At 04:21 PM 3/4/2011, george jannini wrote:
>   They'd likely said something had there been actual fire.

Yes, my landlady might have had something to say had I burned her
house down.  But I meant that it hadn't occurred to me that there
would be clouds of smoke along with the considerable tongue of red
fire (my imagination is probably supplying the dripping
sparks).   None of the manuals I'd read* on how to light off a tracer
bullet had mentioned this little fact.  I still don't understand how
they packed so much sustained excitement into the back of a .30-06
rifle bullet.

*n=0, of course, since the very first line would have read First Go Outside.

:)
d