Evening star. [volume], May 12, 1946, Page 4, Image 77

About Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972

Image provided by: Library of Congress, Washington, DC

                
King Of The Dynamiters by wessel smitteb
NONCHALANT: Here are enough detonator caps and fuse to atomize him, but Ford Alexander feels right at home
Kxplosions arc his business,
slopping oil-well fires his
socially. Nice work — but you
can make a mistake only once!
Mr. Ford Alexander drew his car to a
stop in a lonely little canyon near Los
Angeles, got out his box of shooting tools and
walked up to a couple of young engineers
waiting beside a small wall safe.
‘‘Really want me to try to open it?” he
asked.
“That's what we’re paying you for.”
All during the war. while working in a
defense plant, the young engineers had spent
their spare time perfecting the safe. Already
it had passed several tests. Fire had failed
to warp its heavy steel sides. The best lock
smiths in Los Angeles had failed to open the
lock. Drills made from the best tool steel had
left only scratches. This was the final test, and
the young engineers were full of confidence.
Mr. Alexander dropped to his knees, took
a small vial of yellowish, harmless-looking,
oily liquid from a rubber-insulated compart
ment of the box. With an ordinary chicken
feather he worked the liquid into the narrow
slit. along the edge of the safe door. He
crimped a short piece of fuse to a copper
detonating cap, fixed it in place over the slit
with a lump of clay and a few strips of tape.
Hits Near His Mark
Then he walked to the opposite side of the
small wash, made a mark irr the sand with
his heel,
"Right there.” he said, "is about where
that door will land. Still want me to go
ahead?”
"That’s right.” Now the engineers seemed
a little less confident.
He lit the end of the fuse. In about a minute
there was an explosion like the sharp crack of
a pistol. The door spun through the air,
knocked up a small cloud of dust. Mr. Alex
ander walked across the wash, picked it -up.
“Missed it by eighteen inches,” he
said, handing the twisted piece of metal
to the astonished young men. “I should
have done better.”
The safe cracker is a-blasting engineer and
the owner of the Alexander Corporation at
Whittier, California. The young engineers did
not know that throughout the oil fields and
construction camps of the West he is better
known as the King of the Dynamiters. He
specializes in putting out oil-well fires, but
he has rarely been stumped by any job calling
for the use of dynamite, giant powder or
nitroglycerin.
Helped An Explosive Expert
Born about 50 years ago, Mr. Alexander
spent his early boyhood on a farm in Ohio,
adjacent to what was then known as the Cow
Run oil field. During one summer vacation,
he worked as a helper to an explosive expert,
or shooter. Tliat summer there were a number
of accidents, the most seriousof which occurred
when a team of horses hitched to a “soup”
wagon with 60 quarts of nitroglycerin ran
away. This incident led to a family decision
that there was no future, or at least a very
uncertain one, in the shooting business for
young Ford and he decided to try his luck out
West.
A week later young Ford stepped off the
train at Taft, California, a raw frontier town
in the early throes of an oil boom. Here the
TW 5-12-4*