Zerbo Health Remover

Algae Amok

Because I spent my formative years in the fifties, I’m convinced it was a special era. It was the time of Elvis’ “All Shook Up,” cars with fins (the iconic ’57 Chevy), the birth of McDonald’s, and the greatest earth-shaker ever—The Pill. But for me, a self-proclaimed scientific, I was obsessed, not with burgers or sex, but with rockets and space.

During high school lunch or at the donut shop after class, a few of us scientifics would huddle and talk about rockets, launches at White Sands, or visions of future moon colonization. These were not casual encounters, but spiritual gatherings where we venerated Robert Goddard and Werner Von Braun. We held forth on thrust, velocity and propellant combinations—our Gregorian chant, if you will.

Any fool knows there’s no air in space, so future astronauts were condemned to lug around immense tanks of oxygen. As a teenager unburdened by practical experience, I thought that was ridiculous. But what to do?

One bright fall afternoon as I squatted alongside my father’s fishpond (no fish, just scum), the Space Travel God revealed himself.

“Look at the scum,” he commanded. So I did and shrugged. It was just scum.

“Think,” the Holy One commanded.

My thoughts plodded through the halls of chemistry class, biology, and even the many well-worn books I’d collected about space.

Suddenly I had a flash of insight. Not scum. It’s algae. It converts carbon dioxide into oxygen. Exactly what future rocket pilots need! Shouting and waving my hands, I realized that algae, nourished by sunlight and the spent breath of astronauts, could flourish and bequeath precious oxygen. The Space Travel God smiled and slipped into memory.

As a budding scientific, I formulated a plan to grow algae. Little green bugs from the pond could be harvested, and I’d rig an electric lamp to provide twenty-four-hour sunlight. But a reliable source of carbon dioxide eluded me. I asked my chemistry teacher for advice, and—after cynically grilling me about my intentions—he offered the solution: mix marble chips and hydrochloric acid to get carbon dioxide.

I was already on a first name basis with the counter guy at Cenco Scientific where I’d purchased bottles of mercury (try that today,) supplies for my chemistry set, and assorted ingredients for rocket fuel. The next day, I was the proud possessor of a gallon jug of acid and a box of marble chips.

The pungent acid attacked my nose, so I decided to set up the experiment in the garage, rather than my room. I asked my father for permission, of course, but he was preoccupied with the newspaper and just nodded. Good enough.

One look at the grubby single-car garage mandated a major remodel. I swept the workbench clear of junk, emptied a sagging shelf, and scrubbed the grime away. I pilfered glassware, stoppers, and tubing from my chemistry set and in kid-exuberance, assembled a glorious scientific apparatus.

Darkness descended, and the feeble light bulb, high in the rafters, proved inadequate, so I abandoned the project for the night.

Dawn found me in the garage once more where I tossed the chips into a flask, filled a beaker with fresh pond scum, and started a siphon from the acid bottle perched high on the shelf. Drip, drip, drip into the marble. As predicted, the chips bubbled merrily, and the gaseous elixir percolated into my beaker of contented little algae. I snapped on the desk lamp that I’d snatched from my room and, satisfied my elegant experiment was working to perfection, reluctantly left for school.

There, puffed up with pride, I boasted to my fellow scientifics: Larry, Karl, and Jim. The first period bell halted their accolades, and we parted—agreeing to meet after school at my house to check the health of the little green bugs. Anxious, I spent the entire day mentally rehearsing my triumphal victory speech to my friends.

That afternoon, we all rushed to “the laboratory” where a vile odor, that I immediately recognized as hydrochloric acid, assailed us. Disaster! The siphon had run amok. Acid had overflowed the algae beaker, eaten into the bench top and had pooled on the concrete floor where it simmered like a witch’s caldron. Not only had the algae been killed, but also every piece of metal in the garage had succumbed to the vapors and donned the dull reddish-brown color of rust.

“Is algae supposed to be brown?” asked Larry.

“Only dead ones,” Karl said.

Grateful that my father had taken the car to work and thus evaded the rust assault, I clamped off the siphon. Gasping in the toxic air, we hosed the floor and oiled the Crescent wrench, hoe, and myriad other steel objects.

Breathless, I agonized over the vagaries of science and the aggressive nature of acid. My victory speech receded into the realm of embarrassment and hard knocks.

Karl rubbed his close-cropped flattop. “Nice try, Billy, but it’s obvious you’re a dangerous scientific. I have a new model airplane engine I plan to test. A jet. If you want a lesson in genuine research, maybe you can lend a hand.”

So, a few days later, I joined Karl in his garage.

But that’s another tale.