When I was 16 a buddy David and I were driving around the Coleman Co dirt roads drinking up the leftover beer from the night before when we had gone to a country dance in his mom's station wagon. We had a blowout that night so we had to change out the spare (this is critical to the story). I was constantly getting into trouble with this guy.
We came upon a road construction site that had a trailer with a sign that said Danger Explosives and a huge Masterlock padlock on the door. David grabbed a 36 inch Stillson pipe wrench and with two blows had the lock open. It even relocked. We stole 350 lbs of dynamite, a spool of detonator cord (that we thought was fuse cord - even tried to light it), a detonator, fuses and various blasting caps. So away we go trying to figure out how to light some dynamite fuse. Failing that I figured out how the detonator worked with the blasting caps and we start looking for something to blow up. A row of mailboxes? Sure why not? One stick was enough to level all 6 mailboxes except for the one that we put the tnt in. It went so high it was just a speck in the sky before nearly landing on David's head.
We then go dynamite some stock tanks but nothing but polywog catfish came up by the hundreds.
Fast forward to Monday afternoon as I get off of the school bus and see the sheriffs car sitting in front of our house along with David's parents car. Oh shit. David's dad ran the local gas station/shop and Monday morning went to fix the flat we had Saturday night and found blasting cap instructions that had fallen into a crack where the spare was. My mom had to call the beer joint to tell my dad he better come home and deal with his son and the sheriff.
David and I were 2 of 3 country fuckhead delinquents that ran around together and before we were even made to turn our selves in the sheriff had all 3 of our names written down on a Round up the Usual Suspects style list. The construction crew had reported the detonator missing and was worth like $2000. They hadn't even noticed all the other shit we stole. Turns out blowing up mailboxes is frowned upon and is a felony which went along with the 3 other felonies they came up with. I received a years probation supervised by the probation officer who happened to be a family friend. After 6 months she said gtfo you're done. Hardest part was having to apologize to the mailbox owners, one of whom was my dad's best friend's dad.
That flat tire and the instruction sheet for blasting caps probably save our lives.