I know you have all told a story about an experience you had, and when you didn't see the results you thought you would from your listeners, you have said, “I guess you just had to be there.” This may well be one of those stories.

  We were all sitting in the country store one cold February night and it was getting close to closing time. Clarence had put a couple pieces of wood in the stove so the store would remain warm during the night. In about five minutes all hell broke loose. Something inside the pot-bellied stove exploded, five times, and it sounded just like part of a cowboy movie that had been in the theater a few days ago. In the movie someone had thrown several bullets into the open fire and as they exploded everyone headed for cover.

  Many of the regulars were elderly, in fact some were downright old, and it was surprising the speed they still had left in those old bodies. After the first explosion, and before the fifth explosion, ALL of the old men were outside the building looking in. I was the youngest one in the group and I was on the inside looking out. I guess I was too dumb to go outside. I just slid from my seat and crawled under the bench. Clarence couldn't get out from behind his candy counter so he just kneeled down and waited. Once the explosions stopped and everyone was sure it was safe to go back inside, the room filled up again.

   “What are you burning in your stove now?” Jim Coran asked Clarence. “I thought the tire was bad enough but this sure beats the heck out of that.”

   “Whatever it is he sure gets a bang out of it,” Doc Williams said laughing at his own witticism.

   “If someone wasn't sitting right here in my store Id swear he did it,” Clarence said giving Jim Coran the guilty eye.

   Now Clarence found himself in a quandary. He knew where and when but he didn't know who or how. If anyone had climbed up onto the roof to drop the shells down the chimney the people in the store would have heard it. He walked around outside his store and there wasn't a single footprint in the snow. When Clarence got back inside the store everyone was talking about how it could have happened and how stupid a trick it was. Someone could have been badly hurt, if not killed. No one could explain how it was done so everyone left and went home.

  The next morning when Clarence opened the store he didn't start a fire in the stove. He made sure all the ash in the ash bin was cold and he started searching through it. He found what he was looking for; five, empty, 22 caliber casings. Then he found something he wasn't looking for; eight, thin, half inch long, nails. Like a bolt out of the blue, part of the answer hit Clarence right between the ears. He knew how the trick had been done but he didn't know who had done it, and he never would.

   Someone had taken a piece of the birch cordwood he burned in the stove and carefully removed a section of the bark. He then drilled five holes in the wood and put a twenty two shell in each hole. What nobody knew, except the prankster, was the lead had been removed and each shell had been stuffed with a wad of paper. Then he put the bark back on the cordwood and attached it with eight small nails. A lot of thought and work went into a trick that only lasted for a such a short time, but the results were worth the labor. Watching the old folks scamper for the door and me diving for a space under the bench must have been a sight for sore eyes.

    Aah, “I guess you just had to be there."