Blown Sky High

By B. C. Murray

On a clear spring morning in 1977, the old creosote plant in Columbia, Mississippi, exploded, spewing chemicals and debris into the air, causing the evacuation of nearby, primarily poor neighborhoods and spreading fear throughout the community.

Nearly three years after two illegal drug operations went sour, the now virtually unrecognizable former spy, Joe Don McDaniel, leaves his heavily wooded, secluded hideout in Hancock County, Mississippi, to check out the mysterious blast. Through conversations with a loose-lipped plant official he meets at a Columbia bar, Joe Don learns of a top-secret Pentagon contract and thousands of drums of Agent Orange and other toxic chemicals buried on the plant property.

With the aid of some nefarious characters from New Orleans, Joe Don empties the contents of the plant's 30,000-gallon tanks onto the creosote plant grounds, creating an even more severe environmental disaster. Then, with the plant declared off-limits, Joe Don schemes to use the plant's two laboratories and mixing facilities to manufacture crystal methamphetamine. The drug is inexpensive to make and, unlike cocaine, can be sold at a price that is affordable to anyone. Best of all, the entire enterprise can operate under the noses of the locals who are deathly afraid to go near the abandoned and potentially lethal creosote plant site.

The story follows a prominent civic-minded local couple, a local newspaperwoman, and a New Orleans television investigative reporter who are trying to determine who intentionally spilled Agent Orange onto the plant property and why.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350911114

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

No one dreamed things could get worse. Ever since the malaise of the Jimmy Carter days began, the whole country had gone into the tank. Interest rates reached double digits. Layoffs from manufacturing firms and stores were at their highest since the Great Depression. This so-called stagflation was new, economists said. Never before had the country simultaneously experienced a sluggish economy with high-interest rates and record unemployment.  Adding insult to injury, the damn Russians were having a field day manipulating and embarrassing our Southern president, who didn’t seem to be able to manage even a Girl Scott bake sale if his life depended on it.

As part of the most economically depressed state in the Union, Columbia and Marion County, Mississippi, usually felt only a marginal impact when the country’s economy regressed. Hell, until the area’s oil boom of the 1970s, Columbia was like a remote pine tree-covered island muddling along without a care in the world about anything short of the release of a new Lynyrd Skynyrd album. This time things were different.

Stagflation came at a time when oil and gas drilling in the area had ebbed. The timber industry continued its decline, and Bud’s Bargain Stores, a one hundred store five and dime store chain based in Columbia, was sold and relocated to seemingly greener pastures back East. Local businesses welcomed fewer customers who could purchase little due to the area’s high unemployment. Churches, not exempt from the depressed economy, saw tithes and offerings from their congregations shrivel from a monsoon down to a trickle.

A few months prior, men working in the oil patch and earning salaries equal to or greater than the town’s college-educated citizens were now facing layoffs and bills they could not pay. Their wives, spoiled by the income provided by the oil industry, couldn’t understand why the gravy train had come to a halt. They were accustomed to having their husbands away from home for two weeks every month on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. These women were now babysitting their bored, bitter, and often inebriated out-of-work husbands. At home, husbands were also cramping the lifestyles of many wives who had comfortably settled into adulterous affairs with clandestine lovers. A record number of divorces resulted while these families witnessed their new expensive automobiles, boats, jewelry, and other luxury items become the property of banks and stores that provided financing.

But things did get worse. On a Saturday morning in March of 1977, the creosote plant, another significant employer in town, blew its top like Mount Etna, spewing chemicals and debris throughout a one-quarter-mile area in the city. The plant had sat between downtown and the local high school for so long that people hardly ever gave it any thought. With its tin-walled exterior resembling an overgrown barn or mechanics shed, the creosote plant was visibly overwhelmed by flashy road signs and car dealerships with brand-spanking-new automobiles out front.

Creosote is a wood preservative used on railroad ties and utility poles. This yellowish-to-greenish-brown liquid contains corrosive acidic, flammable compounds linked to cancer and neurological problems. In addition to creosote, the plant, for years, had been producing other potentially hazardous chemicals without the public’s knowledge.

