Dynamite and the Old Snag

I can’t remember the precise time of this memory. My best guess is that it happened during the Summer between one of my later high school years or perhaps one Summer between university semesters at BYU.

Dad was developing a large parcel of land to break it up into smaller lots for building homes. This often involved building a road through the forest. Dad had a Caterpillar that could handle most of the forest clearing and leveling that was necessary to create a good access road. However, he occasionally came up against an obstacle that required blasting with dynamite. He asked me to go with him to help out with the blasting. I was all over that like “ugly on an ape”. Anything that involved blowing stuff up was high on my list of cool things to do. This probably contributed to my later interest in pyrotechnics and “energetic chemical reactions”.

On this occasion, the obstacle that was too big for the Caterpillar to handle was a large “snag” pine tree. It was an ancient old beast that was about 5 feet in diameter. The trunk was about 40 feet tall, but the top of the tree was missing. It probably snapped off in a wind storm a hundred years ago and had been rotting in its vertical position ever since then. It was too rotten to attempt to fell like a normal tree. It could easily break up and fall in an uncontrolled manner. Thus, the best solution was to try to blast it with dynamite from a safe distance.

The first step in the process is to open a hole under the stump with a small charge. Dad cut one stick of dynamite in half for the job. He used a special pair of plyers to crimp a blasting cap on a 2-foot piece of fuse. Then he used the pointy end of the plyers to make a hole in the end of the half stick of dynamite. He stuck the blasting cap in the hole and Bob’s your uncle. It looked like a large fire cracker. Then Dad used a 6-foot heavy iron pry bar with a sharp end to make a small hole in the ground just beneath a few of the big roots of the ancient tree stump. He then placed the big fire cracker in the hole and lit the fuse. Dad started walking casually away from the tree stump. This told me there wasn’t too much to be afraid of, but I had no idea how much power was contained in a half stick of dynamite, so I booked it out of there in a bit more of a hurry.

The sound of the charge going off was more like a “thud” than a loud boom like you see on the TV shows. It was kind of like a big T-Rex stomped on the ground just to let you know who is the biggest “baddest” dude in town. When we walked back to the old stump, sure enough, there was a nice little cave under the stump. It was just right for placing in it the big charge that would truly get the job done.

This time Dad got out a five-gallon bucket and poured about 20 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer into it. These were the typical small beads that looked about like tapioca before you add the water and cook it. Then Dad poured about a gallon of diesel fuel into the bucket. After stirring the goop with a big stick, he said that should do the trick. He then prepared a small bundle of about5 sticks of dynamite that were taped together to form a nice tight cylinder. He prepared a fuse with another blasting cap crimped on the end and inserted it into a hole he made in the side of one of the sticks. Finally, he poured the ammonium nitrate goop down the hole under the stump and carefully shoved the bundle of dynamite as far into the hole as he could reach.

This time the fuse was about 6 feet long to give us plenty of time to make some distance between us and the stump after lighting the fuse. I remember running with Dad about 50 yards away where we stood behind the truck and watched the fuse burn. It was just like in the old movies where the fuse made lots of sparks and smoke as it burned. It seemed like we watched the fuse burn for about 5 minutes, but it was probably only about 20 seconds. The excitement and anticipation were thrilling to a young guy like me who had never seen a real dynamite explosion before.

This time, the sound was much more impressive. It was a big ka-whump that shook the ground and filled the air with a big cloud of dust. Rocks and chunks of rotten wood were thrown into the air about 80 feet high. We had to keep our eyes looking in the air for a while to make sure none of those big rocks were going to make it all the way over to where we were standing. It took at least a few minutes for the dust to settle enough for us to see what had happened. When the dust finally cleared Dad started to laugh. The big old stump was still standing, but now it was only about 8 inches in diameter. Apparently, the charge had blown away all the rotten wood, but there was a solid core of wood that was strong enough to resist the blast.

It just goes to show ya that when it comes to people and old stumps, you just can’t tell what’s really inside by looking at what’s on the outside. We had no idea that that old stump had a solid core of wood inside that was strong enough to survive a sizeable blast of explosives. And just like that ugly old stump, the funny-looking kid next door could have a heart of gold when you really get to know him. The moral of the story is… don’t trust your eyes when it comes to judging a stump or a person’s character. The skill of “looking upon the heart” takes a lot more effort than a mere glance with our mortal eyes.