The Day We Almost Blew up a Village.
The story of a twist of fate.
Recently, I’ve begun to think about all the twists and turns I have taken on this journey called life and how just one twist of fate pointing me in another direction could have resulted in my never coming to Portugal. This is a true story and no, we’re not terrorists. But one day, long ago, in 1992, Paul and I almost blew up a village. If things had gone differently, we most likely would not be alive. What I can only describe as a series of twists of fate saved us. Here is our story:
A twist of fate in life can refer to an unexpected turn of events or a sudden change in circumstances that significantly alters the course of one's life or plans. It's the unpredictable nature of life, where the unexpected can happen at any moment, leading to both positive and negative outcomes.
In a previous post, I mentioned that from the mid 1980’s to the early 1990’s, Paul and I owned one of America’s oldest country stores in the quaint New England village of Chepachet, Rhode Island. The year 1992 was not a good one for us. In early July of that year, my mother, who had suffered from an auto-immune disease for many years, suddenly went into a rapid health decline, and she died three weeks later, on July 24th. She was only 63 years old.
My parents were a big part of our lives especially during our country store days. Mom would drive 45 minutes from their home to the store to help during the week. She especially enjoyed the children who came to buy penny candy. On weekends, both my parents would spend most Sundays helping us out. Our regular customers knew them as well as they knew me and Paul.
A bittersweet decision.
Paul and I had worked hard to build our business. During those years, we sacrificed attending many family gatherings and events, never took long vacations, and we missed out on socializing with friends (some friendships endured; others did not).
Losing my mother was devastating to me, my family, and Paul. When my mother died, part of us died, too. Personally, I didn’t feel as if I could continue working with the public, always having to be upbeat with a smile on my face when inside I was feeling nothing but an empty sadness.
In late August of that year, and after much soul-searching and discussion, Paul and I decided that we were done. So, we closed the store and didn’t reopen it. We put it up for sale.
Back in the day.
Beginning in 1809, the building was originally a true general store, serving the many farms and village residents in the area. Townsfolk would stop by for yards of fabric, penny candy, a pound of Vermont cheddar cheese, various hardware and farming items, dry goods, and their mail. Men would sit around the pot belly stove to stay warm and drink coffee. The store was the hub for local gossip and conversation.
But the cellar was a scary place.
I’m assuming that when the building was constructed in 1799, the cellar was nothing more than a hand-dug dirt space with huge wood beams holding the structure in place. When we bought the building, the previous owners had dug out about a third of the cellar near the staircase and put rough concrete down for flooring where the boiler and electrical panel was located. They also installed steel support beams.
The rest of the cellar was as it had always been – mostly dirt. And mostly dark, with just a light bulb hanging on a beam for light. Even at just under 5 feet 3 inches, I had to walk bent at an angle whenever I needed to (which was rare) venture towards the dirt filled side of the cellar which faced the street. There in the dirt, were remnants of when the building had been a real general store such as broken washboards, wooden crates, broken tools, chipped crockery, old chairs, empty glass bottles, old benches, tools, and probably the remains of critters, although I never looked too closely for those. It was mostly junk, and nothing there that interested us, so we left things as they were.
Because the building was situated next to the Chepachet River, the cellar was always at a constant cool temperature. If it hadn’t been such a scary place, it would have made a great wine cellar! Along the side of the bottom of the staircase, there was a stone cistern that sometimes was filled with murky water and sometimes not. Neither Paul nor I cared to look to see what might be in there.
And although we always meant to clean out the rest of the cellar, it was one of those unpleasant tasks that we always put off.
The building quickly sold, and it was time for Paul and I to head onto the next adventure in life (whatever that was going to be). Since we lived above the store, that meant packing up all our belongings in the eight-room apartment, as well as getting the store ready for the new owners. The one niggling thing in the backs of our minds was that scary cellar. We really should clean it out and not leave it for the new owners like that, we thought.
So, we began looking for help to clean it out.
This was clearly not going to be a 2-person task. Cleaning out that cellar would mean hauling whatever junk was there up a staircase and then down a hall, and outside into a courtyard and parking area where we figured we would have a dumpster parked and waiting. We started contacting people in the phone book who did this kind of work and were shocked at the prices they wanted to charge us – upwards of five to seven thousand dollars! In 1992 that was a lot of cash for us.
Twist of Fate # 1 – Why did I pick up that publication?
Since we couldn’t find anyone who would charge us a reasonable price, as a last resort, my father, my brother, and my two brothers-in-law all volunteered to come on a weekend and help us get the job done. It was going to be bull work and I’m sure no one was looking forward to it, least of all, me. I kept putting off scheduling a weekend to do this.
