Homer Hickam - Dont Blow Yourself Up: The Further True Adventures and Travails of the Rocket Boy of October Sky

Advance Praise for Dont Blow Y oursel f Up

West Virginias favorite son is also its most beloved writer, the Rocket Boys Homer Hickam. In the summer after he graduated from high school, he realized he had forgotten to apply to a college. Not to worry, his mother did it for himand got him admitted too. Hmm. This boy was obviously destined for great things. In this memoir Hickam the raconteur takes us along on his adventures: college, a cannon, the army, Vietnam, underwater exploration, NASA engineer, and bestselling writer. Its a helluva journey, a triumph of the spirit. Dont Blow Yourself Up is destined to become a cla ssic.

Stephen Coonts, author of Flig ht of the Intruder and Libertys Last S tand

Just lovely. I cannot recall when I laughed out loud, and wanted to cry, and held my breath, and just thoroughly enjoyed the true story of a mans life. Homer Hickam by God lived some things, across the fields of a war, under the sea, and in the clouds. He even survived Richard Nixon. Top that.

Rick Bragg, bestselling author, Professor of Wri ting, University of Alabama, Journalism Depart ment

If youve read his bestselling memoir Rocket Boys and think you know Homer Hickam, think again. Not only is Homer a man for all seasons and the true definition of a Renaissance man, but he is, without a doubt, one of the great storytellers of our time. In the pages of Dont Blow Yourself Up , youll travel the world with Homer, all the while asking yourself, Is there anything this man cant do? One thing is for certainWest Virginias favorite son sure knows how to write a memoir that will keep you captivated from the first page to the last.

Dreama Denver, award -w inning author and wife of Gilligans Island star, the late Bob De nver

Homer Hickam brings us on a wonderful journey through his truly extraordinary life. Providing a beautiful account of his dreams, service, and adventure that led to contributions to the space program and the literary world, Homer takes us from rocket boy to rocket man to bestselling author. He writes about his experiences with an engineers precision and a poets emotion, not only sharing the details of the times in which he has lived, but also the deep inner feelings of his lifes successes and disappointments in a most personal and incredibly honest way. This is more than a collection of stories from one mans life, it is an inspirational guide to how a person with an adventurous spirit and a good heart can live life to the fullest. Read this book and be inspired to reach for t he s tars.

Mike Massimino, former NASA Astro naut

A POST HILL PRESS BOOK

ISBN: 978-1-64293-824-1

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-64293-825-8

Dont Blow Yourself Up:

The Further True Adventures and Travails of the Rocket Boy of October Sky

2021 by Homer Hickam

All Rights Reserved

This is a work of nonfiction. All people, locations, events, and situations are portrayed to the best of the authors memory.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Post Hill Press

New York Nashville

posthillpress.com

Published in the United States of America

To my brother (and hero) Jim Hickam who probably wondered what I was doing during all th ose y ears.

Dont blow yo ursel f up.

Elsie Hickam, the au thors mom

Didnt I tell you not to blow yo ursel f up?

Elsie Hickam, still the au thors mom

Contents

I f youre reading this, likely youve also read about my adventures as a young rocket builder in the little mining town of Coalwood, West Virginia. I wrote about that in a memoir called Rocket Boys (which was made into the marvelous movie October Sky ) and then followed it with two sequels, The Coalwood Way and Sky of Stone , both set in my home town.

But there was a bit more to my life than I wrote about in those books. After Coalwood, I went to a tough engineering military school where I famously built a cannon, and then I fought in a war, and then became a scuba instructor, dived on some deep shipwrecks, and unraveled the history of a giant battle along the American coasts. Along the way I worked for NASA, and then I wrote a famous book, had a movie made that was based on it, and did some other things. More importantly, I had a lot of great friends during all of it. And a few enemies, too. Such things happen in a long life.

After enough people asked me when I was going to do it, I decided to sit down and write about some of the things that happened in those years after I was a Rocket Boy in West Virginia. This memoir is the result. There isnt room to write it all down, but maybe I can hit some highlights up through the time Rocket Boys was written and October Sky was made, a stretch of nearly forty years. A lot has happened since, but endings are as important as beginnings. When I teach writing, I tell my aspiring writers, especially ones interested in writing memoirs, to think about where theyre going before they go there. If you just write down everything that happened without running a thread through the piece that ties it up at the end, you may not ever figure out how to get there or when youre done. Theres also a Bible proverb Ive always admired that says, It is the glory of God to hide a thing but the honor of kings to search it out. What I think that means is our Creator didnt just hand us all the answers but left it up to us to seek out what is true and real.

Thats what this book is mostly about, stories about times in my life when Ive learned truths about myself or other people or even the world that I think my readers might like to think about. Or, almost as important, those times that caused smiles or tears. I hope you enjoy m y cho ices.

O nce I started building rockets and got good at it, it looked to be pretty definite that I was going to leave Coalwood and go to college. The only problem was I forgot to apply. This, of course, was not my fault, because I was a teenage boy with a lot of things on my mind. This included building those rockets with some other boys while contending with life in a small coal camp and then going off to the National Science Fair and coming back with a gold medal. After that, to honor everybody who helped us, we had a day of launching rockets at our rocket range we called Cape Coalwood. I wrote about that glorious day in Rocket Boys , and it was also in the movie October Sky . It ended when my dad showed up to watch our last rocket that went miles into the sky and, for the first time in forever, acted like he was proud of me. That scene in both the book and the movie tends to make folks feel good and cry at the same time and, for that, I just say, Youre wel come.

What I didnt write about and what the movie people didnt show was when I got home after that final launch, the entire thing was over and done. Dad went back to work at the mine and Mom went back to painting Myrtle Beach on the kitchen wall and I put all the bent tubes and corroded nozzles and splintered nose cones in a basement corner and climbed the stairs to my room and, with the other boys off to wherever they went, found myself by myself. A very important part of my life was over. There was no need to build any more rockets and, since Id graduated from high school, there was nothing to study or figure out, so there I was with a lot of success and not much to do with it. It was about then that I realized I hadnt applied for college, which, as mentioned earlier, was not my fault. Actually, it was the fault of the vice president of the United States because of a letter hed written me that spring, a letter Id picked up myself at the Coalwood Post Office without anybody else seeing it but me, and it was not a happy letter. In fact, it was soul crus hing.