Bubble Gum, Tootsie Rolls, Matches, Rockets, and Love

By: Frank Coletta

            When I was a young boy living in Hicksville, New York, I just loved to watch the Fourth of July fireworks bursting in the warm night sky. Their flashing colors just dazzled me. My two other brothers shared the same awe. We could never afford to buy any rockets from my older brother’s stash of fireworks.

            We put out collective heads together and decided to build our own aerial rocket. It was fueled by four hundred Grand Union Instant Lighting Match heads topped off with a cherry bomb. The cherry bomb was cemented to the top of the card board tube by a well chewed Tootsie Roll. The bottom had a fuse from Woolworth’s Five and Dime held in by a slightly chewed piece of Bazooka bubble gum. Tied to the rocket was a small stick that would slide into a Coke bottle for liftoff.

            Launch day came early next morning behind the stands of the baseball field of the Jr. High School. There was a P.B.C. baseball game being played, an instant audience. Three, two, one, blast off! Up she went spitting and belching red and white fire out her tail. We did it! We made a rocket. That rocket went straight up for fifty feet and then began to lean over and head towards the trees. That crowning cherry bomb was poised to start a forest fire in two seconds. We just stood there helpless to stop what we started.

            The game stopped with our aborted flight. Their coach came over and asked us to go with him. We went willingly because he was our baseball coach also. He was our friend. He walked us over to a squad car with red lights flashing. We were under arrest for creating flight….Tootsie rolls and all.  We were arrested for blowing up homemade bombs on public property.

            We found out what the letters P.B.C. stood for; the Police Boy’s Club. Get it…POLICE! Cops were the coaches. We never took first place in English or in basic intelligence. Our coach got credit for three arrests and we got to drive away with our humiliated heads downcast, lights flashing and locked securely in the back like criminals.

            Our older brother Danny picked us up that day. He knew the police because he had just taken the test to join the force. We got home and dad was waiting for us in the back yard. Now what! Dad had strong hands and was noted for not putting up with “stuff”. He also had a black leather belt about the width of your buttocks.

            Dad put me on his lap and stared at me with a distressed look on his face. I couldn’t look into his steely blue eyes. All I could think about was that black belt of justice. He said to me, “Frank, what am I going to do with you? You are to big to be treated like a child and yet too stupid not to spank.” I was a dead man hanging there ready for the guillotine.

            An amazing thing happened that day. He put me down and advised me to act my age and grow up. “Now get out of here”, where his last words of warning.

            I was in shock. I was expecting the beating of my life for what we did and the embarrassment we caused to the family. But my father chose to extend grace instead of punishment, love and forgiveness instead of justice and well deserved wrath. Dad touched me that day in a way I’ll never forget. He loved me without saying it. Because of his love I vowed never to embarrass him again but to make him proud of me. I learned the power of love and how it can motivate change in life.

            That same love was given to me in Jesus.  Because of His forgiving love I have vowed never to embarrass my heavenly father again by a life of Tootsie Rolls, Bazooka gum and match heads. Oh, yeah, the following year we played ball for our local church.