Tin Can Tree

A tree that grows tin cans? Well look, right in the centre of this tree at the top is a tin can. How else could it get there if the tree didn't grow it there? I guess you would have to ask a (almost) teen-age boy that question.
It all happened out at Gramy Sharon and Grandpa Steve's place while I was visiting this past spring, March/April 2011. The whole family got together one day for a huge lefse baking party. The girl cousins were running around outside and the young boy cousins were doing their thing, so what does a (almost) teen-age boy do? Thankfully, Grandpa Steve has an assortment of firecrackers on hand. And Steven, being the young inventor that he is, puts his inventive skills to work after just shooting them off in the street got to be old hat. With tin can in hand he punches a hole in it just big enough for a firecracker. Wow! That sends the can up in the air pretty good! How does a young man's mind work? I remember well from when I was his age: If one firecracker will do that, what will two or three firecrackers do? Will they perhaps put the can into orbit? Well the rest is history. He finally got the can to blast over the top of the tree.


Then on one of the blast-offs, the can turned open-end-down and on its decent, settled right down on a branch at the top of the tree. Will wonders never cease? We all just stood there, munching on lefse, looking up in amazement.

Grandpa Steve came up with the brilliant idea of starting a pool and putting down a guess as to when the can would come down. For one dollar a guess, the one that would come closest to the time would win the pool. That lucky lady was Hope, after a big wind storm several days later.