“Rocky”

I’m not sure when this one was originally sent.  If I find out I’ll add in the date.

This is me. As some of you know, I take an almost daily mile and a half walk, round trip, from the house to the hill top and back. At the far end of my trail, I pass briefly under a high power electric line. We all know about these things now as being part of “the grid”. As I pass that way, I am sometimes carried back to my youth. No, no, it has nothing to do with a time warp caused by the one hundred thousand or so volts coursing through the wires. I meant that I am “carried back” in a reminiscing sort of way.

It was in the early sixties, probably ‘62 or ‘63, that the event occurred. When Dad bought this farm in 1960, “the grid” was already in evidence. It was undergoing an upgrade of larger wires for additional transmission capacity. This also entailed the replacement of the existing poles with ones of more substance, and the placement of additional poles to safely carry the increased weight of wire. And this is what lead to a most interesting and educational day for a lad of 12 or 13 years of age.

There was a crew of 5 or 6 men working on top of our hill that day. Their job was to drill the holes in the ground and then to set the giant wooden poles against the sky. The holes were drilled with a truck mounted auger of about 30 inches in diameter, to a depth of about12 feet, if I remember right.

I had wandered up the hill to the job site that day using the same old road that I walk to this day. I stood back some distance out of the way to watch the goings on. One of the linemen gave me a smile and a wave and said, “Ya can’t see nottin from dare, come on ofer.” I’m not sure where these guys were from, but I am sure that they weren’t from around here. These men were all in their mid to late twenties, and looked the part. Blue jeans with cuffs, cigarette packs rolled up in their tee shirt sleeves, and the good old duck tail hair cuts.

The one who called me over had one of those nick names that all boys wish that they had. Rocky, Duke, Bull, something like that. I’ll call him Rocky. Rocky took me under his wing that morning. He asked me questions such as, “Ya got cows and stuff?” “Ya ever git ta drive da tractors?” “No kiddin’, since ya was five?” “Ya godda girl friend?” “Hey, why ya blushin’?” He explained what was happening and how things worked. When lunch time rolled around, Rocky tore his sandwich in half and insisted that I would be doing him a great favor if I were to eat the thing for him. He filled his thermos cup with iced tea, or lemonade, or whatever he had, and handed it to me while he drank directly from the jug. When he opened his package of Tastykakes, he handed one of the cupcakes to me, and lied through this teeth by telling me that he hardly ever ate both of them anyway.

When lunch was over, it was time for the drilling of the second hole. The first hole, which had been drilled before lunch, went smoothly with the giant auger making quick work of the layered stone. The second hole proved to be a bit more obstinate. This hole was being drilled only 10 feet away from the first, but the rock would not give way. The guy in charge, who I shall refer to as G.I.C., said a few words and the auger truck was moved away. A pickup truck towing an air compressor was brought up in its stead. A large jack hammer was quickly produced along with the bits of about two and half inches in diameter. The G.I.C. dug a scrap of paper off the floor of the pickup and, with pencil in hand, using the hood of the truck as a desk, did some calculations, hand held calculators not being known at the time. He then said to one of the men something cryptic like, “five by one” and went and sat in the cab of another pickup truck.

I am supposing that dynamite, being of some interest to the government even back then, caused the occasion of filling out various form to account for the soon to be expenditure. The air compressor was fired up and they “drove that steel on down, Lord Lord, yeah they drove that steel on down”. In short order, 5 holes were drilled to a depth of 12 feet. And this is where my education began in earnest.

A storage compartment on the compressor towing truck was unlocked and a crate of dynamite was removed and dropped to the ground. My knowledge of dynamite up to that time had been gleaned by listening to those older and wiser than myself. That would be boys of at least 15 years of age. So I well knew that the stuff would blow up with very little cause whatsoever. The crate was opened and one of the guys took 3 sticks and engaged in a vain attempt at juggling. Then 2 or 3 of the others grabbed some sticks and began to throw them at one another. Someone yelled “boom”, and they “all fell dead”. Now the G.I.C. either did not notice the antics from the cab of his truck, or had seen such behavior often enough that he no longer paid attention to it. Rocky, probably seeing the fear in my eyes, yelled out, “NOGGIDDOFT”. With shrugs of the shoulders and sheepish grins, the sticks of dynamite were returned to the crate.

Now it was time to “fuse” the dynamite, and all horseplay ceased. I was somewhat disappointed that there would not be an actual fuse like we see in the westerns. Instead blasting caps were used. These are metal devices about 2 inches long and as big around as a good old #2 school pencil. From one end of the cap were 2 wires of about 15 feet in length, one white, the other blue. On the ends of the wires were red sleeves around an inch long. Rocky explained that the ends of the wires were bare so that the insulation would not have to be removed on site, and that the red sleeves covered the bare wires to prevent accidental discharge due to static electric or any such thing. A “tee” handle, with a sharp wooden dowel in the middle was used to make a hole in each stick of dynamite. A blasting cap was then pushed into the hole, and another “tee” handle with a blunt dowel was used to further push the cap inside the stick of dynamite, leaving only the wire hanging out.

