Our gang had made their plans. We had decided that the time had come to raid the Mill Creek mine. It had closed two or three weeks ago. We had been watching the place to see when everyone would finally leave. The mine was now deserted. The time had come for us to do the work. There hadn’t been a soul around the place for a week. Looking around an abandoned mine is a lot of fun. We plan to enter the mine, and maybe even go to the face. The face was what the miners called the place where they actually mined the coal and loaded it onto the mine wagons so they could take it out to the dump to be cleaned and loaded onto the rail wagons.

Smasher, Smokey, Joker, Wizzer and I were going on the raid. Mole couldn’t be with us today. He had been grounded for fighting with his sister. Those of us who had brothers or sisters understood exactly what he was up against, being grounded, and most of us had been in the same situation at one time or another.

In the past, the Mill Creek Mine Shops have supplied us with much steel for our slings. Now that it was closed, we had reason to believe that there was more steel for our slings, and perhaps there would be other things that we could also take for our use.

When Wizzer and I went to our hideout, he was carrying his rifle. That set me back. When we had planned this job, no one had said anything about taking rifles with us. Wizzer and I traveled through the forest to the hideout without saying much. I was thinking about not having a rifle and why don’t we use our slingshots instead. Wizzer knew that he did not have a rifle. He also knew that this particular fact was bothering me, so he didn’t say anything either. When we got to our hideout, Wizzer suggested that we try to sneak up on the guys in the hideout without being seen. We did it. In fact, we slipped in so cleverly that we didn’t have to use our special signal to let them know we were friends. We just lifted the camouflaged hatch and went into the hideout, starting with the rest of the gang. Smasher got angry and started criticizing us for doing things properly.

“Why didn’t you use our signal? How are we going to disperse if you don’t? You two could have been someone else who shouldn’t be here.”

“If we had been someone who wasn’t supposed to be here, you all would have been dead ducks sitting here on this log doing your quacking. There’s supposed to be a guard posted when someone’s going to be here for a long time. None of you he didn’t even see or hear us sneaking up. We snuck in here as pretty as they wanted,” I smiled. That shut him up. However, the look he gave me told me that he wasn’t very happy with what we had done. I looked around. Each of the guys had his Twenty-two rifle with him.

“What are they doing with the rifles?” I asked. “There was nothing in our plans about anyone bringing their rifles.”

“Aw. We were thinking of doing something in cans and bottles if things don’t work out at the mine,” Wizzer said. “Squirt, you can take turns with me firing my gun.” The other boys were silent. They knew I didn’t have a rifle. Another time I had snuck out of the house with my older brother Zip’s rifle. For that trick, my father tanned my skin and Zip gave me a good beating.

Joker then spoke up and broke the silence by saying, “We’d better get going. We’ve got a full day’s work ahead of us if we’re going to go through the whole place.”

“Squirt, since you and Wizzer have done a good job of sneaking up on us, you and Wizzer can scout the mine to see if anyone is nearby. If the coast is clear, give our signal and we’ll be in touch.” We will meet at the great oak.”

Wizzer and I slipped out of the hideout and made our way through the woods towards the mine looking and watching the whole time. About a hundred meters from the mine there was a large oak tree that was perfect for spying on the mine. I climbed up the tree and Wizzer followed me. He was understood by both; Wizzer and I would whisper or use hand signals to talk to each other until we verified that the mine was deserted. We settle in the notches of the tree and begin our surveillance of the mine. The whole place was as quiet as a sleeping baby. Twenty minutes or so passed. Not a soul moved. The place seemed deserted.

“Looks good. Let’s call the boys,” I whispered to Wizzer. He shook his head from side to side. He was telling me that we should wait and watch some more. Wizzer was hawk-eyed and had seen nothing. However, he still did not want to give the signal. He was afraid. He didn’t have to say it. I saw it in his eyes. So I gave the signal, two short high-pitched whistles, and started down the tree. When I got to the ground, the boys were coming down through the woods. Wizzer came down after me. He wasn’t happy that he had called the other boys without him saying so. The dirty looks he gave me told me so I let him tell the other guys that we hadn’t seen anyone around the mine.

“It’s clear,” he said, “There seems to be no one around. However, we’d better go slow. You never know…” She didn’t get a chance to finish whatever she was going to say. What Wizzer had suggested was not Smasher’s style.

“If it’s clear, then we’re not going in slowly!” Smasher said. With that, he strode off towards the mine office. He was padlocked. Smasher swung the ax he carried, and the office was no longer padlocked.

Joker walked up to him and said, “Smasher, you’re completely crazy. There could be someone there.”

Smasher just laughed. “Silly fool. What do you think they did, crawl out a window and something to put the padlock on the door? Let’s go in now and check things out.”

