Today's Post is Brought to You by the Letter W

I'm sitting here thinking what the hell can I post about that begins with a W.  I mean I already posted twice about T and then had to sneak off terminal at work so I could correct it by dumping in some lame ass word that begins with V instead of T.  I apologize for that.  The end is near and my creative coccyx is bruised pretty bad. It's getting harder and harder to sit here and fill your head with a bunch of crap.  I will say that it is all true.  Every last bit of it.  Even that one post that I threw in there to mess things up.

So I visited one of my favorite blogs tonight to see what the heck Penwasser's Place was posting about and that old codger gave me a brilliant idea for W.  (Maybe not brilliant but after 3 beers it sure seems that way.)  Little does he know, well he will know but that is in the future and not right now.  So this post is dedicated to the word wabblecrucix.

Have I ever told you the story of the time I was a forest fire fighter?  (Damn why didn't I use that for F)

It was senior skip weekend and we had planned a weekend trip up north ( we Michiganders call it up north) a few hours drive to a friends, Aunt's, sister's property to camp.  Go ahead, read it again I'll wait.  

We arrived on a Friday evening.  I think it was the month of May.  I believe there were 20 seniors in all and one non senior.  I think he was in 13th grade.  We had lots of beer.  Canned beer, bottled beer and even a keg.  We were a harmless bunch and could party all night and never cause any problems.  It was the daytime that turned out to be the nemesis.  

The next morning we all awoke and were laying around relaxing.  No piggy yelling for the conch, no wild pigs just a bunch of slightly hungover seniors and one 13th grader.  The time was 10 am.  I was laying in a hammock with about 6 other people.  One would fall out and another would take his place.  The trees were bent slightly.

I heard a loud whistle and a pop.  What the hell?  Who's lighting off bottle rockets.  We scrambled out of the hammock (much to the relief of the trees) and began surveying the area.  Bottles and cans littered the ground.  Blue solo cups with an inch of warm, fly swimming cups sat upon every available stump.  My friends were all on their feet as well looking for the source of the fireworks.  Another whistle and pop, this one landed quite close and we followed the smoke trail.  It was the 13th grader.  Of course.  Who the heck even invited him.  (in the end we discovered no one did he just followed)

Someone yelled out for him to knock it off.  Then another person and then another whistle and pop.  This one landed in a brush pile. ( the fat lady began singing here but we never heard her)

Before anyone could even blink we had an instant bonfire.  The wind, as if on cue, picked up suddenly and it began to rage.  Quickly we raced to the shore of the little lake and began filling every bucket and pail and even the garbage can that held the keg.  For the next 2 minutes we struggled valiantly to quell the fire.  There are a couple things that remain entrenched in my memory.

#1.  Kids filling beer cans with water and running to dump it on the fire.

#2.  Once kids knew it was hopeless they began running all the empty beer cans to the lake, wading knee deep and filling them with water in order to sink them so they wouldn't get in trouble for drinking.

#3.  3 kids trying to hide a keg in the woods so we could still have beer after the fire.

#4.  Me trying to put out the fire in nothing but shorts and my old man's shoes which I had swiped out of the         house prior to leaving.

#5 Being scared shitless

Try as we might we were powerless to control the fire and before we knew it about 15 acres were crisped.  That was when the fire department showed up.  Man they showed up in force.  They had bulldozers and some ripper machines that dug trenches, mini jeeps that could cruise through the woods, chainsaws and an army of men.  They even recruited some of us to take these little indian packs down to the lake and fill them up and then run back into the smoldering woods to put out any little flames.  The indian packs were worn on your back and held about 5 gallons of water.  You pumped the handle and water squirted out the nozzle.

Within a few hours the fire was under control and had only consumed about 30-40 acres I think.  It was a black, putrid, mess.  Smoldering logs lay everywhere.  The ground was ripped to shreds by bulldozers and 3 foot deep trenches gouged the once pristine wilderness floor.  Trees had no foliage and their bark was as black as night.  I approached a still burning log and began to spray it with my indian pack when I heard a noise.

20 feet above me a tree was still burning.  A limb had burned through enough to let loose and the 4 inch diameter branch came cascading down and clipped the bill of my hat, sending it into the smoking log I was trying to put out.  One more step and I may have been a goner.

I had forgotten all about that day until now.  It reminds me never to light fireworks when your............

Wasted


(you didn't really look up wabblecrucix did you?)