dynamite cap

[Smitty37]

I wonder if I'm the only one here who has had a dynamite cap explode in his jacket pocket?

One spring day my buddy Butch C. and I were "fishing" using electric dynamite caps (not dynamite, just the caps) and to be safe Butch was carrying the battery we were using and I was carrying the caps in my jacket pocket.

We'd used most of them to take a few pickerel but still had one left so we decided to cross the stream we were fishing in and Butch handed me the battery to hold while he crossed over on a fallen tree trunk and I was to toss him the battery when he got there, then cross myself. Forgetting the reason I had the caps and he had the battery I dropped the battery in my pocket and started over ---- "Boom".

Lucky, lucky, lucky... I was wearing a heavy coat that gave me some protection and all I got was one finger badly cut, a lot of copper bits through my pants and into my legs, a ruined pair of jeans and a really wasted jacket. I had to tell my parents I put the jacket down and walked off and couldn't find it again.

 

[mredburn]

And what year was this in that you just happened to have blasting caps? When I was a teenager you could buy Potasium Nitrate right off the drugstore shelves. Now you cant buy spray paint or sinus tablets without a security clearance and a note from on High.

 

[Smitty37]

And what year was this in that you just happened to have blasting caps? When I was a teenager you could buy Potasium Nitrate right off the drugstore shelves. Now you cant buy spray paint or sinus tablets without a security clearance and a note from on High.

My best guess is that it was in the spring of 1951 (but it might have been 1950). Dynamite itself was somewhat difficult to obtain but the caps were pretty easy to come by.

We used to think it was fun to lay them on the railroad track and let a train set them off. They were a pretty sure way of getting pickerel which were very difficult to catch on lures. We also used them as fire crackers. The kids usually got them when their parents had a tree stump or something to blast out - they'd buy a box of caps and a couple of sticks of dynamite and boom - no more stump. Also where I lived bedrock was pretty close to the surface and there were some really big rocks around that couldn't be moved with most small contractors equipment so they did a lot of blasting and some of their kids were not above helping them get rid of excess caps.


Saltpeter was as common as could be and was found in almost all kitchens. It was used for such things as making our own corned beef brine and some other brines.

 

[cwolfs69]

back in the late 50's and early 60's we used to by dynamite by the stick from, i think, the feed store. memory tells me it wasn't the hardware. we used it for all kinds of stuff, blowing stumps, busting large rocks etc on the dairy. they had rifles, pistols and shotguns in the same store. now you have to have a background check for a picture of a pistol.

 

[Scruffy]

We used M-80s or

cherry bombs to stun them and minnows for fishing.

Set one off ... a lot bait rises to the top ...about 1/3 dead. Scoop them up in net and into the bait bucket. Then off fishing

In the 50s, I can remember dropping our 22 rifles and ammo at the front office desk when we came to class in morning and picking them up when we left school to go off hunting.

 

[nightowl]

I can remember my dad having some M-80's and we use to bury them in the ground with the fuse sticking up and clear. We wanted to see how big of a hole we could make in ther ground. It was fun until one day we came very close to having to deal with the local law enforcement after a neighbor turned us in. That probably saved one of us from eventually blowing a finger off or something.

 

[Smitty37]

We also used cherry bombs and one we called Silver Salute when we could get them - usually when someone went south for vacation they'd pick some up. Most firecrackers were not sold very many places in PA and none local to where I lived.

We could also take our hunting rifles to school and go hunting after school. We just stacked the rifle in a corner of the coat room and kept the ammunition in our pocket.

Virtually all the boys had a pocket knife after about 5th grade when we could join the Boy Scouts. We carried them all over, except when we were wearing our "good" clothes.

This was certainly a much free'er country then.