Originally Posted by
Ouzel
Fifty years ago -things were WAY simpler back then - my father wanted to deal with a large beaver dam flooding our property. He enlisted a guy who knew a guy, apparently an explosives expert (later discovered to be a pyromaniac). The expert suggested my father buy a case of dynamite, 50 sticks. So, my father walked into the hardware store, no permit or license required back then. They hardware guy talked my father down to half a case, and off he went. On the prescribed day, they traipsed into the swamp, dug a hole in the dam, and wrapped up 12 sticks with electrical tape, creating a charge that looked like it belonged to Wyle E. Coyote. They lit the fuse (didn't know enough to use a blasting cap) and retired to a safe distance via their hip waders. When the thing went off, my father describes stumps, logs and debris 100 feet in the air. All pictures on the wall of our cottage rattled to the floor. Funniest part is that as soon as the blast hit, my fathers brother, who lived 4 miles away, immediately called to ask what in hell my father was up to - recognizing instantly who was behind the shock wave that rattled the windows of the whole village. It did make a very large hole in the dam, which took the beavers about 3 nights to fix.
There is an interesting later chapter to the story, because the left over dynamite was forgotten on a shelf in the shop, until rediscovered some years later, with the nitroglycerine dripping out of it.....
