A Rocket Boy’s Wisdom: Don’t Blow Yourself Up

Don’t Blow Yourself Up, by Homer Hickam (Post Hill Press, 416 pages, $27)

M any Americans have heard of Homer Hickam as the protagonist of the movie October Sky, which tells the story of a group of Appalachian miners’ kids who were inspired by the challenge of Sputnik to become “rocket boys,” reaching for the stars. The film’s epilogue tells us that Hickam went on to become a NASA Space Shuttle engineer. That’s true. But the journey from Coalwood, W.Va., to the Johnson Space Center took Hickam a quarter century, taking him through the heat of Vietnam combat, the cold shark-infested waters of U-boat graveyards off Cape Hatteras, and many other adventures along the way.

In his new book, Don’t Blow Yourself Up, Hickam tells his story.

Hickam is a gifted storyteller, and he relates his tale with a folksy sense of humor that makes it a joy to read. But there’s wisdom in it too. Because while there is much that Hickam has good reason to be happy and proud about, there are also things he did — or failed to do — that he deeply regrets. He shares it all.

A good example of each can be found in his recount of the first stop on his trip out of Coalwood: Virginia Tech, which “Sonny” Hickam attended on a ROTC scholarship. Virginia Tech’s archrival in college football was the Virginia Military Institute. VMI used to wheel out its “Little John” Civil War cannon onto the field during halftime, fire if off, and then have its cheerleaders mock its opponents, chanting, “Where’s your cannon? Where’s your cannon?”

So Hickam and his friends decided that Virginia Tech needed to make a cannon of its own — the Skipper. They were able to accomplish that feat using some scrap brass that Hickam’s father, who was the mine superintendent in Coalwood (and with whom Hickam had a very difficult relationship), gathered up and sent to them. The story then proceeds:

Little John was brought out by the VMI cheerleaders and a charge prepared. After it went off, . .  we heard the dreaded chant come across the field. “Where’s your cannon? Where’s your cannon?” . . .

The [Virginia Tech] Highty-Tighties struck up a rendition of “The Parade of the Charioteers” from the movie Ben Hur. As the triumphal music played, a team of freshman, using thick ropes, came pulling our cannon down the track and up next to me and my team. Fans on our side of the stadium burst into cheers and applause. As the march wound down, I directed the freshmen to turn the barrel to face the VMI stands, but then Little John roared forth again and the subsequent chant revealed Butch’s theatrical entrance had gone largely unnoticed on the other side of the field. “Where’s your cannon? Where’s your cannon?”

Butch came running up to me. “Fire it now!” he cried. “Now, Sonny! And make it really loud!”

Although I had doubled the amount of powder in the standard bomblets, I also had one that was even more powerful. . . . I lit my monster and tossed it down the barrel. . . .

The Skipper erupted with a huge high-pitched bark like the maddest junkyard dog in the universe and reared back, its wheels coming completely off the ground. A huge spout of smoke erupted across the field like a gray-black fist. A shock wave rippled through the VMI Corps and continued on to the press box, where it cracked the glass in front of the startled announcers and reporters. . . .

Butch came racing up and said something, but I couldn’t hear him because my ears were ringing. Gleeful tears were streaming down his cheeks as he pointed toward our Corps. Gradually I began to discern their chant.

“Here’s our cannon! Here’s our cannon!”

Virginia Tech went on to win the game in a landslide. Reading Hickam’s account, you can feel the sense of youthful triumph, sheer joy, still remembered vividly more than a half century later.

But then, this:

After the game, Dad came down from the stands. I knew he and Mom were attending, mainly because [Hickam’s big brother] Jim was playing in the game. Dad looked so proud, an expression I knew was not for what I had accomplished ever in the entire history of my life but for my brother’s prowess on the football field.

Dad looked the Skipper over. “Some of my coal mine is in it,” he said to the other cadets while looking inordinately pleased.

What I said back to him came from a place inside me I had no idea was there and I regret to this day. “There’s nothing from your mine in it,” I snapped. “Your brass was too cheap. They put in their own brass at the foundry.” That was not true but there it was. Said and done. . . .

And with that, Dad walked away. I thought about calling out to him to tell him what I said wasn’t so, but the words stuck in my throat. When he joined Mom on the sidelines, she turned and raised her hand to me in greeting and in goodbye. She looked like she was about to cry. Dad took her arm and led her away while I turned to the suddenly dreary task of carrying Skipper home.

There is so much more in this book: The pride a man can feel after he stands with others defending a remote outpost from an overwhelming enemy assault in Vietnam, and his sadness when he discovers one morning that the infiltrator that he detected trying to penetrate the perimeter wire and that he gunned down the night before was actually a baby deer. The joy of a scuba diver discovering a lost U-boat off the Carolina coast and the horror of picking up a bowl inside that turned out to be a human skull. The happiness of hearing that his father had actually bought multiple copies of Hickam’s first book (Torpedo Junction, about the U-boat war off the American coast) and handed them out to all his friends, and his despair when he found out that Dad had died just before he could receive the letter in which Hickam finally confessed his regard. The odd ways of fate that took a scuba divemaster to NASA to train astronauts and finally realize his boyhood dream. A love that might have been, lost forever in a distant land, and a new and true love found. It’s all there.

It’s an inspiring story of a life well lived. If you are looking for a book to send someone this Christmas, keep it in mind.