Tater Shots: Boys Love 'Em

In Fauquier County, The Potato Gun Satisfies an Appetite For Destruction

There are times when men do as they must.

Jason knew such times 3,300 years ago when he and his crew launched the Argo to explore the eastern Mediterranean -- then still viewed as a realm of unknowable gods and monsters. The need, the instinct, the drive remain today. Take a close look at the bridge of the Enterprise in "Star Trek." That's Jason and the Argonauts rendered in modern terms.

Thus it came to pass recently that some men in the foothills of the Blue Ridge in Fauquier County found themselves compelled by forces larger than themselves -- forces they could barely explain -- to disappear into the workshop of Rob Payne of Broad Run. Some might call it a humble shed out back of his house, but then, some doubtless scoffed at the paltry length of the Argo or the cheesy set of the first "Star Trek."

Payne and his neighbor, Dave Anders, embarked on their particular adventure armed with Wal-Mart bags stuffed with $97.09 worth of PVC pipe, sparking flint, ammunition, targets, beer and hair spray. They would labor through the night, shaping these humble materials. It was a ritual as old as that of the early inhabitants of North America when they flaked humble rock into the Clovis points that became the spears with which they would conquer the wilderness.

Rob and Dave built a spudgun.

Why was it done? Why bother to craft a simple but elegant hand-held cannon that can fire a naked potato 300 yards at speeds approaching 300 miles per hour? Why why why?

Perhaps it is best articulated by the legendary Joel D. Suprise, the laird of the Spudgun Technology Center of Appleton, Wis. -- "Because we are men; and because we can."

Or perhaps we should reflect on the wisdom of the bard, the chronicler, the venerable William Gurstelle of Minneapolis, author of "Backyard Ballistics" -- of which more than 170,000 copies have been sold -- when he reflects, "Anything that goes bang, whoosh, splat -- guys like that."

Whatever the deep and fundamental source of their need, this is the tale of its sating. Jason would have understood.

The Men

It takes a certain type of imagination to dream of assembling common hardware into a device that will launch root vegetables over the tallest trees and a sixth of a mile downrange.

Rob Payne and Dave Anders are the kind of guys who have been known to start preparing for Halloween in July. For years, they and other men in the area have gotten together to turn a nearby quarter-mile of forest lane into a venue for a haunted hayride. Their goal, as Payne puts it: "to give the little [unfortunates] something to talk about to their shrinks if they grow up." They also own enough industrial-strength extension cords to power the forest for sound effects, smoke pots, eerie lights and, last year, a robot.

This is the context in which it came as such a shock when these men realized that after all these years, they'd never gotten around to building a potato chucker propelled by explosive mist and a spark. It challenged their self-esteem, already tested by the slurs of a prejudiced world.