Burning Desire

We’re allowed to burn leaves in our city. If you obey the rules and get a permit you can burn all your yard waste and leaves and all kinds of things. Handy.

I have built sort of a special relationship with flames over the years. Back when we cared not a whit about choking the atmosphere with carbon and other chemicals (those were the days!), one of my first summer jobs was at a local hotel, where my duties included gathering up and burning garbage. This job taught me the joys of pyromania.

I also learned which storage room was used by waitresses changing clothes, how to staple blankets to tables for illicit poker games, how to properly clip and light a cheap stogie, and what vigorous sexual congress sounds like when heard in a basement storage room beneath the fornicatorium. Selling tickets to the above also tripled my wages. But I digress.

To a young lad, an afternoon spent burning the accumulated garbage of an entire hotel was wildly entertaining, not to mention educational. I learned the combustion properties of various plastics, light bulbs, and paper products like commercial grade rolls of toilet paper, for example. On one sad occasion, a ‘dirty’ magazine was burning just beyond the grasp of my singed, horny young fingers.

I would re-enact entire episodes of ‘Rat Patrol’ or ‘Combat’ all by myself, lobbing aerosol spray-can ‘grenades’ into the fire and then running for cover. Since it took several minutes for them to cook off, I would amuse myself by heading inside to the closed lounge where I’d squirt various sodas directly down my throat using the bar squirter hose thing, or steal a scoopful of maraschino cherries from a barrel in the cooler.

After a few minutes of diversion, I would proceed back outside to check on my ‘oven’. I would soon witness a satisfying “Crump!” of an explosion, the shock wave bulging out the rivets of the incinerator and belching skyward huge clouds of burning paper towels, cleaning rags and other experimental effluent. Lovely.

I was ruminating on all these fond memories as I raked this years’ leaf pile on top of the wood waste from last year and set it alight, accompanied by a few ritual Toronto Maple Leaf jokes for good measure.

Things were progressing well when I had one of those moments that are usually reserved for when you see the keys in your car ignition just as the locked door is closing crisply.

In this particular instance, I discovered the large can of WD-40 I had misplaced last summer. A split second later I realized the can was in my fire.

In ‘Matrix’-like bullet time I did several things simultaneously. I performed an interesting lurch with my upper body towards the conflagration, thinking I could remove the blackening can and save myself from imminent fiery death. Simultaneously I performed a twisting motion with my legs as they tried to immediately vacate the area. I appeared to be performing some sort of gyrating break-dance maneuver as the can reached combustion temperature and proceeded to "Crump!" enormously. Robert Oppenheimer flashed before my eyes.

I awoke flat on my back at ground zero, staring skyward through smoldering eyebrows at the large mushroom cloud that was roiling its way toward the lower cumulus. I began asking myself questions like “Where am I?”, “What happened?”, and “What’s that smell?”

Face blackened like a cartoon character, remaining hair blown dramatically backwards, singe marks everywhere, I was miraculously unharmed.

“I SAID I WAS MIRACULOUSLY UNHARMED APART FROM THIS RINGING IN MY EARS! I’M FINE THANKS! WHAT?!”

I think my leaf blower converts to a mulcher. I’ll go get the manual.

Astern Warning

It was a beautiful evening at the lake.

Crowds of single people were walking on the beach, looking hopeful as they lived up to their personal ads.

From across the water I listened to the haunting, plaintive wail of a boater examining his fuel bill. 

The beauty of the moment overwhelmed me, such that I decided then and there to pick up milk on the way home.  And write something about boats.

Now when it comes to power boating, my only real experiences were the times I putt-putted about a large, shallow, mosquito-covered lake with my father.  Or perhaps it was a mosquito covered boat, and my father was shallow.  I can’t remember.

The engine in our fine vessel, as I recall, was one of those ancient outward motors.  Outbound?  Outdoor?  Something like that.  Outhouse motor maybe.  Anyway, it had one of those ropes with a knot in the end with which to start it.  You would wind the rope around the spindle thingy and pull with as much swearing as you could muster, and with any luck it would start. 

I learned some of my best bad words watching grown-ups attempt to start these beasts.  It was an idyllic time.

Another type of boat that can teach you swearing is a sailboat, which has spinnacles, ropes, jibes, ahoys, tilleys, witches, starboards and other stuff to play on.  They are terribly complicated and don’t go very fast, and I am quite good at setting them on fire. 

A chum and I had moored our sailboat at the dock in Vancouver after a hard, cold, wet day spent trying not to sink (known as ‘fun’ in sailing parlance).  We had been imbibing liquid anti-hypothermia medications, safe in the knowledge that since we were now tied up at the dock, nothing dangerous or stupid could happen. Ha ha!

Actually, something stupid could happen. You could put an idiot (me) in charge of refilling an alcohol stove that an idiot (me again! Hi Mom!) had never filled before. 

With the confidence born of idiocy and heavy drinking, I extinguished the stove flame briefly, then poured a bunch of fuel onto the red hot stove parts, which blew up. 

With a mighty “Crump!” my arm was aflame, as were the alcoholic vapours of my breath, my eyebrows, nose hairs, mustache, shirt, and large sections of the boat itself. 

Like a scene out of The Matrix, I leapt in slow motion for the fire extinguisher, while at the same time thrusting my flaming arm into my crotch, which I realized might be counter-productive.  By then I was committed to covering my aft, though, so I resigned myself to having not only burnt arm flesh but also crisply roasted privates.

Server: “And how would you like those done, sir?”

Me: “Rare please.” 

My mind played tricks on me and I imagined I was a crazed gunner at Pearl Harbor, leaping to action stations. I aimed my anti-aircraft fire extinguisher skywards and let fly.  My flaming eyebrows spoiled the sight picture, however, so I corrected the spray of white powder downward at the conflagration, which mercifully was extinguished. 

My friend helpfully stomped out my eyebrows and gave me a smoldering look.

Thinking nautically and being in the moment, I shouted “Damage report from all stations!”  My friend smacked me again and loudly noted that I was not, in fact, Admiral Halsey or Charlton Heston but a klutz with a smoking head and a lost damage deposit.

So as you enjoy these early days of summer, take a few moments to listen to the water rhythmically lapping at the shoreline, and the muffled whooshing sound some people make when captaining a vessel or making tea. 

And when you hear stories of large, flaming sailors shrieking like school girls and squirting fire extinguisher powder over most of the western hemisphere, remember this old mariner.

They still call me ‘Red’ you know.