywhere in boxes? Simply had to all be Pyrex, there was no way around that.

   Since the man had a degree in Chemistry from a middling university, and was also employed in a real laboratory at his work, he had a few dollars for his home hobby and a high level of knowledge and experience to go with his enthusiasm. He had cement tables and work benches and shelving. His shed had a thick cement floor, with a trap door and a cement basement under it for secure storage of volatile things. A big cement "fume hood" that was pretty much blast proof as well. He could evacuate the air so fast and so steady with the giant fan he had wired in that he could safely work with chemical mixtures that would be deadly to the average home experimenter.

   He was not a sinister operator, making explosives for nefarious purposes. He made rocket engines from scratch. This allowed him to make much larger engines than the normal home rocketry enthusiast could either find or afford. He could make a small but tidy sum under the table making odd sized engines for dedicated enthusiasts that wanted to fly "grandpa's rocket" you couldn't get engine sizes for anymore. He occasionally made a much tidier sum when commissioned to make a run of large engines in a large size. Internet rocket sites would pool their money to get a run of large engines for launches that were video recorded for the site; huge rockets going off in real life? Attracted a large fan base to your site because you could let them see the impressive video link.

   The little man, despite his education, job and overall appearance had some disparate hobbies. Off of his father, he had gotten his model rocketry when young. His grandfather had been into black powder rifles, both for hunting and target shooting for fun, as well as for grandpa had been a civil war reenact-er. Which involved cannons, which again called for large supplies of high quality black powder.

   This man made black powder of the coarse grade necessary to make real cannons work. This made him particularly useful to his black powder friends naturally, as well as anyone that knew him that owned a cannon. Simply every civil war reenact-er for more than a hundred miles around knew he was a great person to have in the group. They could afford to put off half charges in the largest cannons in the demonstrations; other groups could barely afford quarter charges for only a few smaller cannons in small demonstrations.

   Once again, this man's presence made his group he was a member of? Stand out and become preeminent. Because his model rocket internet site? Had him as a member. He saw to it they made once a year… a model rocket that was simply obscene in size and scale and they set it off to great fanfare. They could only do so because once a year as a service to his group, he put the engine together at no cost above purchasing all the raw ingredients.

   He made the pure alcohol necessary to dissolve all the dangerous chemicals, he knew how to fabricate from raw materials most of the more expensive and hard to find chemicals. His grandpa had been a real pistol. The old man knew how to make black powder at home, and of all things, one of the needed ingredients was dog shit. Dog shit dried in the sun? Turning white? If fed the optimum diet of course, the white layers of dust were collected and cleaned for the specific chemical they were high in. Potassium.

   Human urine collected from men drinking, was particularly high in sulfides, and the urine was rendered for a needed acid. When as a boy, he had loved staying at the grandfather's old farm property in the summers. Why would he ever want to go to the beach every summer like other kids did, no way! If he was lucky, he could stay three out of every four weeks all summer long at the farm.

   Grandpa was fun. They made black powder, they made beer, they made wine, they did model rockets. The boy had his own black powder rifle he was allowed to take out in the woods and shoot. Ten years old but with zero hunting experience or knowledge, he had asked grandpa if he was allowed to shoot a deer with the black powder rifle and soft lead balls wrapped in cloth.

   "No, go on. Have fun. Try to be home by dark for gramma's meal, okay? Missing lunch she don't mind, missing dinner, gramma minds."

   "Are you sure, grandpa?"

   "We have black powder coming out our asses in big sacks. We have all them boxes of lead balls we ain't never getting through, I don't think. We got boxes of primers, too. Why wouldn't you be allowed to go try to shoot at a deer?"

   "Well… I mean, I don't deer hunt any, not like some of the other kids do. But… what I mean, Grandpa, is that… the kids that do it? They do it in the winter. I don't know, is it okay if I do it myself now in the summer? Shoot a deer?"

   "You're almost ten years old now, sonny boy. Time we had a little talk. Okay?"

