I blame it on Marjean. That only makes sense since my she
and Preston coaxed me out onto their sleepy street years ago to watch Marjean
light the edge of her neighbor’s yard on fire. It was way cool how the flames
crept along the edge of the grass, burning the fuzzy fuel, so how can I, or
somebody I know, be blamed for succumbing to the bait once more.
The cottonwood trees have been tossing their fruit to the
wind over the last few days and there has been a buildup of this fuzz along
yards in my neighborhood. Umm, I mean the neighborhood of someone I know… So as
this person I know and his girlfriend finished their nightly walk, someone (not
saying who. Not that it matters at all) suggested getting some matches and his
2 teenage boys out to have a little fire show. After seeing the results of a
lit match tossed in a pile of the cottonwood fuzz, the boys headed off to light
their own little infernos. Of course, the only right way to do this would be to
light the fuzz that was in front of our house. I mean my friend’s house. So
when the neighbors wonder about the burned strip along their sidewalks in the
morning, I will be wondering as well. After all, what kind of parent would be
that bad of an example! So the girlfriend of this guy I know noticed a pile of the fuzz at the entrance of
the tunnel that is the gutter that goes under my driveway. She threw a match at
it and it caught in a small burst of flame that then burned under this guy I
know’s driveway in a really cool flameout! Or so I heard. It was the kind of
flame-out that might make one wonder what it would look like if one were to take
some gasoline and pour it into the driveway tunnel so that the gas flows downhill to the other side of the driveway tunnel. Of course, that would be quite
dangerous and not the thing one would do with impressionable teens around. But
I’ll bet if someone did that, the flames would be impressive and the fire
shooting out the downhill side of the driveway tunnel would be really awesome!
If only… Of course I’ve heard that
gasoline actually burns for quite a while in a tunnel (longer than one might comfortably expect) and one might get nervous
that a non-understanding driver might call the fire department or police, especially if one heard
distant sirens about this same time. One might be relieved when the flames
finally died down and one could sneak inside the house, out of sight.
Oh how fun it was for this person I know to walk his
girlfriend to her home and find really big piles of the fuelly fuzz in her
driveway. I hear tell that they coaxed the daughter out of the house and had
fun lighting the cottonwood fuzz piles on fire. I’m pretty sure the fun ended
right there. I’m pretty sure that the fun didn't end when a bush with dry under-branches
ventured too close to one of the burning piles and went up in a bonfire. Of
course if that would ever happen in real life, there would be frantic running
for a garden hose and even more frantic spraying at the bush (at the base or at
the flames?!? – who knew that one would need to remember those lessons from firemen
visiting one’s 3rd grade class a few years back!).
As fun as it is to think about these kinds of adventures, my
evening was very quiet, spent watching “Backdraft” and seeing if I could
salvage what’s left of my eyebrows while spraying deodorant around the room to get rid of that gasoline
smell…