For whatever reason I still can’t comprehend, I picked up one of those free local homes for sale tabloids that you could find on racks at entrances to grocery stores. We weren’t planning on purchasing a home – Dad had asked us if we wanted to move in with him for a while and we thought it was a good idea since we didn’t know what was going to be next for us, so to this day, I have no idea why I picked up that publication.
One afternoon, as I was mindlessly thumbing through it, it opened right to the center fold. There, I saw an advertisement for someone who was offering to clean out cellars, barns, and basements. I had never seen this ad before, so I suggested to Paul that we call to see if they would be interested in helping us out.
A couple of days later, a nice-looking young man named Allen, who was just getting started in real estate, knocked on our apartment door, dressed in a jacket and tie and with a clipboard. Paul escorted him down to the scary cellar.
Allen gave us a very reasonable price to clean out the cellar including arranging for a large dumpster to be delivered. He and two of his buddies had recently started cleaning out cellars, barns, and basements as a side-business. The only thing he asked was if he found anything interesting – any old artifact - while cleaning out the cellar, that he could keep those items. We readily agreed and hired him.
The work was scheduled for the following Saturday, October 24th – exactly three months to the day my mother passed away.
Early that Saturday morning, Allen and his two friends showed up. Paul went down to the cellar with them to supervise and in case they had any questions. I remained in the apartment in my third-floor home office, doing paperwork and getting things packed up.
The crew made good progress hauling mostly junk up the staircase and outside into the dumpster. By late morning, they were nearly finished. Allen found a few “treasures” and put them in his truck with Paul’s blessing.
Twist of Fate # 2 – The detonator box.
The last “treasure” that Allen found was an old detonator box. He showed it to Paul. Allen knew about these boxes and told Paul that in the early days of agriculture, removing tree stumps or boulders from farm fields was a daunting task. Detonator boxes played a crucial role in harnessing nitroglycerin, a highly explosive compound, and a key ingredient in the creation of dynamite. These boxes contained the mechanisms necessary to remotely trigger the detonation of dynamite safely and precisely. Farmers would strategically place the dynamite around the base of a tree stump or boulder, ensuring maximum impact while minimizing collateral damage.
Local general stores often carried detonator boxes for their farming customers. Apparently, they had once been sold in our country store.
Twist of Fate # 3 - Corn syrup or something else? And why did Paul hesitate?
About 30 minutes later, just as the crew was finishing up, Allen found something set on its side and half buried in the dirt – an old glass bottle, fogged over from time, with a thick liquid inside and a wax seal at the top. To an ordinary person, it looked like an old bottle of corn syrup. To Allen, it looked like something else. He brought it over to Paul.
“I think this could be nitroglycerin,” Allen said to Paul. It made sense. First finding a detonator box and now this bottle. Paul and Allen both stared at each other, not knowing exactly what to do next. One of Allen’s friends thought it was an old bottle of corn syrup and suggested that they just throw it in the dumpster with the rest of the junk.
Paul picked up the bottle and started toward the stairs to take it out of the building. If it was, in fact, nitroglycerin, he didn’t want it indoors.
Then something made him hesitate. He wasn’t sure why, but he carefully placed the bottle back down on a bench in the cellar and gave explicit instructions to the crew not to touch it until he got back.
The Chepachet Fire Department was located diagonally across from our store. Paul walked across the street and went inside. He told the mostly volunteer team what had been found and asked if they would come take a look at the bottle. One firefighter jumped up and went to pull the alarm. Paul asked him not to – he didn’t want to draw attention prematurely (and hopefully, for nothing). So, several of the firefighters walked across the street to our building and went into the cellar to take a look.
Evacuate the village!
Yes. That’s exactly what happened next. The fire alarm went off and firefighters and the local police began going door-to-door surrounding the vicinity of our building, telling business owners, customers, and residents alike to evacuate. The main street was cordoned off – no vehicles could enter the village – only vehicles exiting during the evacuation could leave.
Meanwhile, Paul came upstairs to where I was working in the apartment and calmly told me to get the dog and the cat, and to get in the car and leave. “Go to your father’s house,” he said. When I asked why I should drive 45 minutes to my dad’s house, he said, “We think we found a bottle of nitroglycerin in the cellar and this place could blow up at any minute.”
I placed Lily the cat in her carrier, and Greta the dog on her leash, picked up my handbag and car keys and went outside. I still couldn’t believe that we had nitroglycerin in our building all this time – probably for well over one hundred years! Would it still be potent? Does that stuff go bad?
I even went as far as asking the head firefighter if all of this was really necessary. I mean, couldn’t they just remove the bottle from the cellar? Quietly? Without any fanfare? Without evacuating the village?
