On/Off Dynamite 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
This is an event that I witnessed, and to this day I still have nightmares about it.
I have a friend who works for the Telephone company and own a little hobby farm with a few cows and pigs. John (not real name) always used his position at the Company to his advantage on the farm. He would often use the post hole digger to make holes to put up his fences around his property, and the boom truck to assist him in raising new buildings.
One thing that always bothered him was this large rock (1970 Buick sized) in the center of one of his pastures. Although it wasn’t in the way and the cows didn’t mind it being there, it really bothered him for some reason. One summer he got his generator and a masonry drill and drilled a hole in the center of the rock so he could blast it with some TNT. Luckily/Unluckily for him, at work there was a crate with 2 sticks left. Since all explosives are to be accounted for he just filled out a form saying that they were water damaged, and that he let them soak in a tub for three days before he cut them open and flushed them down the head. Being a bit of a thrill seeker I informed him that I wanted to be there when he blew up the offending rock.
The next weekend we went to the pasture and started preparations for the big event. John had made a cool switch the night before with a lawnmower battery and a light switch from a hardware store. The cord attached to the dynamite and the detonator cap was fashioned from a tattered old 130 ft extension cord, and attached to his switch.
John placed the dynamite and cap in the hole and walked back to the switch. Hooked up the wires and flipped it. Nothing happened. He flipped the switch back and started to walk the length of the extension cord looking for defects. He saw none. Figuring it was the stick he removed it from the rock and examined it. Figuring it was the cap he started to walk back to the switch to get a new one. Ten feet from the rock he noticed a tear in the cord. Bending over he repaired it and the dynamite promptly blew up. Luckily the stick had been taken out of the rock and exploded harmlessly on the ground. From my perspective John had just been consumed by a huge cloud of dirt and smoke and was easily in 50 thousand pieces. Almost about to pass out I see John walking out of the debris and swearing at the top of his lungs. He was not injured except for a slight ringing in his ears and a welt from a flying piece of the dynamite casing.
It seems that the master electrician (remember he works for the telephone company) wired the extension cord and battery backwards so that the switch was on when it said it was off. John promptly removed the battery, and replanted the second stick in the rock, and blew it to kingdom come (2 pieces the size of VW Bugs). That was the last time he ever tried demolition and promptly paid a loader and a dump truck to take the 2 remaining pieces away.
I don’t know if this is Darwin Material but that day he almost removed himself and quite possibly me from the Gene Pool because of a stpid mix-up between off and on.
Submitted on 04/05/2002
Submitted by:
att Goss
Reference:
Personal Account, May 3, 2001
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