The Ominous Beer Can

By Joe Scally

During the late 1970’s, Fred, Allan, Bill, Bill’s friend Joe Sarlo and I would make an annual camping pilgrimage to South Peacham Vermont. It was one of those events that you look forward to for an entire year because you know it will be pure fun.

The trips consisted of a weekend sometime between June and August. The premise was to go fresh water fishing and while we did engage in this activity, the real agenda was camaraderie and a lot of beer. As I said, it was a camping trip and Fred owned almost all the camping equipment, which is the topic of several other stories.

It almost always rained buckets at this time of year, but no one seemed to notice, except Fred who would compulsively check for leaks in the tent, having meticulously waterproofed it some weeks in advance of the trip.

It is important to know that the land we camped on was owned by a friend of Allan’s and that she had decided to go elsewhere lacking the funds and support to live in a very desolate and sparsely populated area. The net result was that there was not a human being within miles of our campsite.

This left us free to engage in an activity that would be unacceptable in populated areas. Unlike most campers, we didn’t build a campfire during the evening; we built what could more accurately be described as a bonfire.

On the trip that this story is about, only Fred, Allan and I were there. The scene is this: Allan has decided that he has had enough for the evening and has retired to the tent. He is awake however, and listening to Fred and I talk as we bask in the fading light of the once great fire. The fire is slightly below a small rise we are sitting on and is about 6 feet away from us.

Now the thing is that these fires had a tendency to reduce themselves to a rather large pile of extremely hot embers as they consumed the larger bits of wood we had earlier gathered.

Rounding out the picture would be the understanding that an enormous amount of beer had been consumed that evening. Fred and I were sitting and talking about everything …. and nothing.

Perhaps out of boredom, fatigue, intoxication, or simply the wonder that made Fred …… well …Fred, he turned to me and said:

 “I wonder what would happen if I stuck one of the remaining full beer cans into the fire?”

“I’m not sure.” I replied.

Without hesitation, Fred grabbed a full can of beer and proceeded to embed it top down in the seething embers. He sat back down next to me and we waited. Several minutes passed and nothing happened. At some level we were disappointed.

Fred turned to me and asked “Really, what do you think will happen?”

I thought for a moment and then said “Well I guess, eventually the beer inside will superheat, blow the pop top (they had those in the old days) and the can will take off like Evil Kenival over the Snake River canyon. (Yes, it was a long time ago.)

Fred thought for a moment and said, “You know, you may be right, we should hide.”

So like two fools, we went behind the tent, crouched down and waited.

Now alcohol has a variety of effects on the human body and one of these is the tendency to distort time. As a result, it took us about two and a half minutes to get bored with hiding and we quickly returned to our slightly elevated perch above the “campfire”.

A few seconds later, Fred turned to me with a disappointed look on his face and said,

“You know, if something were going to happen, it would have occurred by …..”

BOOM!

The beer can exploded out of the fire with a loud report and a hissing sound. To my horror it struck Fred directly between the eyes in the middle of his forehead. He immediately fell back and rolled onto his side.

As I looked at him in the split second that followed, I could see that his body was shaking. I was convinced that he had been knocked out and possibly seriously injured.

I grabbed him by the shoulder and rolled him over to assess the extent of his injuries.

To my astonishment, the shaking was, in fact, due to the fact that he was laughing hysterically. You see, all the fluid had been expelled from the lightweight aluminum can on “takeoff”. By the time it reached Fred, it had also lost almost all of its velocity. In fact, it didn’t even leave a mark.

After a good laugh, completely unaffected by the event and, as is characteristic of young men who think themselves to be immortal, we never gave the possible consequences of our actions a second thought.

We had another beer and went to bed. Only Allan can tell you what all this sounded like from inside the confines of the communal tent.