The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-10-14
WHlMs OF NlTRoGLYcERINE.
Shooters of oil Fields Often Puzzled
 by Behavior of Stuff.

Cherryvale, Kan.-The explosion of dy- namte in a freight car at Jellico. Tenn. and the loss of life and property caused
 thereby, set some of the old shooters of the oil fields to talking.
 The oil field shooter handles from 50 to 300 quarts of nitroglycerine for every we'll sometimes from 250 to 1000 quarts. He hauls it out to the well in wagon, driv- ing lickety split over the rocky country roads. over hills and through valleys, singing as he goes
 Sometimes he goes out and never comes back. as was the case with Jimmy O'Hare, who, after thirty years experi ence with the stuff. drove out of Chelsea one morning to shoot we'll There was a noise and that was all They buried four pounds of OHare the next day. The same thing happened to a shooter named Ware at Cofeyvlle two years ago. "It's a funny thing" said Winchester. who lost one arm finding out about nitro ! glycerine, what the stuff will do When you are looking for an explosion it doesn't happen.
 For instance, there was the time when a wagon full of nitroglycerine got loose in Bradford, Pa. The horses ran down the streets and the cans were scattered all over the sidewalks. ricochetting ! against telegraph poles and things. But never an explosion.
 Then there was the time, right up here north of Cherryville. when the glyc- crime plant of one of the torpedo compa- nies took fire. There was more than a thousand quarts of glycerine.
 "The man went out there in the morn- ing to look after it. He was just leaving when along came a streak of lightning and set the thing afire. The glycerine ran around on the floor and out on the ground burning but never an explosion. ''Then there was another time when all of us thought we would have some noise on the Fourth of July. This was up in Pennsylvania. We got fifty quart bottles of glycerine and went out on high bluff Then we chucked them down the side, thinking they would raise some commotion when they hit the bottom. Marry a commotlon.
 'Then there are other times when you don't look for it that the pesky thing is all alive and anxious to explode and tear up things for miles around. l remember a good looking young fellow up in West Virginia in the shooting business. He was as careful with the glycerine as could be, but one morning we found him in three or four thousand pieces and just enough left of the wagon to tell that one of the cans had leaked a little, the stuff had run down on the springs there was some friction and then funeral
 Nobody knows the cause of one out of a thousand explosions of dynamite or nitroglycerfne. As general thing all the people entitled to know the cause of an explosion are dead a few seconds af- ter it happened and are only fit subjects for an inquest not for an interview. The only thing we know is that effects are never twice the same.
 ''I saw two little boys cutting open can of dynamite in St. Louis one time with a hatchet and the powder did not explode I've seen dynamite heated pret- ty warm and it did not go off and then I've seen some go off when it was cold. just as that carload did in Tennessee the O her day. Ii is funny game.
 "When we think it is going to work up the explosive works down and when we think it is going to work down it works sideways, and there you are. But we do know one thing: whenever 1t goes off there is going to be blood and hair and the ground tore up.
 '.It beats all what damage glycerine or dynamite can do. Makes. brickdust out of city block and causes people miles away to wonder where the earthuuake was It just gets busy in forty eleven different directions at once. Yet outside of some seven or eight lives lost we have never had much trouble with glycerne in Kansas and the territories
 And with that he drove off on top of wagon containing enough glycerne to blow New York or St. Lous clear over into the middle of the next state. But the farmers driving along the road, pass ing close. did not know that.