Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 2, 1993 TAG: 9302020125
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
THINGS THAT GO BOOM IN, UH, ANYTIME
When the slab of sidewalk rose, ripped up by a backhoe, James and Gary Smith peered at the dirt that was left behind.What was that black thing?
James Smith scooped up the ball that had been buried beneath the concrete sidewalk.
There, along Main Street near the intersection with Broad Street in Salem, James hefted the heavy black ball.
"I figured it was the top of a flagpole," he said.
James and Gary, uncle and nephew, work for H&S Construction Co. This winter they've been replacing sidewalks in Salem.
They put the curious ball in the utility box in the back of an H&S pickup truck.
Later, when they had a free moment, the Smiths went back to further examine their find.
Gary dropped it. Then he grabbed a mason's trowel and smacked the ball to knock off clods of dirt that still clung to its sides. James washed the ball down with gasoline.
They put it back in the pickup truck and forgot about it - except for once in a while when they'd take a corner and they'd hear the ball roll against a wall in the truck bed.
The ball stayed back there for about a week; it spent the weekend in the parked truck. Early the following week - this is a couple of weeks ago - the Smiths showed their find to Don Lawrence. He manages The Supply Line, a military-surplus store near where the ball was found.
Lawrence figured it for a cannonball.
The historical society was beckoned and determined that the Smiths had found a 12-pound Civil-War-era cannonball.
Smaller than a soccer ball, it came complete with detonator and fuse. It may have black powder inside.
It may still pack a wallop.
Suddenly this ball that the Smiths had drenched with gasoline and whacked with a trowel was being treated as gingerly as an explosive, primarily because it was an explosive.
"After we found it was live," said James, "we felt like fools. But I never saw anything like it - except in Williamsburg. That one didn't have a detonator."
This one came fully equipped.
Nikki Martin, director of the Salem Museum, would like to defuse the bomb and keep it on display at the new museum at Longwood Park.
But on Monday, state police called her to see if she was ready to blow it up. Munitions specialists at Fort Belvoir, an Army post in Fairfax County, do this sort of thing routinely.
"I told them I've been busy getting together a Boy Scout exhibit, but still hope to find someone who can defuse it," said Martin.
"I think after all it's been through, the threat of it going off is pretty slim," she said. "They told us not to drop it or heat it up."
The cannonball is sitting in the Roanoke College office of history Professor Mark Miller.
It probably dates to a December 1863 munitions raid by Union General William Averell or to the skirmish the following summer between Union and Confederate troops at nearby Hanging Rock, said Martin.
Either way, it could have blown James and Gary Smith to smithereens.
"We could have got one tombstone," quipped Gary. James forced a laugh.