by Julie Carter
Every hundred years or so, any old homestead inevitably becomes the destination for an "event."
That,
of course, requires cleaning up and cleaning out a century worth of
valued "treasures" and piles of "I might need that" items.
A wedding was about to happen in the old horse barn at the Terrell Ranch in the Kansas Flint Hills.
One
hundred years of "treasures" and dust would need to be sorted,
organized and tossed, or not. However, there must first be a place to
put the items deemed worthy of saving.
The
old tin garage next to the house was the perfect place to store the
relocated treasures, but as you might imagine, first it must also be
cleaned out.
Back
in the 1950s, one could still buy dynamite at the local hardware store.
Mr. Terrell, Sr., and his hired man used whatever good excuse they
could contrive to blow up some of the geography around the ranch.
Road clearing and building water tanks commonly led to the use of dynamite.
Just
a kid at the time, Jim Terrell learned that whenever his father yelled,
"Run like hell and get behind the truck!" it was a good idea to do so
quickly because imminently rocks would be flying.
The
dynamite, when not being used to change the terrain of the Kansas Flint
Hills, was stored in the old tin garage. Yes, the one that was next to
the house.
Jim
grew up and passed on the same warning to his son Jake, "Stay out of
the corner of the old tin garage where the dynamite is stored."
For 50 years, they both did just that. However, with Jake's wedding approaching, it was time to tackle the clean-up.
Jim
and Jake decided that before they began cleaning out the nuts, bolts,
nails, tools, barbwire, pipe and other century old collections, they
should venture into the forbidden corner of the old tin garage and get
rid of the old dynamite.
They
considered it prudent to get some expert advice on the procedure, so
Jake called the county sheriff while Jim went off to town.
The next thing Jim knew, he was summoned back to the ranch while his son was hauled off to be interrogated.
Every
local law enforcement agency, fire department with their EMTs, along
with the Wichita Bomb Squad and the FBI converged on the ranch.
It
seemed very logical to friends and family that Jim's profile as a
middle-aged, single white male, educated and living in an isolated,
remote ranch house set off ripples of suspicion in Washington, D.C.
The
two mobile bomb squad command center semi-trucks could not make it
across the river to the ranch headquarters, so a table was confiscated
and an elaborate bank of computers was set up on it while men in
bomb-proof suits patrolled the area.
Finally the doors of the second command unit were open and out rolled the bomb robot.
Of
course the robot had never heard Mr. Terrell, Sr.'s "Run like hell and
get behind the truck!" or the "Stay out of the corner of the garage."
warnings.
The
robot boldly brought the case of old dynamite out of the garage, past
all the nuts, bolts and nails (shrapnel as defined by the government)
while the bomb squad made a bed of hay.
After
the robot nested the crate in the hay, the men in the bomb suits doused
it with diesel and set it afire - a high-tech solution for the
situation such that it was.
The
advice Jim and Jake sought was finally delivered. Told that the
nitroglycerin had leaked into soil and contaminated the garage, they
were instructed to burn it all down.
Somewhere
in Heaven, Jim's mother, Annabel, was undoubtedly smiling.The eyesore
she always hated, not to mention one with dynamite in it, was going
down, and the homestead was getting cleaned up for a very happy event.
All it took was a bomb squad to get done what she never could.
1/9/2011
No comments:
Post a Comment