Anyone that was around Marble Falls in the 60s should remember Glenn’s old pickup. It was his main mode of transportation for much of the 1960s, much of the time it was pulling an old one horse trailer.

When we finished the job at Lakeway, the first of our projects when we made our move to the Austin area, Old Blue had given up on Glenn and he left it sitting in a field out at the side of where the new condos were being built. He and big Jimmy went back to get it several months later after the project owner had made several calls about moving it.

When Jimmy and Glenn went to retrieve it, they discovered something very disturbing. In the front passenger floor board was an almost full case of dynamite and blasting caps. We had magazines setup in a secure location that all explosives were returned to each day that was several miles away.

The day old Blue wouldn’t start and was abandoned, Glenn was suppose to return the explosives to the magazine. He just climbed in with Jimmy and never gave another thought to what he was leaving behind.

Luckily no one ever came along and discovered what was there. As you can see the protocol for handling explosives was a lot more loosy-goosy back in those days.

When they told me what had happened, Glenn explained it away by saying “nobody could see what was in there, because I had some feed sacks and a saddle blanket laid over them”.

Since he had hidden the stuff, it always made me think it wasn’t inadvertently left that day. But I guess he surely didn’t intend to leave it for several months, like he did.

Not long ago a fellow told me a story about climbing in the pickup with Glenn and he had a box of dynamite caps setting right there in the pickup with him. In fact I still have that texting conversation that I’ll share:

One time after he had moved to the Arrowhead, in fact he had been there a good while, I went to his house to look at some horses we had together. Well they were turned out in a far pasture and Glenn insisted we go in his pickup. When I got in I noticed a box about 1/2 full of dynamite caps on the dash. It was middle of summer and hot as hell. You couldn’t put your hand on dash it was so hot! I asked Glenn if that wasn’t dangerous and he said “probably “ and slammed it in gear and off we bounced in that very rough pasture. Well I never saw a horse because I couldn’t take my eyes off of that box of dynamite caps. And that was after he had “SETTLED DOWN”

When I was told that story, it crossed my mind that Glenn could have held on to those caps and dynamite from 10 years before, down in Lakeway, just in case he needed them someday.