So, I told you that my dad brought home expired dynamite from work. Well now, forty three years later, I'm not absolutely sure that's where it came from, but Daddy was an electronics engineer for the Navy. Hey, it was a munitions depot, so is so surprising that it could produce the only dynamite I've ever seen in my fifty one years? Well, Daddy also got a blasters handbook. For more than a week, he sat at the dining room table figuring out how much was the right amount of dynamite he needed to blow up that old stump in the back yard. It was like he had dynamite and this was the perfect excuse for him to use it. There he sat, with that little book, a slide rule, a mechanical pencil and a pad of graph paper. Where do you pick up a copy of a blaster's handbook anyway? I don't really need to know because I inherited that handbook after my dad died. I was the one who went to engineering school, so my mother gave me all of his books. That's my favorite book in his collection. But where did he get it? Really! It's not like you could order it from Amazon.
Wait, I just searched on Amazon and believe it or not, you can buy a number of different editions of The Blaster's Handbook from them! Way to go Amazon! Still, the Internet wasn't around back then, so I'm not sure where he got it.
Daddy wanted to talk out this problem of the dynamite and the stump. I know he talked to his carpool buddies because they magically showed up for three weekend mornings before the event and came early to our back yard on the designated day. But when Daddy was really working on a problem, he talked about it a lot, so he talked about it even to me. Maybe my mother was worried enough about this project that she asked him questions. I don't know. Maybe he was just talking out loud and I happened to be there, interested enough in dynamite to listen to what he was saying. I'll give him this - I never saw the dynamite before the day he blew up that stump. I have no idea where he hid it and I wasn't about to go looking.
After filling pages of graph paper with calculations I didn't understand, he announced that either a half a stick or a quarter stick would be the right amount. I wasn't sure why he didn't go right to a third of a stick, but then I hadn't learned about calculating maximums and minimums at the age of nine. I must have asked him which, assuming he'd made some kind of error if he didn't know more clearly than that. It made me nervous. At eight, I wanted a man to know exactly how much dynamite was needed for a job that was going to blow near my house. If he didn't do it right, I imagined the back wall of the house could collapse and all the windows in the neighborhood could blow out. I had seen the movies.
Finally, my dad convinced us all that he knew how much dynamite he needed to do the job. He had eight sticks of it. Then, he started another part of the job that made me a little more nervous. He decided to calculate how many pieces of that half of a stick of dynamite would blow the stump into chunks and how to wire it together to blow all at once. Here, I imagined that perfectly placed dynamite pieces would simultaneously blow and the stump would cascade down in a confetti of sawdust that was easy to rake up and throw on the compost heap. And while we were at it, maybe a shower of sparks should hang in the sky shaped like a chrysanthemum.
The part that made me nervous was how Daddy was going to cut, break, tear, or file that half stick of dynamite into three pieces without it going off in our garage. I had seen enough episodes of 'Road Runner' to know what could happen if my dad was the coyote instead of the road runner. After the tree got him in the leg, I was thinking he might be the coyote.
I think my mom got tired of making coffee and serving cake to Jim, Sam, Rudy and my dad as they worked out how to wire that dynamite. I was personally glad to see them all there, glad they each agreed with my dad's calculations. I could see how you could make a colossal mistake using a slide rule. (Hey, did you know I'm old enough that they hadn't invented calculators when I was eight?) It helped that my dad told me how they had different engineers performing what he called 'redundant calculations.' I liked that part, imagining the confetti coming down again. I also liked that these men didn't tell me to go away and leave them to their games.
"Oh, this is going to be good," Rudy said, rubbing the back of his head. I thought it might be better if we could hold it in his back yard instead of ours, but I liked the confidence in his voice.
"Really good," said Jim, grinning. I wanted to tell Jim I didn't want it to be really good. Really good could be too big and my room was at the back of the house.
"I think we're ready," my dad said. It was like they were planning to shoot off a rocket to the moon. This is how they worked. Did I tell you how they engineered our upright piano down the stairs and into the basement? Another time, maybe.
So there we were, in the backyard again. It was a hot Saturday afternoon. There was iced tea, Kool-Aid, and oatmeal cookies this time. The whole neighborhood had turned out. I would guess there were about thirty-five people standing mostly in Jim's back yard staring at that stump. Daddy wouldn't let anyone but his three buddies near the stump. They dug down around it and drilled three wide holes in the stump on opposite sides. They wired the red hunks of dynamite and dropped them into the holes. They connected the wires to a long wire that Daddy strung almost all the way across the yard to the edge of Jim's yard. Daddy shouted for the kids to move back further onto Jim's yard. Some of them hid behind trees and peeked out from behind them. I stood as close behind my dad as he would let me. I could see the little switch, a shiny metal lever. That was it? No plunger?
My brother did the countdown. He had wanted to throw the switch, but my dad said he was going to be responsible for whatever was going to happen. What do you mean whatever was going to happen? Ten, nine, eight ....
I could feel a tickling deep in my stomach.
Seven, six, five, four ...