On the day of the explosion, a one-half-mile area city officials barricaded off a one-half-mile area around the plant, and businesses shuttered suddenly. Even the high school baseball team conducting its weekly Saturday morning practice nearby had to evacuate. A Dodge pickup appeared suddenly, and a scruffy old man dressed in farmer’s overalls hopped out, ran to the baseball field’s backstop screen, and cried, Get out! Get out now! We don’t know what is in there!

Despite the man’s warnings, the baseball coach saw nothing more important than completing the team’s practice session. We’ll get a move on as soon as we finish taking infield. the square-headed coach dressed in blue polyester coaching shorts and a gold shirt and cap featuring the school’s logo responded. After speaking to the man in the overalls, the coach turned around to see his players had dashed to their cars and driven off slinging gravel, leaving the bewildered coach alone, holding a bat at home plate.

Chemicals with names ending in ene, ine, sol, and nol shot like cannon fire through the plant’s roof and into the atmosphere. Instantly, an extended, strange sense of death permeated, further exasperating the townspeople. Within minutes, more Columbians joined the hundreds of others out of work.

More disturbing was the possibility that these funny-named chemicals could seep into the nearby Jingling Creek and the town’s water wells less than one-quarter mile away. If the town’s water supply became contaminated, an epic environmental disaster would exist and wreak havoc on the community’s already desperate condition.  Enticing industry to a small, depressed South Mississippi town was tough enough. Having to confess to prospects that cancer-causing carcinogens were present in the water supply would destroy the city, making Columbia’s future as hopeless as it had ever been during its long and storied history.

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Highway 43, also known as Old River Road, parallels the Pearl River and runs through the middle of Marion County. Discovered by French-Canadian explorer Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville during the 1600s, the Pearl River snakes through South Mississippi and serves as a boundary between Mississippi and Louisiana. South of Columbia and Marion County, Old River Road passes through Pear River County, Mississippi, and eventually ends in Hancock County, bordering the Mississippi Sound. Southern Hancock County exemplifies Mississippi Noble Laureate William Faulkner’s description of the Gulf Coast as an area where pine barrens and moss-hung live oaks give way to grassy marshes so flat and low and treeless that they seem less of earth than water. More of a beginning than the end of the land.

The Old River Road passed through the most rural part of Hancock County, including the community of Kiln, known to locals as The Kiln. Because it produced illegal whiskey for the Gulf Coast and New Orleans spirit markets for over one hundred years, The Kiln was called the Moonshine Capital of Mississippi. Surrounding The Kiln are thousands of acres of long leaf pine forests and swamps that provide perfect cover from the law for moonshiners and other purveyors of illegal activity.

Following the launch of Sputnik in 1957, President Eisenhower began laying the groundwork for a state-of-the-art space exploration program to compete with and surpass the Soviets. Before rockets reached the launching pad, manufacturing and testing were required. The planning and design would occur at Marshal Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The construction and assembly would occur at the Michoud Assembly Facility just east of New Orleans.

Testing rocket engines powerful enough to send a man to the moon and back require an extremely isolated area tolerating massive explosions, and jolts heard and felt for miles. With its plethora of trees, swamps, and access to the Gulf of Mexico, rural Hancock County was the ideal site for NASA's rocket engine tests. Also, making this site attractive was its limited population. Property acquisitions occurred between the U.S. government and local citizens, allowing the southwest corner of Hancock County to become home to the Mississippi Test Facility. Later, the facility’s name changed to the John C. Stennis Space Center in honor of Mississippi’s influential and highly-respected United States Senator. To provide maximum security and buffer space for the massive explosions at Stennis, the federal government acquired 125,000 acres of pine and coastal wetlands surrounding the space center property for use as a buffer zone with rigorous use restrictions. Essentially, NASA created a no man’s land in this bootlegger haven where rocket engine tests could occur in a secure, completely isolated environment.

