On a Saturday evening, in around 1974, I was with my neighbor at the local stock car track with a “Borrowed” car driving in the “straight street” amateur heats. We had won about fourteen dollars, I think from coming in third. It was exciting, even if we only got that due to four other cars wrecking.

Anyway, we were in the pits and I was taking the “Real” tires out of the trunk and putting the “Racing” tires back in, and I found a water heater anode that had come out of our heater just a day before.

We had just done experiments with magnesium in chem class that semester, and I knew this thing would burn, so in a clelbratory mood, I hammered the rod into the ground and lit it with a propane torch.

You would have thought I had started a new religion. All the people in the pits came to stare at the shiny white magnesium flame, and half the stands emptied out to come stare. I looked around, propane torch in hand, and saw men and women rubbing up against one another and making it clear this was the most exciting thing they’d seen in a while. Well, it is Indiana, after all. Anyway, rather than getting into trouble, I was a hero, for the remainder of the night. We drove the car home, later than usual, put the “Racing” tires back on the car of their rightful owner, and snuck back into bed.

The next day- like all sundays- I served mass. As it was late in my seniority I got the early mass, but my heart wasn’t in it and I still had the smell of the burning magnesium in my nose. I didn’t get sick but it was touch and go a minute.

I have no earthly idea how I survived my childhood.