   "A talk about deer shooting? I promise I'll be safe with the gun, grandpa, you said I'm safe with it, that's why I'm allowed to play with it when I'm here…"

   "No sonny boy, you? Are just fine. And you're not in any trouble. This is just… one of those talks we have now and then. You're getting older, you're old enough to understand I reckon. Sonny, its not exactly… "legal" to go and shoot a deer in summer. Its not deer season. You were right, winter is deer season. You… don't even have a hunting license, and you couldn't do it in summer anyways. Its against the law, sonny."

   "But… I'm allowed?"

   The old man smiled.

   "Sonny, I don't care. You ain't hurting anyone else by doing it, are you? So… I don't give three whoops in hell what you shoot at. It is illegal, though. You're old enough to understand what that means, right?"

   "I know… its illegal to steal, and if the police catch you stealing? You could go to jail."

   "Okay sonny, let me put it this way. I go by the 10 commandments. Now, thou shalt not steal is god's law. Good law too, you harm someone when you steal off of them, don't you?"

   "Yes, grandpa…"

   "Right. A thieving bastard deserves to be in jail. But… if a person hunts a deer, and doesn't waste it, and we use the meat and the skin and the bones… well, I don't see who you're harming doing that. So, I don't care. Now, the deer police? Oh, they care, and they care plenty. But, honest to god… out here? Ain't no one noticing when you go shooting that old smoke-pole off. No one comes running. I honestly can't figure any deer police are around here now. So… you starting to get the idea?"

   "I think so. This is like… driving a little faster than the speed limit. Everyone does it, and you just try not to get caught."

   "Yeah! There, see? You put it better than I thought I could put it. Its just like speeding. Don't get caught. Okay… just try to look around a lot when you're out there trying to get a deer today, okay? Other farmers in the distance, is fine and dandy. You're trying to look out for anyone in a tan uniform. Tan jacket, tan work pants. Badge and gun, and they always drive big four wheel drive pickup trucks, and the pickup trucks are almost always tan, too."

   "So… as long as I don't see anyone or anything tan anywhere around the other hills, I'm good."

   "Pretty much. Oh, and one more thing, sonny boy."

   "Grandpa?"

   "Just in case you actually manage to hit or kill a real live deer? There's rules… rule number one, you immediately come and get me. You do not mention it to grandma, just to me. Is that understood?"

   "Okay."

   "Rule number two? Its our little secret. Grandma knows, we just don't bring it up around her. You don't mention poaching a deer in summer to any of your friends, for any reason. Even if they talk about it? You don't talk about it. Understood? No exceptions. Grandpa, your dad and you… that's it. We don't talk about secrets beyond that, okay?"

   "Okay. Not even mom?"

   "Eh… its a guy thing, like making wine and beer and home made whiskey. You don't bring it up around mom, only dad. Its a guy thing."

   "Okay grandpa."

   "Now sonny, me and your father had pretty much this same talk, I guess he was about your age, which is why I figure I have this talk with you now. You're about your father's age when I had it with him. You, uh… you don't, uh, go thinking I'm some kind of criminal now, do you?"

   "No Grandpa… why?"

   "Well, I'm telling you now… Its a fucking secret that I make barrels of beer and wine and whiskey for a reason. Its a little bit illegal, just like shooting a deer in summer, just like driving fast. People want me to make them barrels of beer and wine and whiskey, they enjoy it. I don't mind making it. So… I sell it to them. That's the illegal part. I ain't hurting anybody. This all making any sense to you?"

   "I guess so. Grandpa? When does… how do I know, when I'm older. What's the line I don't want to cross over?"

   "Well, what do you mean, sonny? What line?"

   "Well, real gangsters? In Chicago, gangsters came from running liquor. In all the gangster movies, too. I know the liquor laws are gone now, but, what's the difference between running liquor in Chicago, and making barrels of wine for people? Where's the line between driving faster than the speed limit, and robbing banks? If you know what I mean."

   "Yeah, I know what you mean. Well, I guess every man chooses that line for himself. Me? Its real simple. Don't harm anyone, and the rest kind of takes care of itself. Ten commandments is another easy one. No killing, no stealing. Now, this is real easy figuring, sonny. Take… gambling. Gambling is illegal, everyone knows that, but… Christ almighty, ain't no one going around to every bar in America arresting men for playing pool for drinks and bets."

