Blowin' stuff up in Manvel, North Dakota

Here's what happens when you wrap 12 boxes worth of sparklers
tightly in electrical tape and attach a fuse.  When the tape is red-
orange and the fuse is green, the neatly wrapped bundle looks like a 
huge carrot, a carrot that's kind of a bomb.  It gives you a little shove 
in the chest from a hundred feet away.

Other great stuff about Manvel:

-  Massive piles of meat, say 36 venison sausage patties for a four-person breakfast
-  Venison bacon, similarly portioned.  These are my people.
-  If we'd had another person roll into town with us, we would have increased Manvel's population by a full percentage point.
-  A wild night where Megan skillfully defused a bar fight and I quite soberly raced a passenger-laden four wheeler through town
-  Our cousin Anna and her boyfriend Aaron, wonderful hosts and the latter in possession of a miraculous ability to remain on a careening off-road vehicle.  Great-hearted people.

-  Simultaneously a severe thunderstorm warning, an advisory for golf-ball sized hail (capable of decimating crops), and a deafening tornado siren!  Aaron's reaction?  Pile us all in the truck, drive out and take a look.  He and the town so nonchalant.  Anna finally convinced him to head home after a sheriff commanded us to immediately seek shelter.  It was all fabulously exciting.