Vol.10, No.54, 2007
Dynamite Dan
By Wm. Manley Nobles

Dynamite Dan was not exactly a dynamite man but because of inexperience was given that name by his neigbours who were all experienced in handling dynamite. As I related in an earlier story, when we all settled on these lots and built houses, there were no wells on most of them. To get drinking water, we had to take a little iron pipe and go down the river bank where a little spring ran out of the rock wall and wait maybe twenty minutes or so to fill a pail. On Dan’s place was an old well from which in the winter months, he and my uncle who lived next door and just through a small gate were able to get drinking water.

Now when summer came, the well would go dry, so everyone had to rely on the little spring. Dan thought if he fractured the vein they would maybe get more water. That summer when the well dried up, he spent most of the summer in the bottom of the well with a hammer and chisel drilling holes all around the bottom of the well. The well was only about maybe eight or ten feet deep and had been dug many years ago in limestone which is the stone of the district.

Now Dan was a fellow who wouldn’t ask for information if he wasn’t sure. Because he was a grenade man in the war and knew all about explosives, he loaded the holes and packed the well full of cedar brush which took some time to do. It was battery caps that he had wired himself and when it was finally ready, he got my uncle who lived next door to watch the highway and let him know when all was clear.

He was away behind his house so as to dodge when the charge went off. The clear signal was given, he touched the battery and nothing happened. My uncle had not used dynamite for a while. My dad was also digging a well at the time. They went and got him to see what was wrong. They took all the brush out of the well and dad looked over the wiring after making sure it wasn’t hooked to the battery and no one was near it. Dan had just tied the wires in bunches to each wire. Dad then undid them and hooked them up again. Dan was still sure that it was a bad cap and that it wouldn’t go again. They put only part of the brush back in the well and between them carried the well curb and set it back on the well.

Again my uncle took his place on the road to watch for cars and Dad and Dan got behind the house. When the signal was given, Dan hit the battery and it went, the well curb was shattered so not one board was fastened to another and hardly any of it could be found. My aunt in the house next door said if you had been frying eggs, they would have turned over in the pan; she thought the stove pipes were going to come down.

I guess it really shook the bowels of the earth but I never heard of him being short of water again. He never came to borrow the little iron pipe for the spring. We never ever heard how much dynamite he had loaded in each hole. Behind his back, when he was referred to, it was always Dynamite Dan.