What Fire?

Welcome to another installment of Friday's Fun Family Facts... (This was a tradition that I had at the beginning of this blog's life that I thought I would pick back up, at least for today. To read some of the other entries you would need to scour the archives looking for titles with words like tee-pee, diarrhea, Starving Artist etc...)

So, I was a curious kid!

We had found a family of rabbits hiding under a gigantic blackberry bush behind our barn. In an attempt to catch one of them (I think we had just read Brier Rabbit) we dug a hole and buried a metal 5 gallon bucket in the ground. I think we were hoping that one of the rabbits would accidentally fall into the bucket and we would be able to keep it, and pat it, and love it and call it George...

Years later I rediscovered said metal bucket buried in the side of the hill behind our barn. I had to cut away the grass that had grown over the top of the bucket and when I did I discovered 5 gallons of water and slime...

Now, before you judge me let me give a few disclaimers about what you're about to read:

1) I was way too young to know better; probably about 14...
2) I was bored.
3) I was home alone.
4) I knew that Gas was flammable, I just didn't know that it floated...yet.
5) I was NOT anticipating that the floating gas would flow over the lip of the bucket and stream down the hill in a snaking, spreading, conflagration of fear and tumultuous panic scaring the virgin landscape of the once beautiful yard.

So having seen the water in the bucket I made the VERY logical mental leap that I should pour some gas into the bucket and light it on fire to test the questionable theory that gas was, in fact, flammable.

It burned...

Thankfully, however, I was able to beat the flames into submission using a 6 foot piece of flashing that was beside the barn.

Upon extinguishing the fire, I did what any normal 14 year old would do...I took a quick glance around to make sure that no one had seen any of this, wiped the sweat and charred grass from my forehead, turned, walked casually back to the house, and pretended that nothing had happened.

Amazingly, no one ever found out. the most I ever got was, "John, why do all the hairs on your forearms look like that?" to which I just grunted and said, "I don't know."

Mom...Dad...I promise this was the only time I almost burned myself alive using gas.

...behind the barn.

...without a thorough plan for what to do if things were to go terribly wrong.