The Boomerang Adventure

I admit it. I’m tempted to blame cartoons and the Encyclopædia Britannica for this adventure.

In grammar school, I did most of my fun idea research via diligent and aggressive use of Saturday morning cartoons and when an idea required more detail, my mom directed me to the family book cabinet where our Encyclopædia Britannica always stood ready.  But in this case, my enthusiasm for getting a boomerang airborne pretty much truncated what could have been a story of thorough research.  In this case why bother? I’d seen how they work in cartoons and validated the general idea in our bound database of knowledge, so it was time to move into production.  I had everything I needed for a prototype, so it was time to hit dad’s shop.

When I was in grammar school, I thought my dad had the best job because, as a freight truck driver, he often had weird leftovers that he brought home for us.  Once, he brought home several large sheets of orange, semi-transparent 1/4-inch sheets of Plexiglas.  It’s gem-like orange translucence when held up to the sunshine was almost hypnotic. Surely, I could figure out something neat to do with it.

Dad had lots of power tools but the best tool he had was this monster do-all thing called a “Shop Smith”.  In short, it was a huge variable-speed motor mounted to slide back and forth on twin rails with dozens of mysterious attachments.  So, while my friends were weaning themselves from Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs, I was drilling holes, jig-sawing and using a giant disk sander to make gobs of orange plastic sawdust.

I loved that old Shop Smith.  Where else could a kid learn that plastic does not jig-saw as cleanly as wood because it melts itself back together if you don’t do it right?  That Shop Smith kept me out of mom’s hair for hours.

So, what to make?  Just a few weeks earlier, my friends and I discovered that if you threw the drafting triangles from our shop class, they flew in really cool spiral trajectories. Okay, our drafting instructor was not as impressed so we kept this kinda quiet and looked as innocent and dismayed as we could when he asked about several missing triangles that we knew were lost to giant cow monsters up in the field behind Grant School.

Rather than risk being caught, I sought some substitute for these humble triangles which took me to the idea of making my own with dad’s orange plexiglass, which suddenly turned into upping the adventure by making a boomerang instead, and according to the cartoon, a boomerang would even fly back to me.  This would be sooo cool!

I hand-sketched the basic shape from a picture in the encyclopedia because the internet was down that day.  I cut it out with the jig saw, sanded the edges into a nice aerodynamic bevel with the disk sander and polished the result with the buffing wheel. Version 1 took several hours of experimentation but soon enough, I had my first boomerang. To a kid like me, a good supply of plexiglass stock and a functional shop smith were better than life itself.

I was really anxious to bike over to the school yard to give it a try, wondering as I went, exactly how could an object thrown in one direction, suddenly turn around and return to the thrower? Did this not violate normal laws of physics?  Whenever I threw a rock, a ball or my sister, they never returned for another go of it.  Well, sometimes my sister was mad enough to come back for more, but she’s always been a special case.  How exactly could a boomerang return? Could the cartoons possibly have lied? Say it ain’t so.

A triangle can weave itself in interesting arcs when thrown so perhaps boomerangs were somehow better at turning around – hm.  Still – I could not imagine it working.  If the Encyclopædia Britannica hadn’t said that it worked, I’d be tempted to think this was the first time that a cartoon had lied to me.

With a buddy nearby to witness the great experiment I stood in the middle of the large open field at Grant Elementary.  I held the boomerang by one end and wondered – how was I supposed to hold and throw it? Was there some secret trick, some kind of flick of the wrist? No real clue was obvious – so I steeled myself for a lengthy trial and error, scientific approach.  We would hang in there until we figured it out – even if it took until the invention of the internet so we could find a You tube video on it.

I leaned back and threw it as hard as I could – and away it went -spinning like mad, straight in the direction it started, then – it dipped slightly, and was going much further than I expected – much better than a baseball or even a sister.

Wow! I thought. I sure hope those little girls over on the playground are paying attention.

Suddenly, it pitched up and shot almost straight up like a rocket.  Whoa!

My buddy shouted, “Holy Moly!”  Okay, he didn’t really say “Moly”.  You’ll just have to imagine what he really shouted.

The boomerang just kept climbing, until physics cut in and the boomerang slowed to an eerie hover then slowly slipped back to fall in the direction it came.  Now, with plenty of spin left and a gravity assist, it accelerated with a passion – right back at us – Gulp!

So, I thought.  Gravity is how it works.

“Hey – it’s coming back! It’s really coming back!” my friend yelled, “You have to catch it.”

Equally amazed, I watched, and noted how fast it was accelerating and answered, “No – I don’t.  Run!”  We scattered – trying to put as much distance between us and ground zero as we could.

THUMP!

The boomerang landed and we stopped running.  We turned and raced back to check it out.  It landed in the soft grass about 6 feet from where we’d been standing.  And – it had scared the daylights out of us.  “Not bad for a first attempt.  That was downright dangerous and so cool!”

We took turns chucking that boomerang straight out and each time it did the same trick, dip slightly then pitch up and high, followed by a sharp drop back down causing us to scatter and give it all the room it needed to land.  Somewhere around our 5th round of turns, the boomerang landed on drier soil and snapped in half.  Nuts!  But no worries, tomorrow is Sunday and I had lots more plexiglass.

