Was there a time when we were awash with blasting caps everywhere?

[PufPuf23]

7. Back in the 60s and 70s blasting caps were easy to obtain where I lived.

Blasting caps and dynamite were used in road building and logging (the main local economy) and there was not the strict controls now placed on their use.

A fellow I grew up with (and we are still friends) was a heavy equipment operator and logger who was sent to Vietnam. When he came back he spent years as an outlaw, growing pot.

Once he knew that there would be a "powder monkey" spending the weekend blowing stumps from a recently cleared new logging road right of way in the National Forest.

Maybe he knew the powder monkey (probably grew up and had worked together)? At the same time the stumps were being blown, he used blasting caps and dynamite to create grow holes for his crop (so the solitary blasts could be thought the nearby stumps being blown (and just maybe the powder monkey was the source of his material).