A Montana Story
Dynamite and the Lolo Ditch ©
by
Gary Marbut
Dad often tried to approach things in a methodical and
scientific
manner. Usually this method worked well, but not
always.
Like the time he and my uncle made their first foray in
ditch-digging
with dynamite.
I was young when my family had our first Montana ranch up the
Lolo
Creek valley, about 20 miles from Missoula. That was in
1952. We called the ranch the Akekani Ranch.
"Akekani" was
supposed to be an Indian word for friend. I once tried it
on an
Indian kid at school and nearly got the stuffing beat out of
me.
Maybe I didn't have the right accent.
At the Akekani Ranch.
When we moved up Lolo Creek, I must have been about six years
old. The ranch was in a gorgeous setting, straddling Lolo
Creek
and the Lewis and Clark trail over the Bitterroot Mountains into
Idaho. Being snuggled up against the north side of Lolo
Peak, I
remember that this ranch was shaded and cold in the
winter. When
the season caused the sun to be low in the south, it just didn't
spend
much time above Lolo Peak, from the perspective of our
ranch.
There were good springs on the ranch, some of which watered our
hay
meadows, adding to water taken out of Lolo Creek by ditches that
tapped
the Creek further up the valley.
My Dad's prime hay meadow was directly west of the Woodman
School. There was a soft area in the meadow next to Lolo
Creek
Road, where water ran off the hillside and collected -- a linear
swale
perpendicular to Lolo Creek Road. When haying time came
for the
tall grass, it seemed like somebody inevitably would get a
tractor into
the edge of the damp area and get the tractor stuck up to its
axle in
the mud. That necessitated a rescue operation that one
time
resulted in a second tractor stuck in the same area. Then
it was
necessary to get a neighbor to bring yet another tractor around
with a
long chain or cable, and from a distance on firm ground pull the
stuck
tractor or tractors out. That wet area was a darned
nuisance.
So, a plan gradually emerged to run a ditch through that wet
area to an
existing culvert under Lolo Creek Road, to drain off the excess
water
into Lolo Creek on the other side of the road. The big
problem
was how to dig the ditch if a tractor couldn't work there
without
getting stuck. Not many people had dozers then, and even a
dozer
might have gotten mired down in that soft ground.
When it came, the solution seemed obvious. Dynamite.
Yeah, great idea!
Back in those days anyone could buy dynamite at the hardware
store. Many ranchers and farmers used it for various
purposes,
but not my family, yet. Years later, I learned that
dynamite has
many uses, even recreational uses.
As a young teenager, one of my favorite entertainments for a
slow day
on the ranch was to sneak into the shop and into the "paint
room" where
a case of dynamite was usually stored. I'd get out a stick
of
dynamite and peel back the waxed paper to expose the raw
dynamite, a
mixture of sawdust and nitroglycerine. With the raw
dynamite
exposed, I'd pinch off a little bit and put it on the anvil in
the
shop. The game then was to whack that pinch of dynamite
with a
ball-peen hammer and see if I could hold onto the hammer as the
pinch
of dynamite exploded. Usually I could, but with larger
pinches of
dynamite it became more of a challenge to keep a grip on the
hammer
handle. It sure made the anvil ring.
Yeah, I know. It's a wonder that some people live to reach
adulthood. But hey, we had FUN back then. And, I
never did
get involved in any ranchland gangs. I just banged away at
the
dynamite on the anvil and raised my 4-H animals instead.
Back to the ditch. Being careful and methodical, Dad had
obtained
a pamphlet somewhere about using dynamite. He learned that
if the
sticks were planted close enough together, it was only necessary
to put
a detonator and fuse on the stick at the end of a string of
planted
charges. This seemed sensible. We spent several days
planting this long string of dynamite charges in a line through
the
swamp, from the road out into the hay meadow.
I believe the pamphlet said to put the charges no more than 18
inches
apart for each charge to detonate the next one in line. Of
course
given the soft ground and all, just to make sure, it would
probably be
a good idea to put them every nine inches or so. Just to
make
sure, you know.
