2024, Family, Mysteries, News, Uncategorized

There Goes the Neighborhood

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A widow in Holladay, Utah recently contacted the authorities to find out how to dispose of some “ancient dynamite”.  Apparently her recently deceased husband had inherited a fair amount of explosives from his father four decades back.  The explosives were 60-80 years old.

The bad news, besides it not being worth anything, was that several state agencies agreed that the only way to contain the situation was to conduct a controlled explosion, which, as you can imagine, was going to destroy the house.  The family had 24 hours to remove some of their possessions before the charge was ignited, which went off as scheduled at midnight on April 24.  Some damage to neighboring properties was reported (blown-out windows and minor fires).  Yikes.

I’m hoping the family is feeling lucky that they didn’t blow themselves up in the past 40 years!

Have you ever collected anything dangerous?  How much do you think you could get out of your home in  24 hours?

38 thoughts on “There Goes the Neighborhood”

  1. Well, there was my collection of toasters. They might have been dangerous to people with forks.

    Back when the George Floyd rioting was at its peak and businesses were burning on Lake Street, Robin had a couple of large plastic bins on the front enclosed porch and filled with things most precious to her, just in case we needed to get out of the house. Ordinarily we would scarcely make a dent on removing valued belongings in 24 hours.

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  2. Rise and Shine, Baboons from JacAnon,

    All I can think upon reading this is, “KaBoom.”

    I don’t think I have ever collected anything dangerous. My largest collection is canning jars which are only dangerous if they break when dropped on the floor.

    I just read a book by Jennifer Chiavarini called “Canary Girls.” It is about the munitions factory workers (Munitionettes) in England who made the bombs and grenades out of TNT for weapons in WWI. It was horrifying. They all turned bright yellow and suffered terrible health problems due to handling the chemicals. There were endless accidents due to the chemicals, as well.

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  3. I have been surveying our possessions of late to see what we should move to Minnesota and what we should get rid of. The musical instruments will get moved. Sofas and loveseats in the living room and family room will not. They have been clawed by too many cats over the years. We will move all the cooking equipment and Creusetware. I suppose, given 24 hours, we could get all the freezers moved out and plugged in somewhere else.

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  4. Not a collector of much other than books and music recordings, and I don’t even collect music anymore. But I have several hundred albums and several hundred CDs.

    Couldn’t get 10% of the junk we have out of our home in 24 hours. I’d opt for the most important stuff–food, clothes, fianncial records, computers, my Eva Cassidy and Connie Evingson CDs ( 🙂 ) , some photos, maybe a few books other than mine, my supply of books (!)–we could sell those to make food money. 😉

    (Or for people to use as toilet paper)

    Chris in Owatonna

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  5. Nothing dangerous collected except maybe dust.

    I could easily get everything out of my apartment in 24 hours. Assembling the troops for an emergency takes only one phone call.

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  6. My collection of paper craft stuff (stamps, dies, embossing folders, paper) is only dangerous to my bank account.

    I absolutely would contact everybody I know to get as much out as possible. To have to make a decision might be paralyzing.

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  7. We had live hand grenades recovered from caves on corrigador Island in the Philippines. We unscrewed the fuses and dumped the powder into Maxwell House coffee cans. We then dumped the powder in the street, made a fuse trail, and lit it. It was pretty exciting. I made the mistake of pulling the pin on a deactivated grenade in my bedroom. The fuse stank to high heaven. I remember reading that it was fulminate of Mercury, which is really bad for you to breathe. Oh well.

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        3. My Great Grandfather was a Grenadier in the Prussian Army. He was really tall, and threw grenades over the heads of his fellow soldiers into the enemy lines.

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        5. He fled Germany in April, 1914. due to being accused of smuggling butter on the Hamburg wharves with his dray service. He was a compulsive gambler who became a cabbage farmer in Minnesota.

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  8. I wouldn’t have any trouble getting what matters out of here. I have been working on getting rid of stuff for years and I’m not sentimentally attached to everything anymore. There are some irreplaceable things but I could get them out of here in no time.

    Things I would save: Pippin. My guitars and mandolins, my Buddha collection, one special lamp and some jewelry. Some special clothes that are handmade, or that I made, or that were given to me. Clean underwear and socks. Birks. As many books as possible. The Adirondack chair Morgan made, and the cherry box he made for me when he was in love with me, and the painting he did that hung above the wood burner in his house. He built a walnut desk for my dad which I have. It’s much too heavy to move and I’ve been considering giving it to my nephew. I would mourn its loss but I know I won’t move with it next time I move anyway, and flames would be a fitting end for it if Nick can’t get it in time. I would certainly miss my comfortable bed, but it’s insured. Everything else? Meh. It’s just stuff.