   "Them men are gambling, but they ain't hurting a damn thing, so no one cares. Long as no ones getting beat up over it, as long as no ones getting shot over it, as long as assholes ain't burying people over it… then no one gives three whoops in hell what you're doing. Then you still make sure you ain't disobeying the ten commandments. Not being rude to the preacher and all at church, I don't remember nothing in the ten commandments about shooting pool for drink money. You just can't go stealing and killing over it is all."

   "Grandpa? What do I do if I get caught shooting a deer in summer? Do I go to jail? My mom would kill me."

   The old man cackled and laughed, surprising the boy.

   "No Sonny, I highly doubt that you would end up in jail even if you did get caught. Here's why. First off, you are trying to look out and not get caught, that's number one. You don't wanna drive too fast when a cop's in plain sight, you know? Common sense. Now… you're a kid. All you ever say, is that you just got the idea to go shoot at a deer. Nothing else."

   "I bet 99 times out of a hundred, a young kid says that, they just bring you to me, then I have to pretend to be really hopping mad, and yell and scream at you. You just act scared of me screaming at you, and I bet I can get you out of it with nothing, if you played along like I said. You ain't in no trouble mind you, we is just acting to make it look good. I'd probably have to pay a fine, I bet that's about it. Hell, we wouldn't even tell your mom and dad, it wouldn't even be a big deal."

   "Really?"

   "Yeah, I mean it could go bad, but, I doubt it. Only because your a kid though… the older you get? The more trouble you get in for the same things. But even then, when you're an adult? All you really have to do, is judge it against the ten commandments, and if you're harming anyone. I guess I should add, that people should never be… I don't know, alarmed at what your doing, looking for you. Anytime you ever in your whole life, even get close to being some monster roaming the countryside, everyone's out with torches and pitchforks looking for you? Right, you get near that choice? You go the exact opposite way. You never want to be the idiot everyone's looking for, that did some kind of idiotic shit. None of that shit, you understand?"

   "Yeah, I think so."

   "Okay, good. Go on and have fun, just try to be careful. And one more thing? Go and get my good binoculars out, you know where I keep them. Just be careful, they're expensive. You keep the caps on them unless you're looking through them, okay? You're gonna go poaching at ten years old, you might as well have the best binoculars you can, I figure."

   "Okay, thanks Grandpa!", and the kid was running off to get the binoculars he previously had not been allowed to touch, let alone take out alone with him. He couldn't believe his good fortune, Grandpa was fun. Lots of his friends were bored if not outright hated spending weeks in the summer at grandpa and grandma's place? Heck, this kid preferred it. And what's more, he couldn't understand any kind of kid not enjoying the stuff he did. Grandpa could make anything, it seemed like.

   The short thin man smiled, daydreaming about his childhood summers spent largely with his grandfather and grandmother at their farm. He opened a drawer and took out the pouch of chewing tobacco and looked at it. He really didn't like it that much, and it had taken him a while searching to find a brand that was sweet and enjoyable enough for him to remember his now long dead grandfather, and to reminisce by chewing some tobacco as the old man had always done. Plus? It was useful. It allowed him to quit smoking, and feel better. He could enjoy his nicotine around fumes with no safety problems. Spitting tobacco juice never once ever blew up a laboratory.

   The chewing tobacco wasn't a name brand, it had been made in a large batch, one of several in house brands, at a faraway "real tobacco shop". The man liked, well, more tolerated was a batter word. Yes, he tolerated the apple and the peach home made tobacco much more than any brand he had ever tried, searching for a brand that would allow him to remember his grandfather without making a face. Then it didn't take long for him to enjoy it a little bit.

   His grandfather had grown up a wee kid in the depression after world war I, all through the liquor laws. In the depression, people starved to death or died for lack of routine medical care. Rich families weathered it just fine, it was only regular people that suffered at all. Grandpa's father and a few friends made barrels of beer, wine, and whiskey on their small farms, and that was how they weathered the depression, and no one ever thought they should call the authorities about it.

