As we near the 80th anniversary of the explosion that ultimately convinced the Japanese that World War II was lost to them, I am reminded of another, far less volatile explosion, that perfectly illustrates the relationship between the Curtis family and the Dinsdales.

Dad, as in my father, Leonard Curtis, returned from the Pacific Theater of the war having served with the Air Apaches, the American 345th Bomb Group. It was, according to military historian Jay A. Stout, “legendary in the war against Japan. The first fully trained and fully equipped group sent to the South Pacific, the 345th racked up a devastating score against the enemy.” They flew their B-25s at low altitudes – often below fifty feet – in New Guinea and the Philippines. The 345th lost 177 aircraft and 712 men.

So, Dad was no stranger to explosions.

Back home after the war, our family farm northeast of Webster City was in a neighborhood where Dinsdales populated the road that became the Stonega blacktop. Dad, who had been a professional baseball umpire before the war, learned farming inch by inch from the man I identified as the Dinsdale patriarch: Russell Dinsdale. When I think of Russ, I think of a Hereford bull. He was a good man. They all were.

From our farm, Russell and Eva lived just across a field to the east. Then, going south along

the Stonega, there were Pete and Ionia, Clair and Naomi, and Don and Edna. I may have the order

of those last two wrong; it’s been a long time. But no matter; it’s not particularly important to

this story.

What is important is that it was Gary Dinsdale, Don and Edna’s

son, who told me the story of how Dad was faced with one of those huge glacial erratics that used to be far more common in fields than they are now because one by one they were removed.

Well, Russell had a plan.

They would just blow the dang thing up.

Keep in mind that Gary is telling me this at a party during which many cocktails had already been consumed.

So here they are, gathered around this giant rock.

Someone is opining on the amount of dynamite they’re going to need.

Gary recalled that Dad was getting nervous.

Side note: When I think of how this project could go good or bad, I filter Gary’s story through the lens of the YouTube video of the Oregon highway division’s (failed) attempt to blow up a giant dead whale that stunk up a beach there in 1970. They used a half ton of dynamite. Whale blubber went everywhere but where it was supposed to. Sightseers were pelted with rotten flesh, and a big chunk flattened the roof of a car parked a distance away that someone told me had just been purchased from a dealer promising “a whale of a deal.”

But back to that Hamilton County field.

Here are the Dinsdales, reverentially gathered around that huge rock as though it were a washed-up sea mammal, packing it with way too much dynamite, to hear Gary tell it.

Dad’s nervousness was escalating.

Russ, undeterred and taking charge, sauntered over and lit the fuse.

Dad bolted.

As he passed in a dead run, Russ calmly reached out and grabbed the hat from Dad’s head. He walked over to the rock and put Dad’s hat on top of it.

At last, in deference to the dynamite, the Dinsdales backed off a little.

The explosion blew Dad’s hat into the beyond.

Gary didn’t mention what happened to the rock.

Jane Curtis is editor of the Daily Freeman-Journal. She is an Iowa Newspaper Association Master Columnist