Kaboom! or more bang for your buck
As usual I sit down with no idea what I am going to say. Which is really normal when you realize that you have no idea who you are saying it to. If it was a fishing buddy it would be a lie. If it was a drinking buddy it would be a lie. If it was a buddy buddy we would be something made up because I really have no memory. So I guess you could say that would be a lie too.
Like the rest of you out there I learned at a very young age how to lie. And from what I can tell everyone I know no matter how old they are we have all become consummate liars. I remember the 46 inch brown trout I caught in the Ogden river. Of course the line broke and I had to just guesstimate, but I am sure he was 46 inches.
Then there was the time when I rode the wildest horse in the world. In all actuality it was a mule. I had some very large corrals. One was about 50 feet across and another was about 100 feet across. They both had fences made out of railroad ties. They were a minimum of 8 feet tall. They were fantastic for training horses but I had one mule, her name was Louise, she was the most beautiful reddish brown color with the biggest deepest black eyes. She stood from the ground to the top of her withers (which is her back) right at around 6 feet.
I used the large corral as my training corral. Every time I hit the ground I would find a new rock. Not necessarily by landing on it, but by feeling it as I was getting up or stumbling over it. When I say rock I mean rock, about a foot in diameter or close to that. These we would throw outside the corral so all around the corral was a nice bed of rocks. The inside of the corral wasn't so bad. It was mostly horse shit that had been trampled on, broken up, weathered, and softened - usually dry. It made for a softer landing. When you train horses or mules you have a lot of landings.
While riding Louise one day or teaching her to be ridden she got the typical burr under her saddle and gave me a rodeo. I cleared the 8 foot fence, I know because as I passed over it I could see the bird droppings on top of the rails. And this beautiful rock paving that had been created around the outside of the corral was my landing field. I hurt my back and hip really bad and had to take a break.
During the winter months I preferred to use the smaller corral for working with an animal and left the rest of the animals in the larger corral of which there were eleven extras. This meant there was an abundance of fresh manure mixed with snow and water. The consistency of stucco. The smaller corral didn't get used for living in as much and didn't have as much manure in the bottom. One winter I had a couple of new animals I wanted to work but the snow had drifted and filled the corral all eight feet high. We tried the tractor and the backhoe to try and remove the snow drifts, but there it was drift, freeze, drift, freeze, drift, freeze, regular cycles. So the unused corral was not full of snow, but full of hard ice. Being unable to use the backhoe and I didn't have a bulldozer, but I did have dynamite.
Now I used dynamite all of the time. I would take the horses to the river each day for their drinks. When the river would freeze over two or three feet thick, I would use an ice auger and a stick of dynamite. This would open a hole large enough for the herd to get their fill of water. I decided to use one of the sayings that I live by, "THERE IS NO PROBLEM THAT CANNOT BE PROPERLY RECTIFIED BY THE PROPER Application OF HIGH EXPLOSIVES". So, I took my ice auger and I only had forty seven sticks of dynamite left in the case (they usually come fifty), so I was only able to drill forty seven holes in the ice in the corral. In the explosive business we use a product called primer cord. This is actually an explosive that looks like a piece of nylon rope. It burns at 28,000 feet per second, thus making it an explosive not a fuse. Most fuses burn at forty seconds to the foot. Some longer, some shorter. Not being able to count very high I always used the forty second per foot. That way I knew that for each foot of fuse I could get away from the explosion by running taking four foot per step - I could get one hundred feet away in forty seconds (or something like that), far enough to get out of harms way. When you are blasting and you have several places you want to blow up at the same time you tie them together with primer cord. That way everything that is hooked to the primer cord blows up instantaneously.
After drilling forty seven holes in the ice in my corral I placed one stick of dynamite in each hole. No sense having one or two sticks hanging around getting old. I figured I would use all I had left and get some new in the spring. After tying it all together with primer cord I put about fifty feet of fuse, one blasting cap, and about one hundred feet of distance between me and the corral. Now I need to explain that our house sat a quarter of a mile from the highway. Our nearest neighbor was just a bit over a mile away. My horses and mules loved fireworks. I had used them to teach them to handle the startling effect dynamite would have on them in the mountains. When the saw me putting dynamite in all of the holes I am sure the combination of seeing and smelling the dynamite let them know there was going to be an explosion. I did mention my nearest neighbor lived about a mile and a half away didn't I?
