Until Wednesday, the old school locker in the garage that Gary Carlson and his family rented along with the farm house last April had never been opened. The metal locker had seen plenty of use, however — as a skateboard grind rail and as part of a ramp for jumping over.
And when Gary decided to use the locker for storage, his wife Cindy used a hammer to knock off the padlock. So imagine their surprise when the lock came off, the door opened and there, rolling around in the well knocked-about locker, was an unexploded pipe bomb.
“Inside I see this pipe thing. I grabbed it from each end and in my mind I know what this thing is, I’ve seen this before,” said Gary. “I pulled it out a little, took a look and set it right down and told my wife to call 9-1-1. We’ve got a pipe bomb in the garage. She said, ‘You’re full of it,’ but I said, ‘No, it’s a pipe bomb.’”
A Floyd County Sheriff’s deputy responded to the call at  1452 Rustic Ave. at 11:56 a.m. and quickly verified that indeed the 3-4 inch cylindrical object appeared to be a pipe bomb. He evacuated everyone from the three-stall garage, which is unattached and about 30 feet from the house.
“We had six people in that garage at the time cleaning and reorganizing things so that we could park the cars inside,” Gary explained.  “Until now, we hadn’t really paid a lot of attention to the garage.”
He described the single school locker as being approximately 6 feet tall and a foot wide, with a Master lock on it.
“I wanted to spray paint it red and store flammables into it, so my wife moved it and banged off the lock with a claw hammer,” said Gary.
The deputy notified the Floyd Fire Department to be on standby, then alerted the State Fire Marshal’s office. The scene was secured until a state fire marshal and a special agent with the Iowa State Fire Marshal’s Bomb Squad arrived mid-afternoon to take possession and remove  the suspected explosive device. AMR Ambulance was also dispatched, along with Floyd Fire, to stand by during the removal.
“The agents secured the device and took it from the scene without incident, with the intent to cause a controlled detonation (today) in Winterset and investigate its contents,” reported Floyd County Sheriff Rick Lynch.
A follow-up release added that the device appeared to have been stored at the Rustic Avenue location for an undetermined amount of time.
“An investigation is ongoing and is in the hands of the state fire marshal’s office,” added Lynch, who said it is illegal to possess such an explosive device and authorities would be looking into who made it and how long it had been there.
According to Carlson, the property he and his family are renting — with the hopes of buying — is owned by Randy Hollister of Scottsdale, Arz., and was last rented out to Hollister’s brother, Dale.
“He left everything there, it seemed, when we moved in,” said Carlson. “There were lots of  bullets, black powder, casings and scales ... the dude made his own bullets. When I was in the military I became very familiar with weapons, weapons systems and the bullets. In fact, sitting in the garage right now is probably 30-40 rounds of M-60 machine gun bullets — all live rounds. They were in the house when we moved in. We have boxes of .45 rounds, bags and coffee cans filled with spent rounds. There was also a ton of survival books and even some MREs (military Meals Ready to Eat) unopened.
“The M-60 bullets are kind of a novelty, so I kept them. We threw out most of the rest.”
However, the whole time he said the family had no idea what was inside the locked metal locker in the garage.
“All summer long this thing has been thrown on its side and 15-20 kids have come out and skated over it,” Carlson commented. “My kids built a half-pipe for skateboarding, but they didn’t have a grind rail, so this locker would be put on the ground and the kids would slide across it with their skateboards.”
He added it was also used along with a board to make a ramp for jumping over.
“That locker’s been through hell. When you think back now  (to how the kids were using it), it’s pretty scary,” said Carlson.
He reported he moved everyone back from the locker as soon as he saw what was inside, but wasn’t concerned that it would suddenly go off.
“I knew it wasn’t command detonated, there was no radio frequency device on it, it just had a wick of a fuse,” said Carlson.
Lynch said it is not known yet what the device’s contents are or how big a danger it posed.
“We should know more on Thursday,” he remarked.