There wasn’t much to see in the office. Dirty military green filing cabinets were against one wall. Another wall was covered with a blackboard like the ones at school. When Smasher saw those slates, he let out a cry as if he had struck gold. His ax was out of his belt before either of us could blink.

“Move back guys. This right here is work for the Smasher,” he yelled. Smash! She destroyed a blackboard, sending tiles flying across the room. Lines emerged from the cut made where his ax had hit that board. Smash! Smash! With three swings of his axe, he had turned those three slates into what looked like giant cobwebs that no self-respecting spider would consider crawling on. He turned to us. With a smile on his face like one of those little angels you see on Valentine’s Day, he said, “I wish I was at school right now.” If Smasher had been at the school at the time, he wouldn’t have given half a penny for every blackboard in the place.

Joker attacked the filing cabinets. They were padlocked. He took a swing at one of the locks with his axe. Taste! The lock went flying across the room like a bullet and broke a window. He opened the filing cabinet and showed us that it was full of papers. We were not looking for paper at the time. But if we were to start a fire, those papers would make a good bonfire, especially if we could find the naphtha used to fill the bug lights. Bug lights actually have nothing to do with bugs. Miners used them to test methane gas in mines. The proper name for them was flame safety lamps. Something every son of a coal miner learns almost before he can walk.

Smasher took a quick look around, an inspection of the office. Later we will save this place. There isn’t much of anything here. Let’s see what else we can find. He was out the door like a shot. The rest of us follow. We all knew this: Smasher was doing what he did best, which is, he was smashing things. Knowing that Smasher was hell-bent on destruction, we all followed him. None of us wanted to miss anything.

“You’ll look at that!” Smasher pointed to the engine stable. It wasn’t really a barn. What it was, was a building that looked like a dirty, coal-covered greenhouse, something like the ones he’d seen in the gardening magazines Godpap kept in his basement. The entire building, from the walls about three feet above the ground to the ceiling included, was made of small panes of glass. When the mine was in operation, this building was used to store and repair the electric locomotives that miners used to get coal out of the mines. It was not a small building! There was room on it to park six or eight large engines, as the miners called locomotives. Big or not, that building was doomed. Smasher had seen it.

Smasher smiled at us and jumped up and down as if a bunch of ants had crawled up his pant legs. His eyes darted around and glittered like a madman’s. He spied a piece of steel pipe about a half inch in diameter and about eight feet long. That piece of pipe couldn’t have been put in a better place for Smasher’s intentions. Smasher raised his hands above his head, clasped them together, and danced in front of us like a victorious boxer with a wild, crazy grin that gleamed from teeth to eyes. He then he grabbed that piece of pipe and gave us this order.

“Back off guys. I’m about to become Chestnut Valley’s only chaaam-peen glass breaker of all time.”

Crash! Smasher jabbed one end of the pipe through a glass panel. We were all disappointed. Any one of us could have cracked that single panel faster than a snap of our fingers. We were expecting a lot more action than that, and we told him that in no uncertain terms. Smasher turned to us and smiled. “Guys, I haven’t started smashing yet. Check this out my friends. I’m about to make history.” He turned back to the building and waved that piece of pipe like a scythe. With a crash, crash, and clink, five or six feet of broken glass and picture frames fell to the floor. arrested. He walked around the building swinging that pipe like a busy farmer cutting hay. Smash, crash and jingle. Shattered glass and pieces of shattered frames fell dead and mangled to the floor behind him. We all watched, jaws agape, as Smasher smashed every glass pane and frame in the bottom row of the building. However, things were still not happening fast enough to satisfy Smasher. He grabbed a two-by-four about six or eight feet long and hit the center of one of the sills in the second row of windows with the butt end. Glass fell everywhere around him. A whole section of glass had been smashed. Smasher didn’t care. Twenty or thirty panes of shattered glass fell sparkling like the broken halo of a fallen angel splintering around him and the ground at his feet. Twisted and splintered frames hung from crooked tooth holes. Smasher was in the glory of it. We all look on, fascinated. This was better than the movies. Smasher set about the job of completing the destruction of it. When he finished his demolition job, all the glass panes on the barn walls were broken. Blood dripped and dripped from little nicks and cuts on his arms and face. Smasher paid no attention to the blood at all.

Smasher walked away from the destroyed building and walked towards us with a smile on his face. That lunatic look was gone from his eyes. I thought even Smasher could get too much of a good thing. I made a mistake.

“Do you think those fools running this place could have left some dynamite in the tinderbox?” Smasher didn’t ask any of us in particular. “Let’s go there and find out.”

To find out if the gang finds dynamite and what happens if they do, read part two.