April 17, 2001
Great Balls of Fire
by Joshua Carden
I know what you’re thinking. But, no, this article isn’t about rock-n-roll music or marrying your cousin. It’s about my personal experiences with fire. This article was inspired after talking to a friend right after Easter holiday. She had returned to her home from law school and during the weekend her father had a small fire that was suddenly caught by the wind and nearly burned their log house down. The fire trucks came roaring up over the hill and struck an electrical pole. The downed wires landed across the fire truck and trapped the firemen inside until other firemen came and rescued them. My friend’s father was extremely tired and a little warm from trying to put out the fire, so she went inside to get him a glass of water. However it was so dark (since the electricity had been knocked out) that she had to light a candle to get to the kitchen! The firemen eyed her a little askance as she entered the house with a lit candle. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I won’t drop it and start another fire!” As she related her experiences, I was reminded of a few fiery experiences of my own. As we say in Texas, “the first liar doesn’t stand a chance around here…”
The first experience occurred when I was about 11 years old. My family lived in Aledo, TX. We had lived in the country for a while by that point and were pretty experienced at country living compared to several home schooling families who had just moved to the area. One of these new families bought a piece of property right down the road. The father, a worship leader at a church in Fort Worth, decided to clear some brush from his property and burn it. This was fairly standard practice in our community; however, it was NOT standard practice to do it on a day with a 35 miles-per-hour breeze blowing outside! Sure enough, the surrounding property began to burn and four volunteer fire departments and all the neighbors pitched in to help out. I found myself on the smoky end of the fire with a sheet of wet burlap, swatting until my pencil-sized arms were pretty worn out. The hard part was that one side of the fire would go out with the fire trucks squirting, and the other side would start up again. We went back and forth three or four times until it was finally out. Needless to say, the father was quite embarrassed and hoped that this escapade would be quickly forgotten. The next Sunday night was “favorite hymn” night at church. As he began taking requests, one of his good friends shouted “Number 475.” He said “Okay, turn to 475.” He almost choked as he began the song Pass It On: “It only takes a spark, to get a fire going…” Needless to say, they only sang one verse.
The very next weekend, I was out feeding the horses when I heard a WHOOSH. I looked up across the road and the next hill to see a tongue of flame shoot up above the two-story house belonging to ANOTHER home school family new to the area. I yelled for mom to call the fire department, and my dad, my brother Jason, and I jumped in the truck and headed for their house. We got there five minutes ahead of the fire department (still jumpy from the previous weekend) in time to see the father of this family calmly sprinkling down his pile of brush with his water hose. Turns out he had poured about five gallons of gasoline on the pile and then tossed a match, which perpetrated the giant fountain of fire I had witnessed. He got a stern lecture from the fire department, as you might imagine.
The other experience that we had occurred at the family farm in Peaster, TX. We had a lot of friends over one evening, and Jason and I had built a bonfire. Now, seasoned veterans that we were, we dug a pit and built it in the middle of my mom’s half-acre garden, abandoned for the summer. Don’t worry, we did ask permission first! We let the fire burn out at the end of the night and then two days later, my dad asked Jason to clean up the remains of the fire. Jason smoothed over the fire pit, and took the last chunk of burned out wood and tossed it in a culvert in the back of our house. That night, we were watching the American League Championship Series (game three). My dad was talking on the phone and all of a sudden he said “I’ve got to go – my backyard is on fire!” Sure enough, that three-day-old burnt log had a little life left in it. The wind was blowing (Praise God, it was blowing AWAY from our house!) and the fire was already 50 feet wide by the time we had the buckets and water going. The fire began burning straight back through our property. The volunteer fire departments began arriving. The fire kept burning. More fire departments showed up. The fire kept burning. At the end of the night, we determined that approximately 40 acres of our 240 acres had burned! And about 10 of our neighbor’s acres burned as well. He was very good-natured about the whole thing, which was good, because we would have been responsible for the damage! (On a side note: he bought our property when we sold it a couple of years ago. And, no, it wasn’t a “fire sale.”) We also determined that no less than nine volunteer fire departments from nine different areas had responded to the fire. I believe that was a record for the 1990s. It was like a fireman’s union chapter meeting or something. Somebody even brought doughnuts. Jason’s nickname was “Torch” for the next couple of weeks, but it worked out okay. My dad said later that if he had a choice for which 40 acres would be burned, Jason picked the right 40.
So, kids and parents, what have we learned today? Only you can prevent forest fires, and sometimes you might have to prevent your neighbors too. Stop, drop, and roll, but only if you’re actually on fire. Otherwise it might be taken for a temper tantrum. Don’t play with matches and gasoline at the same time. Don’t smoke, unless you’re keeping bees and you use a smoker. No matter what Elton John says, a “Candle in the Wind” isn’t a good idea. And as the Platters once sang, most definitely “Smoke gets in your eyes.” (Okay, so maybe there’s a little rock-n-roll in here.) I close with two of the oldest jokes I know:
Q. Why do ducks have flat feet? A. To stamp out forest fires.
Q. Why do elephants have flat feet? A. To stamp out burning ducks.
Thank you and good night. And for goodness sake, make sure the iron is turned off!