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You know, I kind of expected this style of soundtrack. Pretty clever project, though.

Jeesh, some things have changed since 1989 (when the Berlin Wall fell) , and 1991 (when the Soviet Union folded). Where was I? That's a tough one. Let's see...when the Berlin Wall fell, I was a chuck-tender for an "air-track" drilling rig in Moreno Valley, California just east of Riverside. We were drilling and blasting an area at the base of Box Springs Mountain. (The link shows the finished project via Google Satellite, by golly.)

The shot-rock was then bulldozed to a front-end loader and loaded on haul trucks to be dumped in an area farther afoot of the mountain. Essentially, we were leveling a pad at the base of the mountain and using the material for an earthen berm. On the leveled pads, water storage tanks where built, and the berm kept them from view, as you can see from the satellite link.

Carrying boxes of dynamite and loading the holes with the explosives were the other duties. We were called "powder-monkeys". That's kind of a humorus tale, in itself. An old fellow named Gene was a local licensed blaster and his son Dale helped organize and load the explosives. Old Gene always referred to the drilled holes as "jewels", and he had a rhuemy, squinty left eye, just like Popeye, really. And he sort of had the Popeye voice to along with it. "Let's put so and so amount of dynamite and so and so amount of "prell" (ammonia nitrate) in this jewel", was his habitual advice. His son, on the other hand, had a squinty right eye, so they were sort of like looking into a mirror when they faced and conversed with each another. My brother and I would laugh at the dichotomous scene; not in a vulgar, petty way, but more out of being a part in a jolly fellowship.

I harbored a level of frustration with Gene, though, because he was accustomed to an older system of electrical detonation. This was his first go around with a new, more effecient non-electrical system. The pattern of holes were governed by milliseconds of delay time between explosion, and if they weren't connected in strict sequence, a section of the blast would invaribly be cut off, leaving an ominous, dormant payload of dynamite below surface. The only option was to get back to drilling new "jewels" amidst the old "jewels" that had retarded. That was a little dodgy.

Oh shoot, there was also "Bar-room Billy" running the dozer. God, he was hating it. Dude, his eyes were tatered each morning. He just up and left one day. Had enough of bouncing around on boulders.

Anyway, the Berlin Wall. ( I guess the drilling/blasting story fits, seeing how the wall was being demolished, yet not with dynamite and I'd wager that it wasn't kindly referred to as a "jewel".)

I was sharing an apartment on Pigeon Pass Rd with my brother and step-brother. The news of the Berlin Wall was coming over through a dinky television set in the living room where my step-brother was using the hideway couch as a bed. Quite a moment, but me being twenty-two, the historical impact was lost on more youthful endeavors, I guess. Plus, the SF Giants were chasing a World Series championship, which turned out less fruitful. Live and learn. I did recently read an interesting article in Wired about a dissident woman and the scrutinous East German surveillance world.