| |
Another Driving Story.
This is another story about an adventure in a car. So to speak.
I'm a what I consider a really cool dad. A liberal father. I like to help my kid experience everything this world can offer. I live to show her the world!
All of that being said, sometimes I screw up.
We have friends (Jeff and Janice) who have a family farm in south Georgia. It's a beautiful place. The homestead is a 140+ year old log cabin, with a couple of barns, several fields, creeks, and streams. This is no little chunk of land. This place has over 2500 acres of southern dirt. There's more land to play on there than most decent size towns. I can't stress enough how really neat this place is.
Well when there is that much land to play on sometimes rules can get sort of lax.
Case in point, we were at the farm when my ten year old daughter got the notion she wanted to learn to drive. I didn't mind, as a matter of fact I thought it'd be a great thing for her, you know making memories and shit. So I said "Sure! Lets go". Well, Jeff offered up "Rusty" the old circa 1973 Jeep Pickup for Rene Zellweger (a.k.a. "RZ") to learn with.
Rusty was a sled. That old Jeep has a manual transmission with the gears on the stearing wheel. Not an easy "ride" to train on even if you've had driving experience. Much tougher if the only vehicle you've ever been in control of had pedals.
After putting forth more than her fair share of effort RZ was driving the Jeep within an hour. She was doing quite well for someone who had never been behind a wheel before. Actually, "well" is relative since there were no roads, stop signs, traffic and the only road hazards she faced were trees in the distance and a few quail. All in all she was truly having the time of her life.
She and I were in that Jeep for a couple of hours. She'd hit every ditch she could find just to see my head hit the roof. After a while she became very proficient at shifting gears. Every now and then she'd slip up and catch the wrong gear and "Rusty" would let her know by squeezing off a backfire.
Everytime there was a backfire RZ would look at me with wide eyes like she had just shot the Pope. I'd reassure her that all was fine. I told her that a backfire was basically a car's fart and that is was nothing to worry about. We continued driving around the farm up until around lunchtime when we headed back to the cabin to grab a sandwich.
While we were outside eating and talking, Janice got up and walked over to look over at one of the fields we had been through a few minutes earlier. She came back over, sat back down and started eating and then almost as a second thought she said.
"The field's on fire." then she snags another bite out of her ham sandwich.
There isn't just a fire. There are several fires. Little did I realize that everytime "Rusty" would "fart" he was farting fire!
We ran over to take a look and sure enough, we've got an all out blaze on our hands. Smokey the Bear would've been losing it!!!
Jeff and I run over to the barn to get.... to get...... Hell, I don't know what we're supposed to get, it's not like I'm a fireman or anything. Jeff grabs a shovel and throws me a "Boy Scout shovel". I call it a Boy Scout shovel cause basically the damned thing was a toy. It was one of those collapsable shovels and to top it all off the neck was broken on it. When I started swinging it to try and put out the fire it was like I was swinging an overcooked pasta noodle.
It didn't do much.
Fighting fire is tough work. Fighting fire without the proper equipment or training is an exercise in futility. Here we are trying to stomp out the fire (useless), slap out the fire with a shovel (waste of time). By now we have acres and acres of fire and two shovels. The wind starts picking up and now we truly have a shitstorm on our hands. Jeff decides to go and get the tractor and try and cut a fire break. As he runs past me he yells "don't let the fire get the cabin, whatever you do save the cabin!". Sure Jeff, no problem. I'll just "stop, drop and roll" and the cabin will be fine. It may have been my psychic abilities, or maybe it was just a guy's intuition, but I kinda figured the cabin would've been high on the priority list.
The wind is blowing the fire toward the cabin, the fire is getting more intense. I'm slapping the burning ground with the broken-neck-boy-scout-shovel/weapon with every ounce of strength I have. I'm useless. The fire is within 10 yards of the cabin. By now, Leslie is over slapping and stomping too. The fire is getting closer and closer. All of a sudden, Leslie (who is not very religious) resorts to a prayer that would've made Jerry Falwell stand up and shout an Amen! "God, please help us! God if you can hear me please help us!".
Spooky thing is it worked.
As soon as she got it out of her mouth the fire died down, the wind shifted direction and within a minute the cabin was in the clear.
I'm not saying it was necessarily divine intervention or anything, but let's just say I go out of my way now not to piss off the wife... She may have connections.
We continued to fight the fires for another hour or so until the Schley County Volunteer Fire Department (Here I am to save the day!) showed up and gave us relief. I can honestly say that fighting fire is a hell of a lot harder work than I EVER imagined, hats off to the guys (and ladies) who choose that for a living. Frankly, I was worn out for the rest of the week.
I'm a wuss.
Here are some pictures before, during and after the fire.
Update:
I almost forgot, I spoke with Jeff the other day. He said that Rusty's leaky exhaust manifold had been fixed, and the name has been changed to "Sparkie".
10/29/2003 12:06:00 AM
|
|
|
