Dynamite was one (about the only one) area where Tim and I didn’t have any experience “messing around” with on our own, although it was always in our fantasies. This was in spite of one of the Vartorrela kids in town who blew off a finger playing with dynamite caps. We heard he hit one with a hammer and it exploded. When we heard about that, it just added to the excitement and fantasy. When you’re a kid, you have that “fantasy” of feeling invincible (how I long for that feeling again).  One summer day our fantasy was partially fulfilled.  Uncle Ned and Art Moon were planning on dynamiting out some big boulders that were in 2 of our fields. I guess Uncle Ned finally got tired of farming around them and since Art worked with a construction company, he knew something about dynamite. The first dynamiting was in the field across the road.  I remember the dynamite was a yellowish color under the cardboard-colored outer wrapping. Art and Ned dug underneath the boulder and placed the stick of dynamite under it. The caps were electric and copper-skinned. Art pushed the cap into the end of the stick. They then unwound the thin red and yellow wire to the Super “M” tractor about 200 feet or so away. We all got behind the tractor, and then Art touched the 2 bare ends of the wire onto the tractor’s battery terminals.  Tim and I were really excited because we expected a big KABOOOOOM!  When the dynamite went off, all we heard was a PFUMMMP and the boulder went flipping up in the air about 10 feet or so and alit next to the crater it was in. The next field’s boulder was 95% underground with just the plow and disk scarred flat surface showing. Art set the dynamite on the surface, then made some mud and covered the dynamite with big globs of it. He called this a “mud pack.” THIS time we got the expected KABOOOOM, as we were pelted with pieces of granite pinging against the front side of the tractor we were behind. The loud explosion sound reverberated through the woods about 2,000 feet to the north. That was “NIFTY”!  Art also brought some “Prima-Cord” with him. This was yellow-coated and about a half inch thick or so as best as I recall. I ask Art what it was for and he said it was used to blow up bridges. Later in the Navy, we got to play around with “C-4” which apparently replaced “Prima-Cord” to blow up bridges. After disposing of the 2 big boulders with the dynamite, we went across the road to “Greeno’s,” which was one of the other farms we “ran” (the others being Burnham’s, “The Old Gordon Place”, and “Gillespie’s”). At “Greeno’s”, there was a small tree in the field and Art took the Prima-Cord and wrapped it around the tree 3 or 4 times and then stuck in a dynamite cap. The routine was the same with the dynamite, we’d all get behind the tractor, and Art would touch the wires to the tractor battery. It was another KABOOOOM!, except this time it was more of a “loud crack” that again reverberated through the woods which made the “Nifty” sound last longer!  As we walked around from the backside of the tractor, we saw that the little tree was still defiantly standing. About 3 feet of the bark was stripped off and there was a deep 1 or 2 inch-wide grove in the center of the stripped bark area. Just as Art finished saying, “I should have wrapped 1 more cord around it…” the tree slowly topped over! That was really funny and we all got a real laugh out of it!  Tim and I sure had a lot of fun and excitement on that memorable day! (Hmmm, now that I recall the resulting behavior of both Uncle Ned and Art, I suspect we kids weren’t the ONLY ones that had fun with dynamite that day!