The "Fire Snake

Some years ago a Scoutmaster, who would become a state senator, invited the camp director to attend his Troop’s campfire: “I’m going to show the boys the fire snake!” Fire snake? The camp director was more than curious and showed up at the appointed time to listen as the Scoutmaster related the elaborate legend of the fire snake. The particulars of the legend are lost to time chiefly because of what happened next.

Perhaps you have seen, in a western movie, a keg of gunpowder trailed onto the ground forming a rudimentary fuse. Once lit the line of powder burns slowly, tantalizingly and reaches a pile of powder kegs blowing everything to kingdom come.

Picturesque but pure fiction.

Problem is that old fashioned black powder burns so quickly that it would be more of a flashbulb than a fuse.

Modern smokeless powder burns slowly and was probably what we saw in at the movies. Back to the campfire. The scouts sat in a circle around the fire and at the proper moment the Scoutmaster bent down and touched the glowing tip of his cigar to the ground at the end of a spiral trough he had so cleverly scratched into the ground at the fire circle, filled with gunpowder, and expertly camouflaged. The trough ended in a carefully laid campfire that would be magically lit by the “fire snake”. The blinding flash, the choking smoke and the blackened faces of a dozen or more scouts knocked backward off their benches demonstrated that the Scoutmaster did not know the difference between black powder and smokeless powder. The camp director, having kept a respectful distance and seeing that only the Scoutmaster’s pride was injured, headed up the trail with yet another tale to tell.