Back in the days of mines and men, the hard rock miners of Whiskey Flat (near present day Kernville, Calif.) would spend long hours pounding away at their drills, lucky to gain a few inches each day. By the time Saturday night would come around they had a six inch deep hole in the rock to show off. They called it a day, and headed in to town to spend their Sunday. By the time Sunday was over and Monday brought them back to work, one miner took a look at the hole they had left and swore that the rock was so hard the holes they originally drilled were sticking out a good two inches, making double and triple work for them.

USGS 1908 map of the Kernville area. Whiskey Flat was located slightly south of "old" Kernville on the banks of the Kern River. The site of Kernville as shown on this map is now under the waters of Lake Isabella. The town was relocated north to the Burlando Rancho when Lake Isabella was completed in 1953.

The week went by, drilling and blasting until they ran out of powder at the mine. Supplies and more powder weren’t due in for several days.  Discussions turned to the Incas of Peru and their great irrigation canals consisting of tunnels through the hardest rock formations made without steel or explosives at their disposal. Speculation began among the miners, that there must have been some use of a force provided by nature to aid in disintegrating the rock, since there was only the simplest of tools available to the Incas. It was noted that beans were a large staple of the Incas, and had quite an expansive power.

The  miners began to drill four holes into the drift of their mine, placing one at the top, one at the bottom, and one each side half way to the top. This accomplished, they filled the holes two thirds of the way up with beans that the cook had intended for that night’s dinner. Warm water was then forced in the holes to the point of bean saturation; then the holes were tamped hard and tight in the same manner they would tamp a blast with sand.

For thirty minutes the miners leisurely waited to see what would develop. An occasional snap or crackle could be heard, until the rock in the face of the drift started to bulge out. The whole face of the drift began to bulge more and more as time went by, until a crash similar to one made by a mass of falling mortar, was heard. Before the miners' very eyes, the tock vein forming the face of the drift fell out in broken chunks up to the full two foot depth of the holes they had drilled.

The miners whooped and hollered and did the "happy dance" as they had resurrected the secret of the Incas from oblivion and used it to their own effect there in the southern mountains of the Sierra Nevada at Whisky Flat, California. Gone were the days of dangerous explosives killing and maiming many a miner. Beans would be the sole explosive as long as the men worked the mine. The miners eventually grew old and went their separate ways, their discovery remaining non-patented waiting for some enterprising young modern men to re-discover it and make a fortune on the explosive power of within a bag of beans.

 General Freeman Discovers Principals of Expansion

 The  power of beans, of course has always been known to anyone who ate them. But it was a General Freeman who discovered their first principals of expansion up at his mill at Greenhorn, near Whiskey Flat, and it was his story that attracted the miners of Whisky Flat and their discovery of the great Inca secret.  The General was fond of telling the story of his turn to cook on a Saturday evening instead of going into Whiskey Flat with them.

A large open fireplace took up the entire width of the cook’s cabin.  It was so big that an oak log could be rolled in and used for several days. Next to the fire was a large forty gallon copper kettle. Seeing as it was cool weather, General Freeman decided he could cook up enough beans in that kettle for the entire week, eliminating the need for cooking every day. He filled the kettle nearly full with water, then hung it on a hook in the chimney of the fireplace, grabbed a nearby sack of beans and started pouring them into the water. In the midst of pouring, the General tripped and the whole sack of beans emptied into the kettle.  He had other chores to tend to before heading to church down at Whiskey Flat with his mining partners, so decided to just let it go.

Following his chores, General Freeman headed down to church and forgot about the beans in the kettle hanging on the chimney in the cabin. The meeting was extra long that Sunday, and the General and his partners, Sam May, Long Moore and Leon Mathews, did not return until well after dark that evening. As they reached the cabin built of pine logs, one of the men attempted to open the door, which opened toward the inside. As it would not budge, General Freeman tried, and decided that someone must be inside and fastened the door shut. They went around to a back door, but had no better luck getting it to budge.

Perplexed as how to get in to their cabin, the men decided to climb up the chimney and crawl inside. Upon attempting to do so, the chimney appeared to be clogged.  General Freeman climbed up the roof, got into the chimney himself, and reached down to feel what he was standing on. “Boys get an ax and split that door to pieces. The devil has been here while we were worshiping at Whiskey Flat” he announced.

As the door to the cabin was split, beans began rolling out. Shovels and shovels full were piled away from the cabin until the miners could get inside.  The beans filled the cabin to the roof, and everything steamed like a Turkish bath. A tribe of Indians on the South Fork of the Kern River (or Rio Bravo) were sent for to help carry away the beans before they soured and created an epidemic. General Freeman vowed ever after never to try any more experiments with beans.  

Hand Me Down That Can O' Beans from Paint Your Wagon Lyrics by Alan J. Lerner, Music by Frederick Lowe Well hand me down that can o' beans Hand me down that can o' beans Hand me down that can o' beans I'm throwing it away Out the winder go the beans Out the winder go the beans Out the winder go the beans I had a lucky day Mary, my Mary, my sweet young Mary We're going out this evening Mary, my Mary I'm gonna take you out tonight So hand me down that can o' beans Hand me down that can o' beans Hand me down that can o' beans I'm throwing it away Out the winder go the beans Out the winder go the beans Out the winder go the beans Go the beans, go the beans Good times are here to stay Hand me down my can o' beans Hand me down my can o' beans Hand me down my can o' beans I'm thowin' it away Out the winder go the beans Out the winder go the beans Out the winder go the beans I had a lucky day Mary, M-M-M-Mary My cute young Mary We're goin' out this evening Mary, M-M-M-Mary I'm gonna take you out tonight So, hand me down that can o' beans Hand me down that can o' beans Hand me down that can o' beans I'm throwin' it away Out the winder go the beans Out the winder go the beans Out the winder go the beans Go the beans, go the beans Good times are here to stay Yeah! Hand me down that can o' beans Hand me down that can o' beans Hand me down that can o' beans I'm throwing it away Out the winder go the beans Out the winder go the beans Out the winder go the beans I had a lucky day Mary, M-M-M-Mary My sweet young Mary We're goin' out this evening Mary, M-M-M-Mary I'm gonna take you out tonight So, hand me down that can o' beans Hand me down that can o' beans Hand me down that can o' beans I'm throwin' it away Out the winder go the beans Out the winder go the beans Out the winder go the beans Go the beans, go the beans Good times are here to stay!

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