Roy's Rocket

My dad works in the city. We live in the country. It’s not that my parents are split up or anything. It’s just that Montreal is where the work is. He leaves very early on Monday morning, comes back Wednesday evening and leaves again early Thursday. Sometimes he leaves so early we don’t get a chance to see him. Sometimes he gets back so late that we’re asleep when he comes in to drop off whatever cool thing he’s picked up for us.

A little while ago he brought us Nerf airplanes. I got the Sopwith Camel bi-plane and my brother got the Fokker tri-plane. I woke up when Dad put the Fokker beside me. I asked for the Sopwith. I didn’t want the German one. They were the bad guys. But my brother is only 8 so he doesn’t know the difference.

Anyway, like I said, my Dad is always bringing us cool stuff. A lot of times it’s rockets. I love the rockets and that’s where I’m just like my dad. Only that I’m a little scared of them and he’s not. My Dad, he used to make them from scratch with his buddy when he was a kid. They would build the rocket out of cardboard tubes, put fins on it and pack it with gunpowder they got from their guns. They also used to shoot rats at the dump and get a nickel for each one they killed. I bet you could make a lot of money that way.

I have a pellet gun but I don’t think I’d shoot a rat with it. For one, it wouldn’t do anything except make the rat mad, I think. My Dad, he can light a match with my pellet gun. Sometimes it takes him two or three shots (he says he has to figure out which way the sight is off) but he always gets it. It’s gotta be a strike anywhere, though, because those safety matches won’t work. I try to light matches but I haven’t lit one yet. I keep practicing, though, and I’m a pretty good shot.

So today we got a new rocket. It’s a Saturn V and it’s the same as we saw at Cape Canaveral when we went to visit Granny and Grandpa in Florida. The real one is humungous and it’s spread out in its pieces on the ground but you can tell how big it is. They must have had a job finding all those pieces after they fell back from space. Before they launch the rockets they come out of a gigantic building. The building has the American flag on it and the stars are each six feet tall, so that tells you just how big it is. The tractor thing that brings it out moves slow-slow and it even looks kinda like a turtle. It’s so slow that they have to start moving the rocket the day before just to get it to the launch pad on time.

So today we get to launch our Saturn V. The V is Roman numbers for five. My brother’s too young to read Roman numbers but we learned it last year. My Dad almost got a hundred on a math test once but he forgot the Roman number for ninety.

The rocket engine for our Saturn V is a D size (that’s the biggest there is). You put it in the bottom, check the fins to make sure that they’re straight so it doesn’t fly crooked, then make sure the rocket’s pointed straight up for the same reason. The chute you should have checked when you put the rocket together. The launch pad is no place for that.

My dad built a blast off platform that’s perfectly flat and has a small metal rod sticking up to guide the rocket on take off. He also has a battery he can hook up to the engine to ignite it. Sometimes, though, we use sparklers and that’s what we have today.

Dad says he wants to test an engine before we put it in the Saturn V. Last time we fired off a rocket that looked like R2D2 from Star Wars. Dad took us to see that movie in the city when it came out. Then we went into a really fancy hotel to meet his boss. The hotel room had a big bathtub right in with the bed. I don’t know why you’d want that.

The R2D2 rocket had an engine in each leg but one didn’t fire properly. It took off alright but then one leg fizzled out and the rocket turned upside down and came back towards us. Dad said “run” but we didn’t really have time. The chute never came out either and R2’s head got cracked so now he’s sitting on a shelf.

So today my brother and me are standing by the wall of our house. My Dad’s standing by the short concrete wall that separates our driveway from the neighbour’s lawn. There are these black metal posts that stick up out of the wall that used to be part of a fence when my Dad was a boy and lived there with Granny and Grandpa. My Dad takes a rocket engine out of the package (he bought four) and looks at it. It’s smooth and brown like a roll of quarters but it has one end that’s open so you can see the gunpowder. He takes a sparkler from another package and jams it into the open end of the engine. He strikes a match, lights the sparkler and drops it into the top of the metal post. “Back up,” he yells, but we’ve already backed up as far as we can. A second passes and nothing happens. Sssssst! The rocket lights and comes hissing out of the post. It fishtails like our car sometimes does on icy roads, turns and screams right towards us. We don’t move. It ricochets off the wall behind us and through the open garage door. Off one wall then the other and – smash! – right through the tiny window at the back of the garage.

No one says anything for a moment. We’re listening to hear my Mom’s voice yell “Roy?!” but I don’t think she heard it. “Cool!” I yell. “Do it again!” says my brother. “No, we need to save some to launch the rocket” says my Dad. And, as we walk up the hill to the spot we always set off our rockets, my Dad doesn’t have to say it, but we know: “Don’t tell your mother about the window.”