790C Strikes Again
By George Chevalier

In between Model Airplanes and Bombs we had to develop other diversions and so we developed a cheap stink bomb. The camera film of the 1930s was of a different chemical composition than today’s film is and it was very flammable. We would scrounge old thrown away motion picture film from the Balboa Clubhouse and cut it into say 3 ft. lengths. This was then wrapped in newspaper and squeezed flat. With a match light the end of the newspaper and when you heard the film ignite you stepped on the burning end which put out the flame but the film now sizzled and threw off dense clouds of stinky smoke. A target having been selected in advance we did this quietly on the outside back steps of our target house. When properly smoking crank open the back door to the first floor apartment and toss it in to what was then an upstairs laundry room and then make tracks to avoid being tagged for the caper. This was considered a serious prank and reserved only for targets that had offended us in some way. For example the Sandefords lived in the last four family house at the bottom of Tavernilla St. and young Earl havingfinked to the cops that we had torched a section of Sosa Hill offended us and we sought revenge with the stink bomb and it did fill their house with obnoxious fumes. This was a high risk adventure and not to be interred into lightly.