Before construction on the space center, the government relocated five small, once thriving and now dying, lumber mill communities outside the buffer zone. These communities were founded nearly 175 years earlier in a different era when timber was king in South Mississippi. One community, Napoleon, was founded as early as 1798. Lumber companies took advantage of the area’s vast pine forests and access to the Pearl River that empties into the Gulf of Mexico south of Pearlington, Mississippi. A combined population of seven hundred families living in Gainesville, Logtown, Napoleon, Westonia, and Santa Rosa had their land appropriated during the relocation.

Meanwhile, remnants of these former communities, including streets, stores, schools, and other structures, remained. Situated in what is known as Honey Island Swamp are the remains of Santa Rosa. Before establishing the test facility, Santa Rosa included a couple of stores, a church, a post office, and a one-room schoolhouse. In addition, Santa Rosa served as a refuge for pirates operating along the Mississippi Gulf Coast during the 19th century. Now, the only visitor to Santa Rosa and the other former communities is Father Time. With the help of hurricanes and other acts of nature, he gradually eroded most of the remaining proof that these communities existed.

The Stennis Space Center was constructed and began firing and testing rocket engines for the Apollo moon missions in 1966. After the Apollo program ended in 1975, the Center resumed testing engines for the following age of space travel; the space shuttles. The space center was indeed an economic boon to the area. The communities surrounding the space center were proud of their role in putting Americans on the moon. Also, most were happy to honor NASA's orders to avoid the 125,000 acres buffer zone.

One hundred twenty-five thousand acres of trees and swamp land made an excellent hiding place for people evading the law. People suspected many nefarious characters were using this pine-tree-blanketed acreage as a haven. After all, these kinds of people had always found a home in this part of Hancock County. With a wink and a nod, local law enforcement chose to leave occupants – known and unknown – alone to do as they wished in this remote, rural, arboreal sanctuary, thereby preserving the culture and spirit of locals who adhered to nobody’s rules but their own.

Blown Sky High

B. C. Murray

CHAPTER ONE

The rocket engine blasts were getting on his nerves. Joe Don McDaniel arose suddenly at the sound of a loud explosion seeming to last forever. Everything around his humble abode was shaking violently, down to the fillings in his teeth. He rushed to grab a half-full glass of whiskey sitting on the edge of the nightstand before it rattled off and onto the hardwood floor of the old one-room schoolhouse that had served as his home for nearly three years. Joe Don downed the rest of the whiskey and cursed.

He walked across the room and peered into the foggy, cracked mirror on the wall. It was the first time Joe Don had taken a hard look at himself in a while. His dark brown eyes were as bugged out as an old bullfrog’s. Wrinkles engulfed every inch of his ruggedly handsome face like lines on a Mississippi road map. His previously salt and pepper hair was now snow white.  The crew cut he had worn all his life made way for long, stringy locks of thinning hair resembling the draft-dodging hippies he so vehemently despised. Living on the run and within a few miles of a NASA rocket testing site for nearly three years had taken its toll.

Barely avoiding the law after the fiasco in Columbia in 1974, Joe Don had bolted for rural Hancock County on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. He wandered into the 125,000-acre NASA buffer zone and set up shop in one of the five ghost towns where residents had been relocated elsewhere by the federal government back in the 1960s. When Joe Don arrived at the old town of Santa Rosa and the old Aaron’s Academy schoolhouse, he knew he had found a place he could reside in semi-comfort until the heat cooled. So, Joe Don moved into the historic school building and settled in nicely after adding a few comforts.

He brought in enough furniture, an AM-FM radio, a small black and white television with a rabbit-ear antenna, a small icebox, a hot plate, a generator, and a hibachi grill that allowed him to grill the wild game he killed. He even hoed out a few rows behind the schoolhouse, where he grew his tomatoes, peppers, beans, and cucumbers.

Joe Don relished hiding in what once was a refuge for pirates during the 19th century. Even Jean Lafitte, the infamous New Orleans swashbuckling buccaneer who helped Andy Jackson win the Battle of New Orleans, may have walked these same paths he was now using. Walking in the footsteps of that old scoundrel, Lafitte brought a mischievous smile to Joe Don’s face.