To get the bottom of the ditch down deep, we'd drive a steel bar
into
the mud about three feet deep to make a hole for the dynamite
sticks. Once a stick of dynamite was dropped to the bottom
of the
hole, it seemed a shame to waste the rest of the hole. So
we
would put a couple of more sticks on top of the stick already in
the
bottom of the hole, and pack some mud down over the three or
four
planted sticks.
Three days later we'd gone through many cases of dynamite.
But
hey, dynamite was cheap, and we didn't want to have to do it
twice. We'd laid a line of dynamite charges about 100
yards long,
perpendicular to Lolo Creek Road.
When it was finally time to put the detonator and fuse in the
last
charge, somebody had the good idea to stop traffic on Lolo Creek
Road,
so no motorist would be driving too close to the ditching
operation
when the detonator finally lit the dynamite. We decided to
stop
traffic about 100 yards back from where the line of charges met
the
road.
Because of a shortage of personnel (except for short people like
me), I
was designated to be the road guard to stop traffic coming from
the
west. I held a portable stop sign, a very important job
for a
kid. There was probably also an underhanded intention to
keep me
away from the immediate vicinity and excitement of the
about-to-be
ditch. I made my own compromise with the standoff
requirement by
stopping traffic only about 60 yards from where the line of
charges met
the road, just to be a little closer to the action.
The first vehicle to my roadblock was a logging truck with a
huge load
of logs, coming from somewhere up Lolo Creek. I waved my
stop
sign. When the truck stopped I climbed up on the truck's
running
board and explained to the driver what was going on through the
truck's
open window. Stepping off the running board, I noticed
other
Lolo-bound vehicles beginning to collect behind the log truck.
Meanwhile, Dad was putting the detonator and fuse into the last
stick,
and tamping the stick on top of the others in the last
hole. He
was careful enough with this that it took longer than
expected.
Finally I saw Dad running away and knew that he'd lit the
fuse.
Of course, he used plenty of fuse for lots of "get-away"
time. In
fact he used so much fuse that traffic was getting pretty well
backed
up both directions, maybe ten vehicles each direction.
I was about eight years old at the time, so this was pretty
exciting
for me. It was almost the Fourth of July, and I'd been
playing
with firecrackers for couple of years, blowing up tin cans and
such. But, this would be a major promotion for my
experience with
blowing things up.
The dynamite finally blew.
I.T..W.A.S..S.P.E.C.T.A.C.U.L.A.R!@#& Actually, it was
well
beyond spectacular. It was several notches on the far side
of
stupendous.
The explosion knocked me down!
It seemed like it rained mud for a week. Everybody was
impressed. Even the cars waiting last in line were covered
with
mud. Midway through the rain of mud, I managed to struggle
back
to my feet to better enjoy the effects. Just when I was
convinced
that the rain of mud was over, a chunk of soggy sod the size of
a car
tire came sailing out of the sky and landed on the front of the
log
truck, half on the windshield and half on the hood. The
log truck
driver was also impressed that this large chunk of sod had
buckled in
one side of the hood of his truck. But hey, it only caved
the
hood downward about three inches. The driver probably
popped it
out with the heel of his hand when he got home. At least
it
didn't break his windshield.
It took a while for the smoke and muddy mist to clear so we
could see
what we had accomplished. That was spectacular too!
We'd
wanted a ditch about three feet deep and three feet
across. We
got a canal, about ten to twelve feet deep and probably twenty
feet
across. No wonder it rained so much mud! It was an
amazing
job!
I know. It's easy to impress a kid. But hey, the
adults
there were impressed, too. I didn't do much more with
firecrackers that year. They were entirely too tame after
creating the canal with cases of dynamite.
The drainage canal worked fine. All the water from the
surrounding wet area collected in our new pond. Geese
reported
this new wonder by telepathy to their cousins who flocked from
three
hundred miles away. And, at last Dad finally had a place
to put
all the rocks that us kids had been rolling down the hillside
into his
hayfield.
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© 2008, Gary Marbut