Well, when I touched off that case of dynamite and turned that many thousands of cubic feet of ice into very fine powder snow it only took a few minutes before my neighbor Ken Aimone came flying down my driveway in his truck to see if anyone was killed. As it turned out the only casualty was the frozen snow and ice. It had cleared that corral to the ground. There was not a bit of snow left in the corral. And I am sure the snow fell out of the air about a mile down the road. When Ken said, "Hey Ken, what the hell did you blow up? Is everybody ok?" I just pointed out to him that I was clearing out the corral that me, him, and his cousin couldn't do with our tractors. He said, "That is the biggest explosion I've ever seen, heard, and definitely felt. All I could see was that big white cloud over your ranch."
I did mention this was when I lived in Fort Bridger, Wyoming didn't I? All that fine powdered snow really resembled smoke. Knowing it was me and that I was always using dynamite on the ranch to train my animals he'd never paid attention before. But when this one went off he said he thought it was like Hiroshima and I can tell by the little smiles on the face of my typist that she remembers the incident well. She liked fireworks too; the bigger the better, the more the merrier. I think that was the biggest one she had ever seen too. So in the future if you have a problem that you can' solve any other way just remember "THERE IS NO PROBLEM THAT CANNOT BE PROPERLY RECTIFIED BY THE PROPER Application OF HIGH EXPLOSIVES".
God Bless you all,
Ken, the afterlife messenger
Like the rest of you out there I learned at a very young age how to lie. And from what I can tell everyone I know no matter how old they are we have all become consummate liars. I remember the 46 inch brown trout I caught in the Ogden river. Of course the line broke and I had to just guesstimate, but I am sure he was 46 inches.
Then there was the time when I rode the wildest horse in the world. In all actuality it was a mule. I had some very large corrals. One was about 50 feet across and another was about 100 feet across. They both had fences made out of railroad ties. They were a minimum of 8 feet tall. They were fantastic for training horses but I had one mule, her name was Louise, she was the most beautiful reddish brown color with the biggest deepest black eyes. She stood from the ground to the top of her withers (which is her back) right at around 6 feet.
I used the large corral as my training corral. Every time I hit the ground I would find a new rock. Not necessarily by landing on it, but by feeling it as I was getting up or stumbling over it. When I say rock I mean rock, about a foot in diameter or close to that. These we would throw outside the corral so all around the corral was a nice bed of rocks. The inside of the corral wasn't so bad. It was mostly horse shit that had been trampled on, broken up, weathered, and softened - usually dry. It made for a softer landing. When you train horses or mules you have a lot of landings.
While riding Louise one day or teaching her to be ridden she got the typical burr under her saddle and gave me a rodeo. I cleared the 8 foot fence, I know because as I passed over it I could see the bird droppings on top of the rails. And this beautiful rock paving that had been created around the outside of the corral was my landing field. I hurt my back and hip really bad and had to take a break.
During the winter months I preferred to use the smaller corral for working with an animal and left the rest of the animals in the larger corral of which there were eleven extras. This meant there was an abundance of fresh manure mixed with snow and water. The consistency of stucco. The smaller corral didn't get used for living in as much and didn't have as much manure in the bottom. One winter I had a couple of new animals I wanted to work but the snow had drifted and filled the corral all eight feet high. We tried the tractor and the backhoe to try and remove the snow drifts, but there it was drift, freeze, drift, freeze, drift, freeze, regular cycles. So the unused corral was not full of snow, but full of hard ice. Being unable to use the backhoe and I didn't have a bulldozer, but I did have dynamite.
Now I used dynamite all of the time. I would take the horses to the river each day for their drinks. When the river would freeze over two or three feet thick, I would use an ice auger and a stick of dynamite. This would open a hole large enough for the herd to get their fill of water. I decided to use one of the sayings that I live by, "THERE IS NO PROBLEM THAT CANNOT BE PROPERLY RECTIFIED BY THE PROPER Application OF HIGH EXPLOSIVES". So, I took my ice auger and I only had forty seven sticks of dynamite left in the case (they usually come fifty), so I was only able to drill forty seven holes in the ice in the corral. In the explosive business we use a product called primer cord. This is actually an explosive that looks like a piece of nylon rope. It burns at 28,000 feet per second, thus making it an explosive not a fuse. Most fuses burn at forty seconds to the foot. Some longer, some shorter. Not being able to count very high I always used the forty second per foot. That way I knew that for each foot of fuse I could get away from the explosion by running taking four foot per step - I could get one hundred feet away in forty seconds (or something like that), far enough to get out of harms way. When you are blasting and you have several places you want to blow up at the same time you tie them together with primer cord. That way everything that is hooked to the primer cord blows up instantaneously.
