This is a continuation of stories that have informed my writings. A reprint from my Newsletter. If you're interested and like these stories let me know and I'll connect you with the newsletter. :-)

So, I’m back writing on Bombs and Dumbshits.
As I’m writing this more bomb stories keep bubbling up. I might even have enough for a short book. Anyway, I digress. In this other incident. I was working dope, a majors crew at Ontario Airport. My crew had responded to the UPS annex on airport property for a possible dope package. While we were in back having the dog alert on the package, there was a ruckus out in the lobby. This was a pretty large operation, lots of folks out in the lobby. I stuck my head out to peek, see what was going on. Someone had identified a package abandoned on the counter no one knew who owned it. A small panic started.
The manager was in the process of evacuating everyone. I said, “What the hell.” Came from around the back, picked up the package, (gingerly mind you) and carried it out to the parking lot. The bomb squad arrived a short time later. I didn’t know these guys they were from OFD. I stood by with my hands in my jeans pocket just watch. Before they started they got the skinny from the UPS manager. I could see them talking the manager pointing over to me. The bomb squad fire captain came over to me, stood next to me for a few seconds. We just stood there when he finally says. “You know how that package got from inside there to out here in the parking lot.” I shook my head, “No, don’t think I do.”
He smiled, said, “I’m told some dumbshit carried it out here.”
I said, “Yeah, I think I heard the same thing.”
His reply was, “Hmm.”
He went to work. He set up another one of those graphite and plaster cannons and blasted that package to pieces while I watched. I helped him pick up the pieces. Some father in too big a hurry, had mailed his son some matchbox toy cars. Those cars now looked like they’d been in a big freeway pile up.
The next one I was working as a sergeant out in Morongo Valley, sitting in the briefing room. This was an annex, a double-wide mobile home attached to the station. I was the watch commander on swing shift, the lieutenant and captain having gone home. I was it.
When in walks a deputy, who worked for me on my shift. He had a half-quart jelly jar filled with a clear liquid. I didn’t have to ask I could smell it. Ether.
Heat, the fumes anything could ignite it.
I said, “What the hell are you doing bringing that in here?” I’d been trained on the devastating explosive power of ether. That jar had the ability of leveling the mobile home annex, literally blowing it to smithereens. The deputy said it was given to him while on a call. He had driven all the way back to the station with it. I knew better than to move it. Least I thought I did.
But then I got to thinking if I left it sitting on the briefing room table I’d have to evacuate the jail that adjoined the building. I’d have about a hundred crooks corralled out in a field by four deputies with shotguns. Not good, in fact it was a recipe for an even bigger disaster. So, I picked up the jar and carried it out to the parking lot and had dispatch call the fire department.
They responded. I stood by with my hands in my pockets watching them. They took this one real serious. I watched the fire captain talk to the field deputy and like before the deputy pointed over to me. This was a totally different fire crew, one from Cal Fire.