Oh, I wanted this to work. I held my hands over my ears and braced myself.
Three, two, one, and, click.
I took a half a breath before it blew. It was louder than the firecrackers the town set off for the Fourth of July. One loud crack. It worked! That stump flew fifteen or twenty feet straight up into the air. It seemed to hang there for a half a second, then it fell in one huge piece back into the hole it blew out of.
Maybe Daddy should have used a whole stick.
Thank you for listening, jb
Wait, I just searched on Amazon and believe it or not, you can buy a number of different editions of The Blaster's Handbook from them! Way to go Amazon! Still, the Internet wasn't around back then, so I'm not sure where he got it.
Daddy wanted to talk out this problem of the dynamite and the stump. I know he talked to his carpool buddies because they magically showed up for three weekend mornings before the event and came early to our back yard on the designated day. But when Daddy was really working on a problem, he talked about it a lot, so he talked about it even to me. Maybe my mother was worried enough about this project that she asked him questions. I don't know. Maybe he was just talking out loud and I happened to be there, interested enough in dynamite to listen to what he was saying. I'll give him this - I never saw the dynamite before the day he blew up that stump. I have no idea where he hid it and I wasn't about to go looking.
After filling pages of graph paper with calculations I didn't understand, he announced that either a half a stick or a quarter stick would be the right amount. I wasn't sure why he didn't go right to a third of a stick, but then I hadn't learned about calculating maximums and minimums at the age of nine. I must have asked him which, assuming he'd made some kind of error if he didn't know more clearly than that. It made me nervous. At eight, I wanted a man to know exactly how much dynamite was needed for a job that was going to blow near my house. If he didn't do it right, I imagined the back wall of the house could collapse and all the windows in the neighborhood could blow out. I had seen the movies.
Finally, my dad convinced us all that he knew how much dynamite he needed to do the job. He had eight sticks of it. Then, he started another part of the job that made me a little more nervous. He decided to calculate how many pieces of that half of a stick of dynamite would blow the stump into chunks and how to wire it together to blow all at once. Here, I imagined that perfectly placed dynamite pieces would simultaneously blow and the stump would cascade down in a confetti of sawdust that was easy to rake up and throw on the compost heap. And while we were at it, maybe a shower of sparks should hang in the sky shaped like a chrysanthemum.
The part that made me nervous was how Daddy was going to cut, break, tear, or file that half stick of dynamite into three pieces without it going off in our garage. I had seen enough episodes of 'Road Runner' to know what could happen if my dad was the coyote instead of the road runner. After the tree got him in the leg, I was thinking he might be the coyote.
I think my mom got tired of making coffee and serving cake to Jim, Sam, Rudy and my dad as they worked out how to wire that dynamite. I was personally glad to see them all there, glad they each agreed with my dad's calculations. I could see how you could make a colossal mistake using a slide rule. (Hey, did you know I'm old enough that they hadn't invented calculators when I was eight?) It helped that my dad told me how they had different engineers performing what he called 'redundant calculations.' I liked that part, imagining the confetti coming down again. I also liked that these men didn't tell me to go away and leave them to their games.
"Oh, this is going to be good," Rudy said, rubbing the back of his head. I thought it might be better if we could hold it in his back yard instead of ours, but I liked the confidence in his voice.
"Really good," said Jim, grinning. I wanted to tell Jim I didn't want it to be really good. Really good could be too big and my room was at the back of the house.
"I think we're ready," my dad said. It was like they were planning to shoot off a rocket to the moon. This is how they worked. Did I tell you how they engineered our upright piano down the stairs and into the basement? Another time, maybe.
So there we were, in the backyard again. It was a hot Saturday afternoon. There was iced tea, Kool-Aid, and oatmeal cookies this time. The whole neighborhood had turned out. I would guess there were about thirty-five people standing mostly in Jim's back yard staring at that stump. Daddy wouldn't let anyone but his three buddies near the stump. They dug down around it and drilled three wide holes in the stump on opposite sides. They wired the red hunks of dynamite and dropped them into the holes. They connected the wires to a long wire that Daddy strung almost all the way across the yard to the edge of Jim's yard. Daddy shouted for the kids to move back further onto Jim's yard. Some of them hid behind trees and peeked out from behind them. I stood as close behind my dad as he would let me. I could see the little switch, a shiny metal lever. That was it? No plunger?
My brother did the countdown. He had wanted to throw the switch, but my dad said he was going to be responsible for whatever was going to happen. What do you mean whatever was going to happen? Ten, nine, eight ....
I could feel a tickling deep in my stomach.
Seven, six, five, four ...
Oh, I wanted this to work. I held my hands over my ears and braced myself.
Three, two, one, and, click.
I took a half a breath before it blew. It was louder than the firecrackers the town set off for the Fourth of July. One loud crack. It worked! That stump flew fifteen or twenty feet straight up into the air. It seemed to hang there for a half a second, then it fell in one huge piece back into the hole it blew out of.
Maybe Daddy should have used a whole stick.
Thank you for listening, jb
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