Idle hands.....

The burning fields and brush fires in Texas this week have reminded me of the first time I was priviledged to meet the Fire Chief of the Lost Acres Fire Department. Lost Acres is the name of the volunteer fire department in Granby, CT.

I was about six or seven years old. It was near the end of summer. August was the usual hot, humid steambath in New England and we were so bored. My sister Heidi (10 months my junior), our neighbors Billy and Maggie Keenan, and I were looking for things to do. For some reason, we (I?) decided that matches held the key to entertainment.

We were up in The Field (a clearing a hundred yard up the driveway where we played baseball, football, kick the can and about any other playground type game), finding little, dried clumps of grass to set on fire. Mostly these were on the edge of The Field, at the point where the woods were trying to retake the ground lost in an earlier battle. Right there, the grass would grow taller and form beautiful minature campfires. Billy and I would take turns lighting them while Heidi and Maggie would threaten and plead for us to quit it.

However, boys and matches create an unquenchable thirst for more. As we ran out of clumps on the edge of the field, we ventured into the woods looking for more. We weren't more than a few feet into the woods when it happened. The little clump of fire suddenly became a blaze two or three feet around.

Kids learn and remember everything, although the context is sometimes misplaced on the way. Way back then (in the 60s), charcoal didn't come with lighter fluid in it and my parents rarely had the fluid on hand. No, they were from outdoorsmen stock and so it was that we would build the fire for the grill with grass or newspaper, then twigs and sticks.

I remembered that day that my Uncle Dan, after we kids had been assigned the task of gathering kindling for the grill, rejected our attempts to put green leaves on the fire.

"Green leaves will put the fire out," he said, sending us to find more combustible material.

So I sent Heidi, Billy and Maggie to get green leaves before the fire got out of control.

"We need to put it out!" Our stamping and jumping efforts were clearly not doing it on this blaze.

You know what happens when you put green leaves on open flame? They smoke a lot, turn brown and catch fire. Suddenly our two foot circle had widened to five, then six. Billy and I were doing a red-neck jig, trying to cover more and more ground. Heidi and Maggie had run away screaming. Smoke and flame and panic filled the air. Then I heard it.

VVVVVRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNNN
VVVVVRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNNN

It was a sound that started low, wound higher and higher before sliding into rest. Then it started again. Usually it meant that it was twelve o'clock. If not twelve, then it meant a fire. Positioned throughout town, the siren was signal, calling all volunteers to drop what they were doing and come to the town's aid. Come they did.

As Billy and I were stomping, the sirens from the trucks drew closer. Swiftly, my concern changed from the fire to my buttocks and the impending doom about to befall them. With words I don't remember but equivalent to, "Abandon Ship!" Billy and I were off, each to his own particular favorite place from a summer's worth of hide-and-seek. I went for under the porch.

Minutes, hours, days passed while I was under there, breathing the dust from year after year of dead leaves blown under the porch in short, quick breaths I couldn't slow.

Finally, Mr. Christiansen stood above me, speaking to my mother. I don't know what he said. I don't know who called the fire department. I'm not sure what my mother said back to him. But pretty soon she just said, "Kurt, come out from under the porch" and I had to slide out, dusty and dirty, looking and smelling like a fireman. Mr. Christiansen was about seven and a half feet tall.

He lowered his gaze to meet my eyes. With the quiet voice of a good man, he asked me the question.

"So do you think you're going to play with matches again?"

Of course I stammered no. And pretty much kept to it. But seeing all these fires reminded me of it again. I hope no little boys started these.