After drilling forty seven holes in the ice in my corral I placed one stick of dynamite in each hole. No sense having one or two sticks hanging around getting old. I figured I would use all I had left and get some new in the spring. After tying it all together with primer cord I put about fifty feet of fuse, one blasting cap, and about one hundred feet of distance between me and the corral. Now I need to explain that our house sat a quarter of a mile from the highway. Our nearest neighbor was just a bit over a mile away. My horses and mules loved fireworks. I had used them to teach them to handle the startling effect dynamite would have on them in the mountains. When the saw me putting dynamite in all of the holes I am sure the combination of seeing and smelling the dynamite let them know there was going to be an explosion. I did mention my nearest neighbor lived about a mile and a half away didn't I?
Well, when I touched off that case of dynamite and turned that many thousands of cubic feet of ice into very fine powder snow it only took a few minutes before my neighbor Ken Aimone came flying down my driveway in his truck to see if anyone was killed. As it turned out the only casualty was the frozen snow and ice. It had cleared that corral to the ground. There was not a bit of snow left in the corral. And I am sure the snow fell out of the air about a mile down the road. When Ken said, "Hey Ken, what the hell did you blow up? Is everybody ok?" I just pointed out to him that I was clearing out the corral that me, him, and his cousin couldn't do with our tractors. He said, "That is the biggest explosion I've ever seen, heard, and definitely felt. All I could see was that big white cloud over your ranch."
I did mention this was when I lived in Fort Bridger, Wyoming didn't I? All that fine powdered snow really resembled smoke. Knowing it was me and that I was always using dynamite on the ranch to train my animals he'd never paid attention before. But when this one went off he said he thought it was like Hiroshima and I can tell by the little smiles on the face of my typist that she remembers the incident well. She liked fireworks too; the bigger the better, the more the merrier. I think that was the biggest one she had ever seen too. So in the future if you have a problem that you can' solve any other way just remember "THERE IS NO PROBLEM THAT CANNOT BE PROPERLY RECTIFIED BY THE PROPER Application OF HIGH EXPLOSIVES".
God Bless you all,
Ken, the afterlife messenger
Good to hear from you, Ken!
You are too funny. While explosives is your answer, mine is the good ol' handy hammer.
I remember the first time I used a hammer to successfully make two parts come together whether they liked it or not. I was assembling a fan. I didn't bother to read the instructions cuz I could readily see how to put all the parts together! (Not always the case, mind you. Assembling a desk requires referring to instruction!) When it was time to put the blades unit on the spindle, for some reason it wouldn't slip on, try as I may, so I took a hammer and whacked it. That worked perfectly well putting it in its place! Then I went to put on the final piece, the little center cover that fits on the last 1/4 inch of spindle for a finished look. I noticed that the part that fit the spindle was D-shaped, not O-shaped. I looked at the spindle. Low & behold, it was D-shaped, not O-shaped. Ooops. After that discovery, I was always uncomfortable using that fan for fear that one day the blades would work their way loose from the spindle & go flying thru the air, causing some considerable damage, altho in retrospect, it's probably safe to say that it was whacked onto that spindle for time and all eternity. I've made jigsaw puzzle pieces fit together with a hammer as well. But that's another story. Suffice it to say that the hammer is a many splendored thing.
Blessings.
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Howdy youse twos...Kathy and I laughed ourselves silly with this one. I will have to remember your motto. Where do I go to get some dynamite? Would I have to get a license for such stuff. How old were you when the big blast went off. Thanks so much for sharing this story, and thanks for the great laugh we enjoyed at the close of our day. You have a fantastic sense of humor Ken. Love and Light.....Corky
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Marvelous story, it reminded me of when I lived on a farm and was walking toward the house (we heated and cooked with a wood stove) and saw flames go shooting out of the chimney. My brother had decided that he'd start the fire in a hurry with gas. Luckily it was just his eyebrows he signed off.
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