Sunday, March 20, 2016

Where There's Hick, There's Fire

The night The Pony and I came home late in the evening and caught Hick gorging on charred hot dogs...we at first did not attribute the smokiness of the homestead to Hick's hot dogs. Yes, my eyes watered, and smoke hung heavy from the ceiling. But I initially assumed that smoke had come in from OUTSIDE.

Coming up the gravel road around dark-thirty, we saw a glow in our field. The field where Hick has his two freight containers that are one day going to be joined in unholy trussimony to put under roof a garage/shed with fillable metal sides.

"What in the--PONY! What IS that?"

"It looks like a fire. Dying down."

"I KNOW that. Why is there an untended bed of coals smoldering in our field? LOOK! Did you SEE that?"

"Uh huh!"

"That blew right toward that downed tree! Hick is going to catch the woods on fire! Where is HE?"

"Probably in the house. Or the BARn."

"He can't leave that burning! The wind must be 50 miles an hour!"

We got T-Hoe in the garage and clambered across the sidewalk to the porch. The wind whistled through the breezeway, whipping my lovely lady mullet to and fro. Well, not so much whipping it to and fro as almost blinding me with the gust-driven tendrils. Only Hick would have chosen to do some open burning on a day like this. I had scolded him only the week before for setting fire to a fallen tree in the goat pen, with wind pushing ashes and smoke toward the house.

Of course Hick confessed right away to the burned hot dogs he made himself for supper. Better to be thought a horrible cook, I presume, than an unrepentant arsonist. Surely he's old enough to have grown up with those Smokey the Bear commercials. "Only YOU can prevent forest fires!" I saw them. And Hick is older that me!

“Oh, and while you’re sitting there feasting on your charred hot dogs, your field is on fire. We saw it on the way home. I thought that was the smoke inside the house at first.”
 
 “I’ll go check on it when I finish my hot dogs.”
 
"Seriously. Why would you start a fire with the wind blowing so hard?"
 
"It wasn't windy when I started the fire. I was just trying to clean up those trees we had down."
 
Let the photographic record from the next day show that this is the scene of the crime, AFTER Hick went over and shoveled dirt to smother the still-glowing embers that were being fanned by the wind and blown towards all manner of bone-dry combustible tinder.


Yep. The burning embers were right there under the little pile of dirt, which Hick shoveled from the big pile of dirt that he'd accumulated while trying to dig out room for some giant concrete squares he's going to use as a foundation for his freight container garage.

Notice the dry cedar laying in the path of the wind-blown burning embers, and the wispy dead weeds that make good tinder, and the row of cedar trees at the edge of what we call THE WOODS, which are trees, you know, made of wood, which is the main fuel for FIRE.

That man needs to go back to burning hot dogs.

16 comments:

  1. Have you ever mentioned how much property you own? Just curious to know before it all burns down.

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    1. What if it burns down to stone! There go our retirement nest egg rocks!

      We have 20 acres adjoining the house (10 that we bought and built the house on, and 10 that we bought about 12 years later from a neighbor. Then we have 10 acres on another gravel road, the place where we sold the rocks from. So...that makes 30 acres.

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  2. Guess that's what you get for criticizing his cooking.

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    1. I hardly think an interrogation concerning Hick's lack of culinary skills warrants the incineration of a retirement nest egg, Mother Nature, and a pack of jumbo hot dogs.

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  3. It does look like Smokey the Bear's worst nightmare.

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    1. Yes. The Smokester will be having night sweats, one way or the other.

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  4. Val--When June Carter Cash wrote that song, she must have been writing about when she met Hick...

    And after she fell, she got up, took care of the burns, and stayed with Johnny instead of Hick.

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    1. Well...she DID get married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout. So I can see the initial attraction.

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    2. She also fell into a burning ring of fire. She went down down down but the flames went higher...

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    3. Um...yes...I got that part. June and some dude wrote one of Johnny's biggest hits.

      Also, June and Johnny had a duet that she DIDN'T write, nor he, about going to Jackson, where they apparently spiced up their love life like jalapeno sprouts.

      How many times do you want her to fall in there? You won't be happy, Madam, until her skin peels off like a roasted red pepper. Oh, wait. It's a little too late for that.

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  5. Smoking hot dogs, smoking weeds. Yup I'd say intervention is in order.

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    1. Thank goodness Hick was never one for smoking sausage...

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  6. Oh my, I'm glad we can't burn things here on our property, or I might have the same problem! Ha, and loved our song in previous post!

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    1. Good to know your retirement nest egg rocks are in no danger.

      As much as I would like to take credit for my song...I had a flash of inspiration. Or two. I don't think Simon and Hickfunkle would have made a very good duo, though.

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  7. I have no words. I know your pain, though.

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    1. Yes, I'm sure you are well aware of the atrocities I must endure, what with having your own HeWho, Hick's brother from another mother and father.

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