Ka-Sploosh
My grandfather, Dr. James Arthur Downing was an eyes, ears, nose, and throat specialist. During his early years of practice he developed quite a reputation for successfully removing chicken bones, pins, coins, and other obstructions from his patients windpipes. He proudly exhibited the strange things people swallowed in windowed display cases in his downtown Des Moines, Iowa office. Each object was carefully pinned to the backing and assigned a number that was cross-referenced to his patients. His medical skills depended on delicate manipulation of the tools of his profession. However, his medical finesse was balanced by a very unusual interest.
Grandpa was a firm believer in time away from the office. In the early 40’s he discover the Rio Grande Valley of Texas and for a number of years my grandparents escaped the coldest part of the Iowa winter in the sun and surf near Brownsville. After my family moved to Texas in 1947, Grandpa and Grandma continued making their annual February trek to Texas. In February of 1956, on their way to the Valley, Grandpa and Grandma stopped in Dallas at the southwest Sears and Roebuck distribution center. There is my grandfather, well-dressed, white hair standing by the commercial sales desk. I can just imagine the conversation. “May I help you?” “I need a box of dynamite, a box of caps, and 2000 feet of fuse.” “Ahhh, I’m sorry sir, did you say a box of dynamite?” “Yes I did and hurry up, Gertrude is waiting in the car and we have a long way to drive before dark. Got to get all the way down to the Rio Grande Valley tomorrow.” “Yes sir, if you will pull your car around to the loading dock in back we will get everything taken care of. Anything else today?” “No, just hurry up, Gertrude is going to be mad as hell if I don’t get back.” Back in 1956, Texas was noted for excellent highways and the traffic wasn’t very heavy in the wide-open spaces between Dallas and Lyford. There probably wasn’t a huge risk in driving with a box of dynamite in your car.
We were just finishing dinner when we heard the horn. “How is my Sweet Patootie?” “Hilly, your skin looks a lot clearer, I think that cortisone helped.” “Oh, just look at how much the orange tree has grown.” “Jimmy, how are your ears?” “Where’s Willy?” It seemed the greetings go on forever since we wanted to see if there was something special in the car. Unpacking and moving Grandma and Grandpa into the newly cleaned Spartan Manor trailer goes smoothly until we see Grandpa’s little black bag. Not that we didn’t expect to see it, we did, because it came every year. But that little bag meant that our simplest of colds or eye irritations would not go undoctored. “On, my God don’t touch that Willy!” In a meek tone, Bill asked, “What is it?” “Those are blasting caps,” said Grandpa causally. Certainly surprised, dad quickly steps forward and takes them. “Hilly, there’s a box of dynamite in the back wrapped in an old blanket.” No longer surprised, just simply bewildered, dad replied, “OK, let me take care of these first.”
I’m not sure why the Rio Grande River delta is called a valley. It’s almost flat as a pancake with the exception of randomly scattered lagunas or lagoons in English. We had 3 lagunas on our farm. They are generally round depressions covering about 5 to 10 acres and about 20 feet deep relative to the surrounding topography. The soil composition in a laguna is more clay like than the surrounding sandy soil and it traps water for months after a heavy rain. When a laguna finally dries up, the bottom is like Mexican bricks, very difficult to plow even with a large tractor. We called it “hardpan”. Generally speaking, lagunas were wasted land, unless you were a goose or grew watermelons.
Lagunas were a frequent topic of discussion amongst farmers. Not only did they reduce productive acreage, they caused erosion and they were an inconvenience to row crop farming. Most farmers plowed right through them, when possible, and planted rows of cotton that were straight as an arrow. Around 1950, Dad tried a new approach, contoured farming. Instead of farming directly across the lagunas, he built a series of concentric ridges around the lagunas to prevent runoff and erosion. Then he plowed and planted in rows that followed these contours. Quite revolutionary compared to accepted practices. Although contoured farming controlled erosion and water runoff, it ceded the acreage within the interior contour to weeds, watermelons and geese when they came. Grandpa was aware of many of these farming practices as he enjoyed sitting with our neighbors who frequently stopped by for morning coffee.
When Grandpa came to Texas in 1956, he clearly had a plan to solve this laguna problem. He thought that breaking the clay hardpan would let the water drain into an aquifer that was about 20 feet down. We loaded the trailer with a heavy rod, long pieces of pipe, sledgehammer, wading boots and of course the dynamite. Epitacio drove the tractor with trailer in tow down the dirt road to the large laguna and we followed in Grandpa’s station wagon with the caps carefully wrapped in the old blanket. Grandpa waded out into the water, trying to explain to Epitacio where he wanted the holes. Epitacio didn’t understand much English and Grandpa didn’t speak Spanish so there was a lot of handwaving. “Bang a hole with that big rod right here and put that piece of pipe in the hole then another one over there by that willow bush.” As we made holes, Grandpa began to string sticks of dynamite and pushed them down the pipe. Then he pulled the pipe out leaving the sticks down in the muck that collected at the bottom of the laguna. After a couple hours we had laced the entire laguna with dynamite. We were ready for the 4th of July in February.
Grandpa’s trusty Zippo lighter gave life to the fuse. We ran up to the top terrace. Ka-boom or more like kasploop. Water and mud flew into the air in a progression of explosions and rained back to earth leaving a huge mud pit. If Bill’s 4H pig Maggie had been there, she would have thought she’d died and gone to Heaven. Grandpa was clearly pleased with his work. Bill and I thought it was great fun. Epitacio, not sure what to think, just loaded the tools and we headed back to the machine shed.
Before Grandpa and Grandma returned to Des Moines, unbeknownst to any of us, he stored the remaining box of dynamite. I’m almost certain he planned to tackle another laguna next February; however, next February did not come for Grandpa as he passed away in December.
Our house on the farm was built in 1947 when knotty pine was a popular wall finish. It covered the walls of our family room. We noticed the slightly reddish discoloration of wall shared with the garage but nobody thought much about it. After all, pine is known to have sap lines. After several very hot summers, the streaks were getting redder and shiny. Dad reached up and discovered that the stains were sticky and greasy feeling. Deciding to check what might be the source he climbed into the attic. There it was – an old box half filled with decomposed dynamite and a moth eaten blanket wrapped around the box of caps. We spent some anxious time cleaning up the mess without jarring anything. I have often wondered what might have happened if someone hit that wood with a hammer. Talk about a message from the grave.
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The spring after dynamiting the laguna, Bill and I planted watermelons in the weeds around the lower terrace. Maybe it was just a good year or maybe the traumatic turning of the soil contributed but we had more melons than ever and some reached 80 pounds. They were so big we had to haul them in a wheelbarrow. After a few years of contoured farming, Dad reverted to straight row farming like the other farmers. The carefully constructed contour ridges slowly melded into the background. As always, the lagunas filled when the fall hurricane rains came a few months before the ducks and geese returned on their annual migration. Maybe that is how it was supposed to be.
Jim Downing
03/02/02