Living inside the buffer zone took some getting used to. Joe Don learned early to keep everything worth saving off shelves and on the floor. For example, to protect jars of homemade whiskey and other valuables, Joe Don placed the wooden tops from old school desks on top so they would not be broken when debris fell during rocket engine tests.

But now, after nearly three years, the rocket blasts wreaked havoc on Joe Don’s psyche. With the moon race over, the firing of the Saturn V rockets at Stennis Space Center had ceased. But those engines for the space shuttles - whatever the hell that was - continued. Although not as powerful as the Apollo rocket engines, the blasts from the shuttle engine tests still made everything in Joe Don’s makeshift home shake like popcorn kernels in a skillet of hot butter. The old building seemed to want to shake and disintegrate into a thousand pieces during tests. Thankfully, it had held together during these blasts and even during the devastating hurricanes Betsy in ’65 and Camille in ’69.

Despite all the challenges, the one-room school had served him well. No one bothered him the entire time he was here. Those living nearby and just outside the buffer zone were either in the illegal whiskey business or still too pissed off about losing their land to the government to care what some crazy loon was doing in what used to be Santa Rosa. People had their own lives to live. They worried about family, jobs, floods, and hurricanes instead of what was happening inside the buffer zone. And that suited Joe Don just fine.

He turned the radio on to a Picayune AM station. The announcer explained that a rocket test had just occurred at Stennis Space Center as if the listeners didn't know. Immediately after the explanation, Waylon and Willie poured through the airwaves encouraging everyone through song to join them in Luckenbach, Texas. Joe Don liked Waylon and Willie’s outlaw country music. Their songs were becoming anthems for men like him who had always been outlaws in spirit. Now that he was officially a fugitive, Joe Don could think of no better soundtrack for his life than this new Texas-based country music that thumbed its nose at the sequin-wearing Nashville establishment.

He looked at his watch. It was getting too late for breakfast but too soon for lunch. After a grilled T-bone steak and potato cooked the night before he chased down with enough whiskey to get an entire college fraternity drunk, Joe Don awoke hungover and hungry. Looking in the mirror, he knew he had to clean up some before heading over to the little diner in The Kiln for a bite. Joe Don ran a toothbrush across his yellowing teeth, then stuck his head in the sink and rinsed his hair with the remaining piece of Ivory soap resting on the 2 x 6 shelf secured to the wall. He took a used Schick razor and knocked down the kaleidoscope of brown, black, gray, and white stubble from his face, removed the t-shirt he had worn the day before, and dried his face and hair with a stolen Holiday Inn towel. He sprayed on some Right Guard and put on the freshest shirt he could find in the freezer box serving as his shirt drawer.

After raking a comb through his hair, Joe Don peered into the mirror again and decided he was presentable enough. After all, he wasn’t trying to impress anyone. Joe Don also didn’t want to stand out in a crowd either. So, he tried to blend in with locals he ran across and not give them cause to be suspicious. For almost three years now, his strategy had worked. He talked only to the waitresses, especially the cute ones, and never said more than hello to people greeting him at the diner, on the street, or elsewhere.

To escape the isolation and boredom he endured regularly, Joe Don would sometimes ice down a case of Budweiser and head out to Ship Island on the excursion boat leaving from the Port of Gulfport. He would gravitate to the beach and lay his old body back in a lounge chair and people-watch. Ship Island was free of police and investigators who may still be looking for him and instead featured occasional federal park rangers more interested in bikinis. After all this time, Joe Don doubted anyone was actively searching for him.

He frequently drove his old International Harvester pickup to New Orleans. Joe Don had maintained his relationships with some former spies and ruffians he utilized to take care of his people's problems in Columba in 1974. Despite things not going as planned, Joe Don knew it was better not to cut ties with them. Joe Don didn’t plan on remaining in hiding forever. When the opportunity for adventure arose, and the chance to make some serious money appeared, he fully expected to take advantage of it. And when opportunity knocked, Joe Don knew he would need his faithful compatriots in New Orleans to pull it off.