   Why? Well, the church had a barrel of grape wine "just show up" on literally the front door steps of the small local church. A midnight 'donation' for surely first and foremost, the sacramental needs. Perhaps a bit more in the barrel than needed for strictly that purpose, surely the men and women that worked for the church wouldn't mind a glass of wine with lunch and dinner like normal people. When the priest discovered the barrel, he figured out what it was and went and got help from the two altar boys to help wiggle it into the basement. No one once ever thought to call the police about the donation. God bless them, the priest even slipped into sermon a thinly disguised, yet public, 'thank you':

   "Heavenly father, we also thank you for your divine providence seeing us through this period of trial, that in your providence you saw fit to provide this church with the necessary sacraments with which to worship you, amen."

   And the crowd had, willingly or unwillingly, thanked the bootleggers by publicly saying "amen" in unison.

   Not only did no one call the police about the mysteriously donated sacramental wine, one of the policemen discovered a similar barrel of beer. It had been left, somewhere between 2 and 5 am the night prior. Smack dab on the front porch of the police station. The liquor laws had killed off a zillion small local breweries around the nation, and many of them had been dark hearty beers of German descent. Consequently, you simply could not buy beer like that at all, anywhere, at any price.

   This was the exact type of hearty, thick, dark homemade beer that showed up at the police station. It was still ice cold from its long slow brewing process. Brewed the old fashioned way, in that very barrel. The police knew contraband when they saw it, and they brought it into the police station and put it in the back evidence room. Then, not knowing what else to do with it? They tested the contents of the barrel, quite thoroughly, over a length of time.

   Not knowing what to do with the empty barrel? They stuck it outside when it was empty. They never once in a million years imagined it would be magically replaced with another. Yet, that's exactly what happened. The police station never did get to the bottom of that particular crime mystery. Perhaps it was a manpower issue.

   It was assumed that the church distributed the casks of wine that showed up with the other churches, but honestly no one really knew. Perhaps the church sold it or traded it for its own taxes or bills, who knew. The police? Well, while it might have been under investigation, the investigation hadn't risen to the point of the police going around asking anyone about it.

   This small police station wasn't really a town police force. It stood a small shack of a house converted to its purpose, abandoned at the intersection of 2 back country dirt roads. Out these 4 roads from this central point, at varying distances of several miles… were 4 tiny villages. A few other shops of various kinds, appeared around the police station. It served as the "town square" for the 4 tiny villages out the 4 roads.

   The small church shortly out the one road, was much like the police station. Nearly everyone from those 4 tiny villages reported somewhat dutifully to this little church. The little church saw to the tiny schoolhouse which was technically a "real schoolhouse" and not a church school, so as to meet the letter of the law as a public school. The 4 tiny villages met informally at the church social hall, so as to pay the schoolteacher her salary.

   Maybe in a city or even in a larger town, sure, there would have been a speakeasy. Naturally there would have been some brush up with the criminal element surrounding this speakeasy and its running and profits. Surely there would be card gambling, and roulette wheels, and naturally scantily clad women dancing. Whores too, naturally, what else would one expect would crop up.

   Yet, in this small town that wasn't even a town, there wasn't a bar to begin with. People that lived on tiny farm properties usually made or traded for home made beer and wine and much of anything else they wanted. These people simply made it "available" to the church and the police station at no cost.

   Now, in the big city… the police acted in private much like any other bootleg-era gang. They wanted their cut, and violence and other recriminations were the result of thinking you could write the cops out of the big city equation. True, in some small towns, a scaled down version existed. Often enough in small enough a town, then the police themselves were the rum runners and had no organized competition.

   This though, was not even a town. It was a crossroads in between 4 other tiny villages. Naturally it did not operate like a big city did. It did not even operate like a small town did. The local police were paid, but not for all of their hours. In the depression, the locals brought them eggs and milk and bread and meat from their small farms. They were suffering neighbors like they themselves were. The gas station guy pitched in with a few gallons of gas for the police car.

   If the local farmers chose not to starve by selling of all things, wooden casks of beer and wine and whiskey to some city people for big money, and that money would make their tiny little hamlet secure through this crisis? Well, then that's what happened. The police couldn't believe their good fortune at the arrival of the magical never-ending dark German beer cask. Whoever was switching it out, was cleaning the wooden tap properly; the contents were under natural fermentation pressure and produced the foam naturally. If the church thought the 55 gallon wooden drums of grape wine was heaven sent? The local police probably if only in private, voiced much the same message.

