Never get tired of telling this one. Our neighborhood a-hole was Mr Crosby. He ignored us kids, the adults who tried to hail him, and pretty much everybody except his wife. He never gave out candy on Halloween, and good damn luck to the Girl Scouts trying to sell cookies.
On the 4th of July, 1973, my crew and I was pretty much out of firecrackers by 10 pm. When Herb and Rob's mom called them inside, we were just about ready to call it a night. We were between 11-13 years old. My older brother ran with HIS crew back then, and evidently somebody dropped a 50 pack of firecrackers and we found them. It was serendipity, because Crosby left his garage window open. We must have had the Vulcan mind-meld going, because we all said "Let's get Crosby".
Problem was, I had a twisted ankle so I couldn't do the deed and run fast enough to hide after the firecrackers went off. So I hid behind Greg's house, Eric was halfway between Greg's house and Crosby's (he was the lookout), and Huggy and Phil were the perps. Huggy lit the firecrackers, Phil shut the window. Eric told me afterwards that Huggy and Phil almost caught him running to our hiding spot! Crosby came out after a minute or so, and if we weren't already hiding, we would have been dead kids. He drove up and down the street for about a half hour while we were howling behind Greg's house.
And this was how cool my Dad was. Next day, the word evidently got out about what happened. During the summertime, the only time our paths crossed was at dinner. So Dad casually mentioned:"I heard somebody lit up Crosby last night". Me: "Firecrackers in his garage". Him: "Good". And that was that.