Joe and Randy had built a nice darkroom in Randy's basement and Dale had a darkroom in his too. Each one was set up slightly differently and occasionally one group asked the other to do some processing for them. Joe and Randy, in particular, asked Dale for special processing because Dale, good scientist that he was, liked to buy the photographic chemicals and, using a formulas book from Kodak, he mixed whatever developer was good for the film or papers he was trying to process.
Also occasionally, since we were all pranksters, one group or the other would sabotage the other for a little fun. Joe and Randy asked Dale to process a roll of film one day and I went with Dale to help. After carefully mixing ingredients and going through a good half-hour of work to get the "perfect" negatives for Joe and Randy, we were finally able to open the developing tank and discover that the film was bogus. It was actual film, but there were no photographs. It has been completely exposed and the message "Ha Ha to You Too Sideburns" was scratched into the emulsion. Dale had some rather large and bushy sideburns in those days so the reference was true, but the time we wasted to discover this was irritating. Dale decided to strike back.
From some dark corner of his darkroom he produced a glass bottle with a NASA label. I have no idea how he acquired this, but, the bottle contained about six ounces of 80 molar hydrochloric acid. I went out to find an old plastic film can and, while I was gone, Dale donned a mask and poured a little of the HCL into a stainless steel developing tank and dipped the film we had just processed into it. The emulsion just liquified. I didn't know Dale had done this and when I got back, before he could warn me, I walked into the darkroom and in less than one second, with a single breath, my lungs just locked and I literally fell backwards out of the darkroom. The HCL was so reactive it was fuming and my first breath burned my lungs and made my body decide not to breath anymore. I went outside to recover while Dale cleaned up. Later, after the basement had cleared, we took the blank cellulose and the remnants of the melted emulsion and shoved them into the film can and returned the film to Joe and Randy. What a mess.
It hurt every time I breathed for about three weeks, but I never told anyone and never went to the doctor. How could I explain it? "Yeah doc, I burned my lungs with some fuming 80 molar HCL acid stolen (most likely) from a NASA government facility." "No problem kid. Take two aspirin and call me from jail."
Dale also tried to destroy his neighbor's house one day. His neighbor was having his yard graded and shaped and there was a front-end loader/grader working in the yard. The operator would bring the bucket, very carefully, right up to the side of the house and grade the soil back towards the street. Dale hated his neighbor. He took a metal garbage can out and put it by the street next to his neighbors yard. As the grader driver was approaching the house, Dale threw a lit M80 into the can and slammed on the lid. When it blew the noise was tremendous and the can lid flew into the air. The grader operator literally stood up in his seat and turned around to see what had happened as the grader continued forward. He then realized he was still moving and sat down just in time to stop the bucket of the grader about two inches from the neighbors wall. Disaster had been averted and Dale was PISSED that it had. He sooooooooo wanted to see that thing go through the wall.
Dale also got a copy of a formula for smokeless gun powder. He mixed a huge batch in his garage and, with confidence that the formula was good and he had mixed it correctly, he put a big pile on the garage floor and threw a match in it. Pea-soup fog is transparent compared to the blindingly thick smoke cloud that filled the garage, and then his house. Minutes later his dad came home from work and ... well ... let's just say that "it" hit the wall.
Thus, some of the adventures of Dale.
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