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  10. My father had a compulsion to turn our scrub timber into arable land, except, of course, the red clay was not all the arable. For that he used dynamite, for which he needed a permit and he had to buy it from a liscensed dealer. Boots, the dog, loved when he blasted stumps.

    My father stored it in a small box with a gabled roof set up in the air in the corner of a fence in the field as far as possible from anywhere it could damage if it somehow ignited. And dynamite can be unstable.

    When he retired, he still had three sticks of dynamite. I know movies and TV like to portray big bundles of dynamite going off as large blasts, but big bundles would make horrendous blasts. Three sticks would make a large blast. So he and I dug a three-foot deep hole in a bowl shape so it could not propel anything up in the air. He set a two minutes-fuse so we could get far away. It was very loud and left a deep crater.

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  11. My normal heart rate is in the 50’s. One of the drugs they gave me is lower my my heart rate, which is now down in the 40’s, in my sleep as low as the 41. They told me to report symptoms. Today I am a bit dizzy and lightheaded and dare not drive. They are going to call me back.

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    2. My mom has had heart issues and sometimes the meds lower her BP as well. Then the heavy breathing starts… until she stops breathing for a while. It scares everyone the first time they see it. Eventually she comes out of it, and I think the meds are finally stabilized as she hasn’t done that for a couple weeks now. Do what you can to get them to pay attention to you. Thanks for commenting!

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      1. Shoot, forgot to sign my name-

        XDFBen

        while I’m at it, my dad used dynamite too to make a trench for the water line to the barn. He said he could pick it up at the lumberyard. This would have been 1949 or 1950. Mom always complained, he put water to the barn before the house. 🙂

        I never found dynaminte, but I found the blasting caps. I asked law enforcement what to do with them and no one was very concerned. I finally threw them in a fire. It was about like a 22 rifle: just a ‘bang’ was all. No damage.

        During WWII, my dad wasn’t able to join as he had 3 brothers serving. They mailed him bullets. I’m told he had quite a collection of 50 caliber and such. And then while pouring cement for the corn crib, mom threw them all in the wet concrete- she didn’t like having them in the house. He was pretty mad and always missed them.

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  12. A neighborhood association where I reside had a “dumpster day” that included a separate table for collecting old paint cans. After sorting out the water-based stuff from the oil based, I took the toxic stuff (oil based) to the county recycling center in the trunk of my old Honda. The staff there were not thrilled, but did their job.

    The following year, as we organized for another event, I mentioned that I’d take the paint again. A wise newcomer to the committee dissuaded me, and, in fact, said we shouldn’t take ANY paint at all. Apparently, I’d driven a BOMB out to the recycling center.

    I shan’t do that again.

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  13. I had a cap gun, for when we played Roy Rogers…

    Boy – 24 hours – Well, the desktop computer with my LIFE on it. I’d hand-pick a box of books, photo albums, music, some special pieces of clothing, esp. if I’d made them by hand…. boy, looking around, there’s no furniture I could live without, though I’d try and save a table made by my grandpa, and a shelf by my dad.

    Some gifts that Joel gave me/us.

    Hmmm, maybe some of this stuff should be put together now.

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  14. We had a big cattle farmer near Luverne who tried to use dynamite to reroute the Rock River that ran through his pasture. He ended up blowing up a bridge instead. The County commission refused to rebuild the bridge.

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    1. His daughter is a fine Minnesota composer and music teacher who studied with Nadia Boulanger and recently wrote Playing Hayden for The Angel Of Death. She and I went to High School together

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  16. If I had 24 hours I’d probably try to save the quilts my mother and grandmother and aunt made, and a couple of boxes of Christmas ornaments, and some letters and photos. I would be really mad about having only 24 hours, though. If the dynamite had been there for decades, why the rush to vacate in 24 hours?

    Nothing dangerous in my house that I know of. But it’s been awhile since I cleaned out the fridge.

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  17. I’ve never collected anything that was potentially dangerous, although I suspect that I may well have had an assortment of chemicals for weed and pest control in the garden that was more harmful than I realized at the time. Likewise, I’m pretty sure there has been an assortment of cleaning supplies, and even skin care products that were more toxic than I realized at the time.

    OT – I had a root canal today as part of an ongoing battle to save my teeth. It’s sobering to discover that an infusion I had in April to help stave off bone loss has potentially jeopardized some future dental procedures such as extractions due to the risk of osteonecrosis. My dentist is a superstar. Compassionate, gentle, well informed, and highly skilled. I’m so lucky to have this Hmong woman on my health care team.

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