Early the next morning a larger team of buddies were on hand to learn how to build their own boomerang.  We were in Shop Smith heaven, with melted Plexiglas sawdust everywhere (no dust masks anywhere in sight) and when all that dust had settled, we had 4 brand new version 2 boomerangs – which were a tad wider where version 1 broke. I was confident that I had perfected the battle-hardened boomerang.

Back to the school yard we went; ready to enjoy the new creations.  I had the idea to throw it differently so maybe it would come back, just not from so high and deadly a trajectory.  So, after getting the guys up to speed on the level throw as we had perfected yesterday, I had them stand back and watch the next phase of discovery.  This time: I threw with a slight tilt to the left that caused the boomerang to veer to the left; climb some then level out; and slowly turned – really – the thing just plain turned – and cruised around us about 100 feet away in a wide loop.

As we watched, it sailed past the scrimmage line of where I threw it and it kept going back and around us.

The crowd of boys went wild!

It was like the boomerang had its own mind of what to do.  This is so much better than the cartoons.

When it was approximately directly behind us, it sharpened its turn to a much shorter radius and began a mellow spiral descent and dropped softly down onto the grass after completing a full 180-degree loop back around us.

The crowd of boys went even wilder!   Version 2 was a huge hit.

Other kids nearby were attracted and came near to watch and scream with us.  Even some girls, who only weeks ago were gross were taking interest and I caught myself feeling weirdly anxious to give them a good show. Where did that come from?

In mere moments, the sky above our school yard was full of bright orange boomerangs spinning through these two tricks.  The school yard was chaotic with kids trying to find the best place to watch from and not get hit when they came back. Boomerangs were great. They never needed reloading or anything, you could just pick it up and throw it again.

As it turns out, it was not hard to make the boomerang do either of these two stunts, it was hard to make them do anything else – but we kept trying – until they started breaking again.

No matter.  There is still more plexiglass where those had come from.

Well, when I told Dad about our success, he had to try.  By the next weekend, version 3, with even thicker areas to prevent those nasty breaks, was ready to do its magic.  When we got back to the school yard, once again the yard had plenty of neighborhood kids running around and, shockingly, Dad wanted to avoid hitting them so he insisted we move over the fence to the large cow-field with tall grass.  I told him how to do each trick and stood back.  He gave the boomerang a great heave and away it went – carving its way through the high grass like a mach 2 lawn mower before climbing and settling into a standard return pattern that sent us both laughing and scrambling through the tall grass to get to safety.

Version 3 rocketed up and sliced through the air above us before pausing and diving straight into the tall grass somewhere in front of us, landing almost silently – and was gone – never to be seen again after only 1 flight.

We never found version 3. I was not pleased.  It must have found a damp soft spot and buried itself. Note: boomerangs and tall grass do not play well together.

So, back to the Shop Smith and version 4 was soon ready.  The design change for version 4 was to sharpen the leading edges of each end of the boomerang.  Surely this would improve how long the boomerang would fly, not to mention making it cut grass much better.

Back to the schoolyard, Dad and I stood but this time, the school yard was mostly clear and so there was no need to feed another boomerang to the tall grass field.

I insisted on throwing first and gave it a mighty heave – and “wow!”

The extra sharp edges really made a difference, but as it began the familiar 180-loop-back pattern, my hand started to itch.  I ignored it – until my hand began to feel wet and sticky.  The maiden flight of version 4 was still unfolding when I glanced down to see what itched so badly – and “uh-oh,” my hand from palm to just between the first finger and thumb was sliced wide open – and bleeding freely.   Dad proclaimed the test over and took me home to wrap up that hand while thinking out loud if there was a way, we could get out of telling mom.  There was no way to hide the bandage, so my awesome new boomerang and I were grounded for about a week to let that hand heal.

I sadly modified version 4 by sanding those sharp edges down to something less than razor-sharp because I didn’t want to have to use a leather glove to throw it.  That would just not be cool.

Version 4 survived for several months and gave me hours of fun at the school yard, always mystifying and entertaining anyone nearby.  Then one day, Dad took me to the old D-street shooting range, just outside of town.  After running out of ammo, I retrieved my boomerang thinking it would be neat to have it perform a few circles around the range.

I gave it a well-practiced throw and it began its normal trajectory, smoothly flying into a loop right over the shotgun range.  I expected everyone to “ooo” and “ahh” and some did, but there was one guy who could not bear the temptation and raised his shotgun and fired.

Version 4 exploded into an orange cloud of plastic dust and shards.

“Are you kidding me!?  What kind of jerk shoots down a kid’s boomerang!?”

I was indignant, crushed, scandalized. Dad was sympathetic but pointed out that I had thrown it into a live shooting range.  What did I expect to happen?

I thought, but did not say, Well, it would be nice if my dad, who still had ammo, would have returned fire.

And that was the last boomerang I ever made.  Enough was enough.  It was time to move on to other adventures.

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