JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 386

                                                                                                            
Hercules Dynamite on the Farm (published by the Hercules Powder Company in 1943)–isn’t that a title that just begs to be read?  “Ditch Blasting, Stump Blasting, Boulder Blasting, Soil Blasting, Gully Blasting, Tree Planting, Tree Rejuvenation”–keyword:  blasting.  Actually, the tree planting and rejuvenation parts also involved blasting:  blasting was done to create the holes for planting tree; blasting was also done deep near the deepest roots of a stumpy tree to help create space for root growth. I have no idea if this was actually a good idea or not, but on the face of it, the blasting part seems to make sense.

It is a tidy and well written account the foundations of which are terrific understatement and adverbial creationism.  We read that “success in stump blasting is a matter of ordinary care and discretion” and this pithy little sentence, “Every stump is a problem to itself.”  And: “The size of the hole depends on the size of the stump.”  Actually, aside from the extraordinary number of times that the word “stump” appears in these pages, I feel quite confident (after having sort-of read this thing) that if

need be I could go out and blow the crap out of one, and correctly:   considering the age of the stump, the
type of tree,the SIZE of the stump, the depth of the roots, the type of soil; I believe I
(and by “I” I mean “all of us”) could calculate the amount of the charge, the placement (depth and
angle) of cartridge, use of stemming and fuse, and get the stump the
bleep outta there. There’s much much more, of course, but it is the
stump blasting that caught my eye…and the root blasting rejuvenation
as well