rockets "Cape Coalwood", in honor of Cape Canaveral. The Rocket Boys enjoy mixed success during their three-year rocket launching campaign (1957 to 1960). They employ several fuel mixtures including rocket candy and a mixture called "zincoshine", which is composed of zinc dust and sulfur, along with alcohol from moonshine, supplied by a local bootlegger, as a binder for the mixture. They launch a total of 35 rockets, all sequentially numbered Auk I–XXXI. (There are five different Auk XXIIs.) They also won a National Science Fair gold medal for their rockets and project titled "A Study of Amateur Rocketry Techniques." Characters Homer "Sonny" Hickam Jr. is the author and narrator of the memoir. He is 8 years old at the beginning of the story but is in high school for most of the book. He serves as the leader of the Rocket Boys. He is nearsighted, wears glasses, and plays in the school band. Elsie Hickam is Homer Hickam's wife and the mother of Jim and "Sonny" Hickam. She has a tense relationship with her husband through most of the story. She is supportive of Sonny's rocket building, and often finds herself at odds with her husband, Homer Sr., about the rocket building. She often tells Sonny, "Don't blow yourself up." She works on a mural of Myrtle Beach throughout the memoir. Homer Hickam Sr. is Elsie Hickam's husband and the father of Jim and "Sonny" Hickam. He is the hard-headed mine foreman in Coalwood. He takes his job very seriously, going out of his way to help miners in distress. He is almost always at odds with the union leader, John Dubonnet, who dated Elsie when they were all in high school together. Homer Sr. seems to not care about Sonny's affairs as much as he does Jim's; Sonny points this out in the book much to Homer Sr.'s chagrin. He has a spot on his lung that is the common miner's disease, black lung (Coal Workers' Pneumoconiosis), but refuses to quit work, although most men who are discovered to have this illness are forced into retirement, but allowed to stay in Coalwood. Jim Hickam is Homer Hickam Jr.'s older brother and the son of Elsie and Homer Hickam. He is a star athlete, which leads to him having several conflicts with "Sonny" over how Homer seems to favor Jim over "Sonny". He dates the girl Sonny is in love