Bang!

One day I was at a friend’s house out in Perry County.
His father, and uncle were practicing a strange "sport" I had never before witnessed.
I don’t know if most people know but in the bottom of an anvil is a hole two to three inches square, and a couple of inches deep.
The two men inverted the anvil, filled the hole with gun powder, inserted a piece of cannon fuse, covered the hole with masking tape, righted the anvil on a large stump, lit the fuse, and ran like hell.
There was a loud bang, and the anvil was launched high into the air.
Everyone watched the sky for the anvil, and then Whump! The anvil would bury itself in the ground.
This seemed at first like a rather foolish activity, but I found myself enthralled.
I would never have thought that an anvil could be blown so high in the sky.
Sometimes it was just a speck.
EVERYONE WATCHED THE ANVIL. Not to would have been insane. The thought of a 110 lb. anvil plummeting toward earth with enough force to bury itself in the ground got your attention.
They said that they got the idea from a TV show.
They’d been doing it for years, and occasionally went to events where people launched anvils, and other unlikely, heavy objects over a whole weekend.
They showed me a Skil-Saw that had been mashed when an anvil "got away from them" and penetrated a tool shed.
Since then they do it out in a field instead of in the back yard.
Amazing!
But, stupid.