Next time he would be more careful. That Boston couple, Chance and Charlotte Albright, nearly caused him to land in prison by screwing up his two separate drug operations, which resulted in the death of a prominent local family’s teenage son and others. With the Albrights back up north and everyone in Columbia having short memories, he knew a new challenge would arise someday. Finally, after hiding out for nearly three years, he could position himself to grab it. Meanwhile, he would go about his routine and disappear inside his old schoolhouse deep in the pine forests of South Mississippi. But he needed a bite to eat and wasn’t cooking this morning.

Joe Don secured the schoolhouse door with a padlock and marched to the rear of the building. He passed his small garden on his way to an old shed where he kept his truck. After removing the shed door, Joe Don cranked the old truck featuring a standard transmission and gear shift on the steering column. He pulled out onto what remained of the road leading to Highway 43, the route straight into The Kiln. Joe Don looked around cautiously as he made his way out of the woods and onto the highway. Thankfully, the radio was not turned up loud like some honky-tonk jukebox. His ears couldn’t handle that right now. He cut the volume down anyway and continued to drive.

After a few miles, he arrived in front of a stand-alone faded red-brick building. Lott’s Café had been in this exact location for nearly fifty years. During the day, it served breakfast and lunch. After 5:00 PM, though, the small diner became a gathering place where locals enjoyed illegal homemade alcohol made in these Mississippi backwoods. Although Lott’s serves food after five, the whiskey attracted locals who compared notes on the day's events after work. Joe Don dined here often. But, although he could join the locals after five, Joe Don never ventured by this place after dark. The last thing he needed was to end up in some fight or other trouble that would attract the local sheriff or worse. Joe Don knew that trouble was never far away anytime rednecks and liquor were together. So, he drank alone unless he was at the beach or over in New Orleans.

Joe Don parked his truck and got out. He walked past the large faded front window displaying a long crack from one end to the other. Joe Don wondered how long that crack had been there. He thought it probably occurred when one of those massive hurricanes came through back in the 1960s. Joe Don opened the ragged screen door featuring an ad for Sunbeam bread on the middle strip of tin separating the door’s top and bottom screens. He opened the rust-colored door and heard the tiny brass bell ring as it did each time a customer entered and exited.

He looked around and saw it was 10:00 AM. He was the diner’s lone customer. Ellen Ann, his usual waitress, took a drag of a Virginia Slims before smashing and twisting her cigarette out in an ashtray already overstuffed with red lipstick-stained butts at this early hour. Ellen Ann smiled at Joe Don and offered him the table of his choice as she rushed to the coffee maker and poured the warm liquid into an ancient bone-colored glass mug. Ellen Ann temporarily sat the coffee down to adjust her girdle before grabbing a menu and a cup of coffee. As the waitress sashayed across the dark, dingy, wooden floor, Joe Don couldn’t help but notice Ellen Ann wasn’t bad looking. Some thirty years earlier, she probably had been a high school homecoming queen or cheerleader at the local school. He bet she got knocked up by some football star, got married, and within a few years was left alone after her has-been jock of a husband ran off with some barmaid he met in New Orleans or Biloxi. Meanwhile, the rest of her high school friends moved away, searching for a better life leaving Ellen Ann in The Kiln to raise a child or children by herself.

As she placed the menu and coffee on the table, Ellen Ann rubbed just a little too close to Joe Don, confirming what he already suspected. This waitress was after him. After a quick look up and down her curvy torso and grabbing a whiff of her drugstore perfume, Joe Don decided he could do a helluva lot worse than Ellen Ann. He would take her right then and there if he felt like it. But with him still hungover and starving, she’d have to wait. All Joe Don wanted now was food, coffee, and lots of it.

After taking his order of fried eggs over easy, biscuits, tomato gravy, and bacon, Ellen Ann patted Joe Don on his shoulder, turned, and walked away with enough shake in her hips to give a man whiplash. He could tell the ol’ gal knew he was looking as she leaned over and inside the window between the service counter and the kitchen to hand his order to the cook. Joe Don smiled, knowing Ellen Ann was giving him one helluva show this morning. Maybe he should catch up with her later this afternoon after all.

