Growing up in North Eastern Minnesota in the 1960s was quite different than anything people who grew up in the 70s and 80s of mainstream America had a chance to experience. And just so any FBI or DHS snoopers are monitoring this let me emphasize now: my father never taught me anything about the use of explosives.

My dad had a thing for blowing shit up. In those days, he would go to the local co-op or hardware store and buy dynamite and blasting caps on a fairly regular basis. He used it to remove stumps on our farm and the neighbors’ farms. He also was very adept at burying the huge glacial rocks that made plowing a field difficult. When he was drilling water wells, he could crack a bedrock shelf with a half stick, and hardly ever blew the casing 300 feet into the air (a totally awesome sight when it did happen).

In 1967, I was 14 and our neighbor Leo came over with his Farmall H tractor. We had two tractors, a Case VAC my dad used and a little Farmall A I puttered around on. It was the 3rd of July. My dad, convinced that indoor plumbing was here to stay, decided to rid the farm of the outhouse his father had built about twenty years earlier. Its important to point out that my grandfather was a somewhat whacko bricklayer/cement mason.

We used the 3 tractors, lots of chains and a great deal of ingenuity to pull the monstrous reinforced concrete footing Gramps had made to found the family shitter on. After we got its footing out, we dragged it out about a quarter mile to the middle of an unused field and washed it off with high pressure hoses hooked up to a pump mounted on one of the tractor’s PTO (power take off: a separate shaft providing a rotational power source for accessories and implements, in case you didn’t know) and a 500 gallon cattle tank. Then we dumped about 30 cubic yards of gravel into the old pit to fill it.

On the morning of the 4th, my dad kicked my ass out of bed about 5:30 am and we went to work. Using hammers and rock drills (old underground mining tools, from the 1870s), we punched eight holes deep into the four foot thick footing. Each hole was then loaded with a two pound stick of 85HiDrive Dynamite (an 85% nitroglycerin charge, used mainly for mining and heavy demolition) topped with a no-delay electrical blasting cap. The caps were wired in parallel to two separate reels of solid copper-core insulated wire. Old tires were stacked up against the footing, dirt was pushed up against the tires with the tractor. Then the wire was rolled back to the farmyard, and we went and had coffee, awaiting high noon.

At around a quarter of twelve, a blue Ford station wagon stopped on the county highway that ran past our farm. Across from the highway was a small clearing and pond. The family in the station wagon got out with a blanked, a picnic basket and four young children. They spread out the blanket and sat down for a holiday picnic.

As the noon hour approached, my dad and I went out to the yard. One wire was hooked up to the rear axle of the tractor, the other was to the magneto output. I had the honor of turning the crank.

The mushroom cloud that arose was amazing: all black and white, rising a few hundred feet straight up into the clear blue sky, without even a breeze to disperse it. The BOOM! was totally unreal, it made your head spin, the shockwave and earth tremors seemed like the end of the world had arrived.

Across the road, the family dropped their picnic lunch and ran for their car, taking off in their own cloud of smoke, tires burning on the asphalt. I don’t think the doors were even closed, and there might have been a kid or two dragging down the highway. The picnic blanket was left behind, replete with the food and drink that had been abandoned in the mad dash to flee for what they no doubt thought was their lives.

My mom gave my dad a halfhearted lecture afterwards; he just smiled and winked at me.

Greatest Fourth of July ever!

Feel free to add your own holiday/explosion tales.