   There were simply no criminals and no criminalized police out of the depression, if only in this small hamlet and other areas similar to it. The small thin man came from this exact stock of people. He was quiet and industrious by nature, as had been his forebears. From his father and mother came his "book smarts" as his grandpa put it. Grandpa said having a smart music teacher for a mother, and an educated man like his father, well… grandpa said they planted corn, so they got corn.

   From grandpa the boy learned to make a lot of things old fashioned country people used to know how to make. Some strictly legal, some half and half, and some outright illegal… although, grandpa's rules were simple. No one ever gets hurt, and you are never a monster with people looking for you with torches and pitchforks.

   An intelligent man, with education and experience and ability in chemistry? With his grandpa's genes and upbringing running through his veins? Oh good lord the man had a wide open field to make himself a complete nuisance to society, if he so chose to. Fortunately for society? He knew to watch it, as per Grandpa's rules. Had he wanted to make himself a millionaire manufacturing dynamite to sell under the table at insane prices? He could easily do so.

   Cotton, treated with the right strong acid the correct way? Was dangerous enough if you did not know how to calculate the temperature conversion correctly against the volume of reaction vessel. The drops out the other end of the surprisingly simple reactions? Were drops of almost pure nitroglycerin. You could literally let the drops fall out a pipe to a safe destination and watch the periodic BOOM! of individual drops hitting the ground. The man knew, because he had once and only once, for his own personal amusement only, done so. He stood back and watched with his dead grandpa's binoculars, the same binoculars he had been given to get away with poaching. BOOM!… BOOM!… BOOM!

   There was already intermittent blasting (legitimate) going on up the hollow with gas drilling anyways, the man had his own special July 4th celebration, and had a cover for it all. He smiled, he wasn't hurting anyone, and his family got the best fireworks display anyone ever saw outside of a war. Drops of honest to goodness nitroglycerin, condensing and falling over the hill, exploding on rocks harmlessly but to great fanfare.

   But, the man would never once try to sell any explosives beyond fireworks to anyone for extra money for his hobbies. A friend of a friend at work had a gay friend, and apparently him and all his friends were complaining they could no longer get "party drug X" anymore, which wasn't even technically illegal in their state. A party drug. Not technically illegal yet in his state. Hm.

   This man made a tidy sum providing said party drug to a contact. It wasn't heroin, it wasn't cocaine or anything you ever once heard of on the news. It was GammaButylHydroxyl. It actually had several legitimate industrial uses, and until it was popularized as a 'date rape drug' it had been a party drug in the gay community for years. No one knew or cared.

   All the man knew? Was that while the window of "legal" in his state was closing soon? Money was to be made, and he was not breaking any laws, technically. Well, scratch that, he was technically cheating a little on his taxes? But… since he just poured all his extra money back into his lab… he felt as if he wasn't really cheating the government too much. He did after all, pay all his legitimate taxes from work.

   This was his 'secret retirement fund' as he put it to his wife, who smiled and shook her head at her surprising husband. He didn't once in his life ever raise his voice badly to her, never once even thought about hitting her, and he had a nice education and a nice salary. He didn't carouse at bars on the weekends, getting into mischief as other men might. No, her chemist had his own chemistry lab for fun. He was a great husband, she thought. Work, model rockets, civil war re-enactments and a couple black powder groups of various kinds. The family attended these events, and the kids liked it.

   His own two boys liked dressing up and shooting the old fashioned guns, and he assured her he had grown up shooting black powder on his grandpa's farm, it was natural and healthy for a young man to appreciate the outdoors as well as he was expected to attend to his schoolbooks. School, and either sports or some hobby.

   The father didn't enforce this rule; he simply lived that life and his two boys naturally took after him. One was making his own kites from scratch and was getting into scratch-building model airplanes, and the other liked music, taking after his mother. Making beer and wine isn't in any way illegal, and he had his kids help him. When he took them to 'the farm' in the summers, because he had inherited his grandpa's property and was able to afford it. Everyone wanted to buy it as a 'hunting cabin' in the remote area near the state game lands? But it wasn't for sale, and he didn't even hunt that much. He did provide black powder for a local black powder group though, so… he was a swell citizen. Such a nice and polite man, with such a sweet, smiling wife and two quiet boys that actually listened to their parents, it seemed like.