If Corky Furillo knew anything, he knew about blowing up shit. Two tours in Iraq will do that for a guy… IEDs, RPGs, land mines, booby traps, suicide vests strapped on teen-aged girls…explosions were a way of life over there. So when it came to the task of blowing up a couple of dams made of dirt, gravel and rocks…no problem.
It would be a night job. We met up at the old abandoned Gypsum Mine
…me, Corky, Skeeter, Lonnie, One Fly and Huey.
We would move around 11pm. Canoes would be used – quiet, fast, set up and get out. Doc would drop us off at the old boat launch above the cattails and pick us up two miles downstream at the cottonwood patch. Zero hour would be 2AM.
Corky had rigged two packages: each held two full sticks of dynamite rigged with wires. He used a countdown timer in a black box with a digital face. We loaded up the canoes with the packs of explosives and slid silently into the Madison River. With no moon and tough viz, we zigged and zagged, bobbed and weaved around rocks and arrived at The Outlet right at midnight. Canoes were beached. Me and Corky snuck up the dry channel to the main dam… Skeeter and Lonnie proceeded down to the second dam, while Huey and Lonnie stayed with the canoes.
Using a trowel, me and Corky quietly dug two holes about four feet apart and sunk in the dynamite. We checked the detonator switch which was taken from a remote control model airplane and set the dial on the digital timer at 2 AM.
Down at the second dam, Skeeter and Lonnie did the same. We all met back at the canoes, double checked that everything was in sync, and set off down the river.
Doc was waiting for us at the cottonwoods. We loaded the canoes in the long box of the pick-up, strapped them in, and headed back home.
We were pretty sure nobody saw us.
At two AM on the button…KABOOM, BOOM! Even though the blasts were miles upstream, everybody in town including the passed out drunks heard it. The bars had just emptied out and the late night partiers froze in their tracks. WTF was that? A few thought: meteorite, terrorist attack, the end of the world.
They would have to wait until morning.