Experimenting with Dynamite
DYNAMITE!
For some reason, our parents thought that my brother and I could take care of ourselves. They let us run around and do about anything that we wanted on the farm. We’d often walk over the hills to our grandparents’ home about three miles away. We wouldn’t follow any roads but just go in the general direction – even getting slightly lost in the hills occasionally. Plus, to get to the grandparents’ home, we often traversed the Guadalupe Mines property with its abandoned mine shafts and mercury here and there.
And our parents never got excited when we pulled a turn of the century buggy (actual transportation for our great-grandparents who settled the ranch) to the top of a hill on the ranch. Then, we’d climb in, and have a wild ride to the bottom careening over bumps and holes. And you know what, it never tipped over, and our parents were happy to see us having so much fun.
It didn’t bother my parents either when we walked five miles to the nearest grocery store picking up empty bottles along the way to get the refund money. Then we would spend it on double-dip ice cream cones for 10 cents each. Of course, the world was a lot safer place then.
The foolhardiest action occurred when my brother and Joe, a young worker living on the ranch, decided that they wanted to blow up stumps. To do this, they made dynamite out of a mixture of 33 percent nitrogen fertilizer and diesel fuel. (You actually have this stuff on ranches.) They found it very, very ticklish to get the right ratio. It took many measurements and trials for them to succeed. Then they pulled the fuses out of firecrackers to create one long fuse. They lit the fuse and ran like hell. They were so successful that they blew the stump 50 feet in the air. This is one time that my parents spoke up. Our father suggested that they not do this again.
aginggratefully 