CLAY CENTER, Kan. (AP) A group of Kansas pranksters are finally coming clean right before the 50-year anniversary of a high school finding a mysterious hole through its roof.
Richard Klocke and his friends fired a small cannon full of gunpowder near Clay Center Community High School for the Fourth of July in 1968, the Kansas City Star reported.
This thing just exploded like crazy, Klocke said. The metal was flying. I could hear it flying in all these directions, but I could specifically hear it flying from this direction off toward the school. It was a deafening explosion.
Authorities reported that mysterious metal scraps had gouged the school roof and caused a water leak, but they never figured out where the scraps came from. A local newspaper reported that the mysterious piece of metal was sent to Forbes Air Force Base in Topeka for identification, but the scraps still couldnt be explained.
I think when the thing showed up in the newspaper that they found something on the roof, we all went, Are you going to tell them about this? said Mike Browne, Klockes friend and one of the teens who fired the cannon. No, no, keep quiet. Nobody wanted to get in trouble.
Klocke said he now wants to take responsibility because its never officially been told as to what happened at that event.
Ill have to suffer any consequences now as an old man for my youthful indiscretions, said Klocke, now 65.
Klocke works as an artist and exhibition designer in Lawrence, and Browne is a business owner in Lincoln, Nebraska.