He looked somewhat annoyed with me and politely (but firmly) told me that taking the bottle outside could cause it to explode with the change in temperature and that there was enough nitroglycerin in that bottle to potentially level all the buildings in the center of the village - many of them historic - with ours being ground zero and smack in the middle. He had already called the Rhode Island State Bomb Squad. They were on their way.
I can’t leave.
I looked at Paul and said, “You’re coming too, right?” He said, “I can’t leave. The bomb squad needs me to guide them out of the building.”
I was shocked! Did the bomb squad really expect my husband to guide them out of the building? Apparently, yes. They did. He knew the building better than anyone, so he was asked to stay. I told Paul that I wasn’t going to my father’s house. If he had to stay, I was going to stay. Paul walked me to my car, put the animals inside and calmly said, “Go. I’ll be fine.”
So, I drove away. Shaking and in tears. But I didn’t drive far. Just far enough from the restricted area. I parked the car along the side of the street in the shade, cracked the car windows open so the animals could have fresh air, locked the car, and then I quietly walked back and waited across the street near the fire station. I was not going to leave Paul.
I could hear the sirens from the Rhode Island State Police cars approaching the village. And then the Fire Marshal’s truck. And then the bomb squad truck. And then, the news media - reporters and photographers from all the local televions news stations and papers. Bystanders crowded together as close as the police would allow.
The bomb squad, all dressed in their hazmat gear, entered the building, went down the stairs and into the cellar. They placed the bottle into a special container and then slowly, Paul guided them up the wooden steps of the cellar onto the main floor of the store. They had asked Paul to take them along the most level route to the street front of the building – not an easy task since the building was so old and the wooden floors uneven.
The bomb squad placed the container in an explosive-proof cylinder and drove away with it under State Police escort to a quarry, where they safely detonated the nitroglycerin. It blew up a boulder the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.
Twist of fate # 4 – We could have been liable.
By this time, Allen and his crew had left, not wanting to hang around in case there was an explosion. But reporters with news cameras did hang around asking Paul for additional details. The Fire Marshal returned to our building and conducted a thorough search of the (newly clean) cellar just in case there were more explosive materials. Nothing more was found.
However, he did tell us that if that glass bottle had been compromised in any way and had exploded somewhere between the cellar and the dumpster or in the dumpster on the way to the dump, Paul and I would have been liable for any deaths, injuries or destruction that occurred. A sobering thought.
Twist of fate # 5 – No one died.
If Paul had decided to take that bottle of nitroglycerin out of the cellar from where it lay in a constant temperature for all those decades, it is highly possible that it would have exploded in his hands in the warm October air, and he would have died. Being inside the building, I most likely would have died as well as our pets. Allen and his crew would also have perished. And an historic country store (among other buildings and people) would have been destroyed.
If I hadn’t found Allen’s advertisement, I would have most likely lost all the men in my family since they had volunteered to help clean out the cellar. My sisters would be widows as would my sister-in-law. My nieces wouldn’t have fathers. Paul’s family would have lost him. My sisters would have also lost a sister, a brother, a brother-in-law, and a father exactly three months to the day after losing their mother.
As my brother said to me later that night in a slightly emotional voice, “Carol, I would have just thrown that glass bottle into the dumpster.”
Why am I sharing this story?
I’m not an especially religious person, but I often think about this experience and wonder if there were other forces guiding us to make the right choices leading up to that day. Perhaps guardian angels or forces in the universe? Or maybe friendly country store ghosts? I really don’t know. But there was something.
In my wildest dreams, I would never have anticipated that I would be living in Portugal with Paul in this moment. And I never would have expected to discover some of my Portuguese ancestry. But here we are on our Portugal journey. I am learning - even at this older stage in life - to have faith in fate that forces beyond my comprehension have a plan for us.
For me, twists of fate serve as a good reminder that life is full of surprises and that despite our best efforts to plan and control our lives, external forces or chance occurrences can intervene, shaping our destinies in ways we never expected. This is certainly what has happened to me.
Have you ever experienced a twist of fate? Leave a comment and tell me about it.
Postscript: After that October day in 1992, we lost touch with Allen. However, 10 years later just before we moved to Arizona, Paul was walking into his favorite coffee shop in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, when the owner of the shop called Paul over to introduce him to a realtor in town named Allen. Paul took one look at him, smiled, and said, “Hello Allen. We met a long time ago. You saved my life once. Remember the country store and the nitroglycerin?”
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Until next time…
Obrigada!
Carol.
Wow. One of the best true-life stories I have read. Some luck, but a good decision by Paul to leave the vial alone and contact the bombeiros. I really enjoyed reading this. Thanks for sharing
Great story, well told! Yes I believe you had/have guardian angels guiding you. We all do if we allow!!