News of Bygone Days......

[Bob Wright]

The paper we now get from Jackson, TN, has a column entitles "News of Bygone Days, which consists of news articles taken from files of years ago. This morning (The Commercial Appeal, Jan. 3, 2021) from 100 years ago, had this article"

A man in some Pennsylvania was the manager of a stable in a small town. "......found a stick of Dynamite and put it in his pocket. A mule kicked him, setting off the Dynamite. (The man) was blown to bits and the stable destroyed.


The first thing I wondered, how was it known a mule kicked? Did anybody actually see him pocket the dynamite? And, how did they know a mule kicked him to set off the explosive?

Bob Wright

 

[nvbirdman]

Or did the newspaper simply blow up the incident to sell more papers? :P

 

[bogus bill]

Times were slower and things less sophisticated. My bet is he got the story in a bar or sitting around the country general stores cracker barrel. I was raised in a general store. My uncle told story's. He had recently come back from Washington and said he had worked in a lumber camp. He said the cook had a huge frying pan and would grease it up tying two slabs of bacon on his feet and skating in it. Well this time cookie slipped and then one of the nurd farmers slapped his leg and said ew ew! The others laughed at him. He realized he had been taken and stormed out and didn't come back for awhile.

 

[Acorn]

What happened to the mule?

 

[Mobuck]

"What happened to the mule?"
Maybe that's how they deduced that the mule kicked him(ie, 1/2 a mule carcass in the rubble).
Regardless, the important issue is: don't pick up "found" dynamite but if you do, don't put it in your pocket.

 

[JFB]

For what it is worth and the cedibility of the reporting
https://www.nytimes.com/1921/01/03/archives/mules-kick-kills-man-who-carried-dynamite.html

 

[Johnnu2]

FAKE NEWS has ALWAYS existed...

If it happened in Ca. or NY, the mule would have been sentenced to death, then have his sentenced changed to life when the death penalty was done away with, and THEN, released early because they wanted to close the jails and move them to other neighborhoods.........

IMHO, and not based on any facts,
J.

 

[vito]

Maybe it was "Saturday Night Special Dynamite" and not high quality dynamite so it would detonate too easily. Or maybe he failed to put the dynamite into a custom made leather dynamite holster that any sensible dynamite carrier would use, and not just stick it in his pocket "Mexican style".

 

[toysoldier]

Dynamite is produced by using diatomaceous earth, wood pulp, sawdust, flour, or starch to soak up nitroglycerine. This is then packed in waxed cylinders. With age (especially in hot environments that melt the wax), nitroglycerine can "sweat" from the sticks, making it very unstable.

My (ex)wife's great-uncle was killed in an explosion at a DuPont facility in Dynamita, Mexico. His son was killed in an explosion at an Illinois plant.

 

[Mobuck]

Back in "the good old days" dynamite was a tool and not as strictly controlled so often not handled properly. I had a friend whose face was badly disfigured and his Father was killed when a charge went off unexpectedly. In the "lean times" of the mid-70's, I was doing day work for an old farmer who had a few eccentricities. One day as I drove the tractor up to the fuel barrel to refill the tank, I noticed a cardboard box laying in the driveway and fortunately skirted around it. As the tractor tank was filling, I went to move the box and found it contained 15-20 sticks of dynamite. Taking a careful look, I saw the little droplets under the wax paper wrap and knew enough about dynamite to know what that meant. I went to the house and told the farmer's wife I wouldn't be back until that box disappeared.
Fast forward to 2009 and I was retired and again doing day work for a guy who'd spent 5-6 years as a "DOD contractor" in the Middle East. Myself and the other guy (another semi-retired farmer a little older than me) were sitting at the lunch break table talking about using dynamite to make drainage ditches and blowing stuff up and all sorts of foolish stunts. Our employer just sat there listening and then said "We did some pretty wild stuff in the Middle East but you old pharts are just totally bat crap crazy".

 

[bobski]

anyone remember the days when it wasn't proper for a girl to talk to boys? introductions were required?
I grew up that way. yet, I watched the bold boys make passes at girls all the time. they were know as bullies or nasty boys.
and the girls that talked to them were......(too many names to recall) lol.
my wife was introduced to me by a friend over a dinner where we were both invited. 1995!
sure beat hanging out in gin mills making blind passes and hail mary hopes of scoring.

 

[Acorn]

My wife has pictures of her Pap using dynamite to blow up boulders on property he’d bought in Maryland. Would have been in the early to mid 60s.
Remember the episode on the Andy Griffith show, where a goat ate a case of dynamite?

 

[Kevin]

Does dynamite look like it does in the movies? Red sticks which sort of look like a road hazard flare? I got to thinking about this, and realize I've never seen any dynamite in person.

 

[Bob Wright]

What happened to the mule?

He got elected.


Bob Wright

 

[Bob Wright]

Does dynamite look like it does in the movies? Red sticks which sort of look like a road hazard flare? I got to thinking about this, and realize I've never seen any dynamite in person.

Dynamite looks more like a limp tamale, sort of brown paper with oil stains.

Bob Wright

 

[Bob Wright]

Does dynamite look like it does in the movies? Red sticks which sort of look like a road hazard flare? I got to thinking about this, and realize I've never seen any dynamite in person.

Boy! Did you ever bring back a memory!

As a boy I remember seeing those red sticks of dynamite. Remember those lady finger firecrackers! Perfect for miniature sticks of Dynamite.

Soooo............... I put some on the tracks of my Lionel electric train and lit the fuse and turned on the transformer. The train passed about half its length before it went off.

The train, and tracks, showed no damage. But my mother sure gave me a scolding!

Bob Wright

 

[Rick Courtright]

Fast forward to 2009 and I was retired and again doing day work for a guy who'd spent 5-6 years as a "DOD contractor" in the Middle East. Myself and the other guy (another semi-retired farmer a little older than me) were sitting at the lunch break table talking about using dynamite to make drainage ditches and blowing stuff up and all sorts of foolish stunts. Our employer just sat there listening and then said "We did some pretty wild stuff in the Middle East but you old pharts are just totally bat crap crazy".

Hi,

Mid-'70s I used to shoot skeet with a couple of guys who were firefighters. Not many years earlier, both had been paid by Uncle Sam to blow stuff up in a beautiful SE Asian resort. They told stories of stuff they did with det cord that made some of the dynamite stories I'd heard seem tame.

Rick C

 

[bobski]

when I was with the seals, they told me the difference between seal/udt and demolition teams was....udt/seals blow things (up) and demo blows things (down) never forgot that.

 

[Fox Mike]

For what it is worth and the cedibility of the reporting
https://www.nytimes.com/1921/01/03/archives/mules-kick-kills-man-who-carried-dynamite.html

I will take your word for it. Not going to subscribe to read one article. :D

 

[6GUNSONLY]

I learned to rig dynamite on construction jobs working in New Mexico when I was a young man. We did a lot of underground utility work, and it was not unusual to have to drill and blast that old blue granite to lay pipe or install a manhole. I was the guy on the pneumatic drill and 90# jackhammer. Drill the holes, load with dynamite rigged with det cord to blow all the holes at once. Long wire to the truck battery to detonate. We had an old dump truck bed we would put upside down over the charge holes, put the backhoe bucket down top of that, and set 'em off. You don't want the blast to come up out of the holes, but to stay below and fracture the rock. Then you dig it out with the hoe and repeat as necessary. We've set off charges quite close to established homes and they'd never know it. The two guys I learned from were good, both had been powder monkeys in the copper mines.