Ellen Ann reached up and turned the small color television on the wall to WLOX-TV in Biloxi. Joe Don noticed she remained in front of the counter with her hands on her shapely hips. Well, I’ll be damned! she said to herself but loud enough for Joe Don to hear.

How’s that? Joe Don asked.

Without turning, Ellen Ann replied, They’re saying some chemical plant up in Columbia exploded, and they are evacuating everyone within a half-mile.

Joe Don looked at the screen and saw little because Ellen Ann stood in front of the set. Care to turn that up, sweetie? he asked. Ellen Ann fumbled with the volume. Joe Don nodded that he could hear the reporter, a pretty, light-skinned, black woman named Sally Ann Roberts, explain the plant was located very near downtown Columbia just off South High School Avenue. She further reported that the plant manufactured creosote and other chemicals. What other chemicals, she said, no one was certain. Joe Don was trying to picture the plant. He finally got up and walked over to where Ellen Ann was standing and watching.

The second he saw the television screen Joe Don knew where it was. The old plant set back off the road so far that few gave it a second thought. Joe Don had never thought about whether it was in operation or not. He certainly didn’t know what the plant manufactured inside. All he knew was that the building had something to do with the now dried-up timber industry.

The reporter explained that EPA and state environmental officials from Jackson were on their way to Columbia. Meanwhile, law enforcement officials asked everyone within a one-half-mile radius of the plant to leave because of fear of the types of chemicals present in the air. Joe Don found it odd. No one seemed to say what damage occurred to the plant. He also found it peculiar that neither the reporter nor the first responders interviewed said what chemicals other than creosote the plant manufactured. Joe Don asked Ellen Ann to keep the TV on while he ate. Sensing her anxiety, Joe Don pointed out Columbia was over an hour from The Kiln as the crow flies. He assured her they were safe. She came over and refilled his coffee, and this time Joe Don patted her on her fanny and coolly told her not to worry. Ellen Ann smiled and told him to let her know if he needed anything else. Joe Don patted her again and assured her he would.

Ellen Ann flounced away, removing all doubt that she was looking to hook up. Being without a man was getting old, she thought. This guy, who is relatively new to the area, would make a great companion, even if it was for only a night or two. Of course, no one would have to know. All she needed to do was make sure he wasn’t some ax murderer. So far, the vibes she got were encouraging, or at least she convinced herself so.

Joe Don munched down on his breakfast that hit all the right spots. After polishing off a second helping of biscuits covered with tomato gravy, Joe Don pushed away from the table. He wiped his mouth and hands and took a deep breath as if he had passed from one realm of life to another. Ellen Ann hurried to his table and refilled his coffee one more time. She gave him a big smile and winked when she removed the crumbs, gravy, and egg yolk-coated plate from the table. As she turned to leave, Joe Don focused again on the Columbia chemical plant explosion. He listened as a company official now tried to conduct damage control. Each time a reporter asked about the kinds of chemicals used and manufactured at the plant, the company’s public relations man seemed paralyzed with fear. He kept reiterating that things would be okay and that there was no cause for alarm. Yes, there had been an explosion, but with some redesigning and new safeguards, the plant would be up and running in no time. He asked for everyone to stay away now as a precaution. But he assured everyone there had been no severe damage to the plant or surrounding properties to cause citizens any discomfort.

Joe Doe thought this sounded like a load of horse manure. The company hack was trying his best to convince everyone that the explosion was no big deal. Instead of focusing on the damage to the facility, the official was more concerned with minimizing the public’s interest in what happened inside. Joe Don surmised that the company man was trying to make this whole thing go away in the public's minds as fast as possible. The average person viewing this interview might have bought the garbage the company hack was spewing. With his extensive military and civilian disinformation experience, Joe Don knew better.

He called Ellen Ann over and handed her a ten for breakfast. He told her to keep the change and spend it on something that would make her happy. She smiled and said she knew just where to use it and what to buy. I’ll buy something to make me downright irresistible! Joe Don answered that he would like to see what could make her even prettier than she already