About now the G.I.C. must have looked up from his paper work and noticed me standing there. He hollered out the window, “GED DA KID OTTA DARE”. Rocky and myself, as well as the others not actively engaged in “fusen da sticks”, moved back to where the trucks were parked, approximately 100 feet away. The sticks were soon “fused” and placed in the holes previously drilled. A roll of blue and white wire, with the strands in a slow spiral, had been attached to the lead wires of the blasting caps. This was then unrolled back to the area where the trucks were parked. I asked Rocky if we were far enough away. He assured me that with the depth of the holes, and the solid nature of the rock, we would hear a muffled roar, feel the ground tremble, and see the layer of soil around the blast site lift up and settle back down like “yer granmutter shakin’ out a blangket”. I had never seen Grandmom doing that, but I got a picture.

It was now time to cut the wire from the roll. This was more complicated than you might expect. One man separated the white and blue wires as much as the spiral would allow. The other man first cut the blue wire, unwound the spiral a couple of feet, and then bent the blue wire back away from the uncut white wire. He then cut the white wire and removed an inch of insulation. Another slight disappointment. I had expected to see one of those neat plunger things that the dynamite is set off with on television. What I got was a common lantern battery. He connected the white wire to the negative terminal of the battery. He then very carefully removed an inch of insulation from the blue wire, keeping it bent back away from the battery. He then called for a head count, with all being accounted for. He then stood up and looked all around. Kneeling back down, he took the blue wire in his hand, and as loud as he could, he yelled for the benefit of anyone who might happen to saunter through the woods, “FIRE INDA HOLLLLLE”. Waiting several seconds for a reply, and hearing none, he touched the blue wire to the positive terminal of the battery.

This set into action several laws of physics, none of which I fully understand. This much I know. For electric to be of any use whatsoever, it must return to where it began. That is, to ground. When the blue wire touched the positive terminal, the electricity stored in the battery flowed at the speed of light down the wire, through the blasting caps, and then returned to the battery through the white wire. Now the only thing which makes dynamite any more dangerous then a stick of wood, for example, is the rate in which it burns. Whilst a stick of wood of equal size may take many minutes to burn, the same amount of dynamite burns in a fraction of a second. In technical terms, this is what makes it go “KABOOM”.

The electrical charge caused the blasting cap to explode, which in turn set the dynamite on fire. The extremely rapid burn rate caused combustion gases to build up within the holes drilled into the rock well beyond the rocks capacity to stay in one place. When the man hollered “FIRE INDA HOLLLLLE”, he had no idea how right he was.

There was a tremendous roar, not at all muffled. The ground did shake, much more than I could have imagined. A split second later, the earth exploded with jagged chunks of rocks lifting skyward on a column of fire which reached at least 30 feet in height. The ever expanding inverted cone of rock traveled high into the sky. I’m guessing in excess of a hundred feet, if not much more. The “safe” distance of the trucks from the blast proved to be wholly inadequate, as the cone of rock extended well beyond where we stood. The large auger truck, and a large flatbed truck were parked about 50 feet apart. I was standing in the middle of the two, which put me about 25 feet from either one. As gravity took over, the larger of the rocks grew weary of the flight and began their return home.

It was then that I was introduced to many words that I had never heard before. While I was vaguely aware of men diving for cover underneath whatever vehicle they happened to be closest to, I stood transfixed watching the jagged rocks falling from the sky. I suddenly became aware of a sensation of flying. I then realized that someone had a hold of me by the scruff of the neck and the seat of the pants while running at full speed. And then I was flying, as I was tossed through the air like a bean bag. I was airborne for 15 feet or so, and then hit ground and rolled under the flat bed truck. I might have rolled right on through, except that someone reached out and grabbed hold of me.

Just as I came to a stop under the truck, there began a noise which I can in no way describe. All those jagged rocks began to hit the truck. Screeching sheet metal and busting glass make quite a racket, not to mention the rocks bouncing off the steel deck of the flatbed. The only unbroken glass was the door windows, and only because they were all rolled down. The rocks which happened to land on edge pierced the roofs and hoods of the vehicles leaving them looking like some prehistoric creators from a cheap movie.

Had I remained where I stood, I could not have escaped serious injury or even death, as there was not a square foot of ground not covered with sharp rocks. My benefactor was, of course, Rocky. He had been leaning against the auger truck, and could easily have dived for cover. He chose to traverse the 50 feet of unprotected ground to keep me from harm. He was the only one injured. A rock the size of a pie plate hit him flat on the right shoulder blade, leaving a bruise from neck to waist, and a large area of missing and torn up skin. Had the rock hit him on edge, his injury would have been severe.

It turned out that the “five by one” instruction had been misunderstood. Rather than 1 stick per hole, for a total of five, they put five sticks per hole for a total of 25 sticks of dynamite. The resulting hole in the ground measured some ten feet across.  Their work being done for they day, they removed as many of the rocks from the sheet metal as they could, and the wounded convoy limped off the hill. The next day, a different crew was there to fill in the hole, and finish the job.

I sometimes wonder about Rocky. He would be near 65 years old by now. I think it likely that when the weather is cold and damp, his shoulder must ache something terrible from the “rumatize” that has set in. He probably rubs his shoulder as he tries to flex the pain away and wonders, “What ever happened to that blue-eyed, brown-haired kid from Pennsylvania?”