In an episode of Fraiser ("Are You Being Served"), Niles goes into the bathroom where his father has just plugged in a Hot and Foamy for shaving cream. Among all of the commotion, you hear was seems to be a gunshot from the bathroom but Niles walks out, covered in warm shaving cream. The Myth: Does the hot and foamy really cause shaving cream cans to explode?

I haven't tried the Hot and Foamy but it sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen if it was all that common.

I CAN tell you that shaving foam cans, like other aerosols, are not supposed to be placed in baggage being transported overseas by military aircraft, since the baggage holds are usually unpressurized and the pressure in the container will rupture the container, making an unholy mess at the very least.

Accordingly, on Graduation Day from one old army training school after which we were rewarded with a trip to the spas and resorts of Southeast Asia, most everyone pitched their cans of shaving cream into the trash can....and it seemed like a shame to waste all that Good Stuff. And, since we weren't going to be around to take the blame, it sounded like the perfect *crime.* And if they did catch us, what were they gonna do? Send us to Vietnam?

So with the various cans, some rags, a couple of mop and broomstick handles taped together and some scrap cardboard, we set off for the Post Headquarters where the *Sunset Gun* was parked. The *Sunset Gun* is a swell old Army tradition of firing off a cannon at dawn and sundown along with the required bugle calls, allowing those out of earshoit of the bugle [or loudspeaker version nowadays] to nevertheless know that the Sun is now officially up or that the duty day is over. Boom! In the old days, the practice meant that the powder charge in the gun was nice and fresh and that the gunners at least had a little practice; now it's a nice old tradition often involving a museum-piece or obsolete cannon. But not where we were.

Ft Knox, Kentucky was and is the home of Armor, where young treadheads are trained on how to use tanks to the best effect without accidentally hurting themselves too much. And so our post sunset gun was one that was mounted in an old Sherman Tank in front of the Headquarters Building flagpole. And since when at rest the barrel of the Sherman's main gun points downward toward the ground [todays point out the back deck, ruining the chance for fun] it was easy to load up a sheet of newspaper with shaving cream, roll it into a tube stuffed up the barrel in front of a wadded-up dead t-shirt, and cram it in as far up the barrel as it would go. After four or five such, the extension of the paired broomhandles being used as ramrods was split and only one was needed for four or five more, which was then plugged with another T-shirt and shoved tight past the gun's muzzle break at it's very front end so that nothing showed from in front and gave the game away.

The guy coming to touch the gun off from inside the turret- which was padlocked; they at least had some clue about the character of the trainees around at that time- had done it at least a hundred times before, every morning. Open top hatch, pop down inside, open breech, load a blank round, wait for the music of *To The Colors* and make it go boom, then reopen the breech, climb out, and lock things back up. If it was near-habit, as he'd done so many times before, it WAS done in the early-morning semidarkness when he was just awake.

And so when the sun came up that morning, there we were at our outfit[perfect alibi!] and only the most sharp-eared of us heard the faint sound of the bugle call followed by a sad and tired blup! instead of a boom!

Most of us found some excuse to get over that way before the mess was cleaned up. There was soot-blackened shaving cream, scraps of burnt newspaper and shreadded t-shirt all over the nicely manicured HQ front lawn. Why, whatever COULD have happened, we asked ever so innocently.

Then there's the time we put the executive officer's Volkswagen on the roof. Of a three-story building.... But that's a secret.

Tankers can be creative critters, if sometimes a little crazy. But I'm much better now.