Chapter 19
I was sitting there at work when the sirens began to scream. Since the sun was out, I immediately came to the brILLLIANT conclusion that there wasn’t a tornado fixin’ to sweep all my papers away. It HAD to be a fire!
Several years ago, I got the splendid idea that we could reclaim that “little” piece of unused ground behind our house. Gardening WAS work but the food was SO much better for us, the vegetables were CHEAPER than what we bought at the store, and so on and so forth.
I convinced myself and the whole family that it would be FUN! But the “little” acre and a half of ground was waist deep in weeds. Seems it hadn’t seen a plow in about ten years.
No problem! Poppa had tackled BIG weed patches when I was a kid. I’d watched him so I became an instant expert.
So, we waited for the proper conditions to prep our garden plot. Finally, the RIGHT day came! There wasn’t even a faint breeze. I KNOW!! I licked my finger and put it up in the open air—NO wind!!
We started with just a TINY place. And it burned off so well we knew we’d picked the very best day to get rid of those weeds so we could get the plot plowed.
THEN from somewhere up in Kansas and without the slightest notice or warning… WHOOSH! To say the least the FIRE did NOT stay put in the spot we had intended for it to keep inside.
When we figured the wind and fire was more than we could handle with the worn-out kitchen broom and a holey toe sack, we called in the fil department to give us a bit of help.
Here they came… siren squalling and neighbors, who thought they’d better check and see if I’d burned down their house as well as weeds, were driving along behind. It looked like a fine parade!
They put the fire out in seconds! And a few days later we had the ground plowed. We had PLENTY of garden to feed all of us and a large majority of the county. But we did have to gather most of it out of the weeds!
I don’t think I watched Poppa close enough though! He always managed to burn off whatever HE wanted with no firemen. And HIS garden NEVER had weeds.