A Blast From the Bulletin's Past
The Trench by Peter Kushkowski


Living next to an interstate highway here in Haddam isn’t appealing, but we don’t mind.
Maybe it’s because the one that runs along the other side of our stonewall property line isn’t a road at all, but an underground telephone cable. It’s AT&T’s electronic communications version of I-95, stretching all the way from Maine to Florida, whose subterranean murmurings don’t disturb us in the least.
The cleared swath that exists above the cable actually did serve as a ‘road’ of sorts; a convenient footpath for our children, when they were growing up, to join neighbor friends in play. Their telephone conversations often ended with, “See you on the trench!”
It was just after we moved into our newly-built house in March, 1968, that the trenching for the cable began. We were happy that the use of explosives along the cable right-of-way was done the year before, when our house was a-building. Blasting Haddam’s hard granite a scant 100 feet away was something we could do without.
You can imagine our concern when the familiar sounds and vibrations of heavy equipment reappeared next door. Apparently the work done earlier did not go deep enough. Blasting crews had returned for another try.
Otis and Oscar—our two female (!) cats—were even more upset about this than we.
Their antics through the ordeal were classic demonstrations of the behavioral adaptations of animals to the ways of man. This alert, black-and-white, feline duo accepted the awful din of bulldozer, huge power-shovel, air-compressor and pneumatic rock-drill, but we noticed they preferred being more indoors than outside.
Our high-IQ cats became most agitated when all the ruckus stopped. It didn’t take them long to figure out that it was during these quiet spells, soon after three shrill toots of the compressor’s air-whistle, that the house shuddered from dynamite’s dull thud.
The incessant noise they could take. The man-made tremors? Hardly!
When three toots sounded, our cats booked! Claws frantically scratched for traction on slippery vinyl flooring as they scooted for the stairs down to the basement, the most secure place on earth for them at that moment. There the cats cowered wide-eyed and motionless, and each as quiet as a mouse!
Otis and Oscar learned something else, too. They recognized another signal. It was the lone, long, air-whistle’s “To-o-o-ot” after the thud, the “all clear.”

Enlisted by Diane Kelsey, Peter Kushkowski wrote essays in the Bulletin from May, 1989 to June, 1991. He was a resident of Haddam from March 26, 1968, to June 15, 2005 and now lives in Portland Connecticut.