On the night of October 3, 2018, I was sitting in bed, surfing my TV for a show to watch. At about 10:20 p.m., a thunderous boom shook my neighborhood. I paused in my surfing, glanced around my room, and listened for other sounds of alarm, such as sirens. Hearing nothing more, I signed on to Netflix. Before I set my pillow for sleep, I visited my neighborhood’s social media page; it was lit up with the usual comments: “WHAT WAS THAT BOOM?” and, “Did anyone else hear that boom?” For once, the question of “gunshots or fireworks” was not posed, for this was truly an outsized blast. On my way to the convenient store at 7:00 a.m. the next morning, I saw a lonely reporter and cameraman in front of La Escollera restaurant, filming; the morning news was frantic with reports of the explosion and speculation on its origin.
On Saturday, October 6, I met with the creators of this publication, Ethel Winslow and Paula Nicewanger, on our monthly sojourn to Ash and Elm Cider Company for its “Small Batch Ciderday” offering. Paula laughed: “I heard about that ‘boom’ and thought you might have been mixing up chemicals again!” I had told Paula a tale from my childhood, when I lived in a great brick building that I called a castle because of the turret on the outside edge. The room that my parents rented for themselves and their three children had access to a small, rounded enclosure that was formed by the turret. I cannot remember what else this area was used for, but I used it to blow up a jar of chemicals.
Of course, an explosion had not been my intention. A curious 9-year-old with little supervision, I often got into shenanigans with my buddy, who also lived in the building. We had found the joy of mixing chemicals. I’m not sure how we decided that that might be fun, but we surfed beneath the cabinets under the kitchen sink, and would dump soap, cleanser and anything else we found into a glass jar. We’d swirl the mixture in the jar and look at the texture and colors that resulted. I took those experiments to another level when I combined an unknown number of contents that included liquid bleach, baking soda and my father’s lighter fluid. I struck a match and placed it to the mouth of the jar; the concoction exploded and I bolted from the turret room, my face measled with dots of baking soda.
Paula was laughing about my childhood “boom” and as we recounted the story, two faithful readers who also enjoy Ash and Elm’s “Ciderdays” offerings laughed along with her. For the sake of their privacy, we will call them “Sherrie” and “John Knighton,” for we are not sure of the statute of limitations for the explosion of “John’s” so-called “school chemistry project” that had involved an old camera flashbulb, an alarm clock, and a battery in an empty lot in the state of Washington.
On the morning following the bombast in Irvington, my youngest daughter placed her daughter in my care, saying that she had heard the speculation about the boom having been a “sparkler bomb.” I expressed skepticism about whether sparklers can go boom, and she confessed that she and some friends had blown a big hole in a backyard with one.
I don’t know how the hole was blown into the median at the corner of Washington and Bolton streets, but neither “John,” my daughter nor I should be factored into any theories about the Big Boom.