FIRE!

“A word to the wise ain’t necessary—it’s the stupid ones that need the advice.” – Bill Cosby

Like most of my stories, this happened some time ago, and as usual the guilty and innocent need to remain anonymous.  The Fourth of July was upon us, and a special guest was expected at our modest weekend cabin.  The East Coast college I went to didn’t have fraternities; instead there were “houses” holding about 350 students.  Each house had its “entries”, with about 30 students in each entry.  And each entry had a resident graduate student who was supposed to be a beneficent policeman, big brother to make sure not only that we behaved ourselves but also to give us brotherly advice from time to time, usually over a weekend cocktail hour.  The special guest that day was my entry grad student, who had served us well…he had been both a tutor and big brother while I was in college.  The worst part was that he had been a professor at UT for 20 years and neither he nor I had made a great effort to get together.  Today was the day.  We were going tubing on the Guadalupe River.

So Bob arrived.  He got his Ph.D. at 21 in chemistry, got bored and went into linguistics, then computer linguistics (no, I never did find out what that was).  A grand reunion it was….for 20 minutes.  Nearby a 45 acre piece of property had been broken into two pieces, and I had met the guy who had bought the southern piece, a pretty, heavily-wooded property.  An Aggie who must have felt some compulsion to bond with nature. Like me he originally had no appreciation for the “cedar” problem, had discovered the pest, and had tried, like me, to remediate it.  While small cedars are cute little Christmas trees, they can grow to seventy feet and proliferate so fast that they crowd out not only grass and flowers but can also kill native trees by blocking the sunlight.  And I’ve heard that the average cedar can absorb up to five gallons of water when it rains, so long term cedar is bad for the water supply.

There was a loud knock on the door after Bob and I had told each other enough lies about the last 20 years to last us for a while.  Our neighbor, let’s call him Stan, was at the door, sweating and red-faced.  But it was about 100 degrees outside, so we thought he had been, like most of us city-folk weekenders, out in the heat.  Not so.  Stan had started to burn some cedar, but the fire had spread to his grass and to live, uncut cedar, which burns live, as attested by the annual brush fires in Texas.  My spouse, a hill country native, wisely stayed behind to call the local volunteer firefighters (see below) but offered up to Stan the services of our youngest daughter, me and the professor.  She equipped us with the necessary firefighting equipment—mops and brooms to stamp out the fire— and away we went in our Suburban to contain the fire while waiting for professional help.

The first surprise was driving into Stan’s property, getting out, and seeing a 25-foot cedar tree literally explode in fire.  That was a message, I am sure, to be careful.  After about twenty minutes Stan and the three of us were able to sort of cordon off the fire so it would not spread any further, just as the volunteer fire departments from both Blanco County and Hays County arrived.  We were exhausted, so we retired to the area where Stan had installed a well and pump and got some water.  I looked over to Stan and he was bright red, and I do mean bright.  I figured that he was having heat stroke so loaded him into the Suburban and with the gang of three we went back to my abode.  In the car my teenage daughter said “Who was the idiot who started this fire on a hot, windy day?” not realizing that it was indeed Stan.  Fortunately Stan was so out of it with heat stroke that he looked as if he had not heard my daughter.  When we got back Stan was still bright red and incoherent.  I had no idea how to treat heat stroke, but spied the cattle tank, shaped like a big bathtub and about three feet high, near our cabin, and our garden hose.  Without further ado I made Stan get into the cattle tank, which was half full of water, and turned the hose on him.  He gave a huge sigh of relief and his clarity of mind returned almost immediately.  Very quickly we returned, rather wet, to his place to thank the firemen, who were about ready to leave, having stamped out and watered down any smoldering ashes.  I guess all’s well that end’s well, and Stan kept apologizing to us every time we saw him for the next two years.

But the sad part is that we have never seen Bob again….shortly after his hill country experience he decided to move to San Francisco!  I wonder why….

MORAL:

Don’t play with matches.  Don’t think that since you are an Aggie that you are a natural in the country.  And stay inside when the temperature is over 100.

                                                              A VISIT IS NOT A STAY

 “God gave us our relatives; thank God we can choose our friends” –Ethel Mumford.

Our adult children who live some distance from us always express regret that my wife and I don’t stay longer than we have.  We have a three day rule, which mostly comes from my own mother, who said “Fresh fish and visits to relatives spoil after three days.”  Seems to me that after three days of proximity we’ve pretty well caught up with what each of us is doing, we’ve taken walks together and done all the usual things we want to do when we get together.  Time to go out on a peak.

As a neighbor pointed out to us, a visit is very different than a stay.  A stay is more than three days, more like a week or two.  Stays can bring out all the family strains that have promoted separate households in the first place.  If you’re a parent, a visit is generally pleasant since you’re a guest and the rule is that you’re not to interfere with the good order of your child’s home and hearth unless specifically asked to do something or give your opinion on some serious matter.

Not so with a stay.  If you’re in someone’s household for a week or two, you inevitably become an irritant to the order of the household, since at a minimum any human has his or her needs, opinions, foibles, prejudices, and general way of doing things.  Adults living apart inevitably develop differences in these regards, so stays inevitably must be avoided.

There are things you can do to alleviate tensions during stays, like residing not in your relatives’ home but rather in a motel or some similar locale where you can create some separation, indulge in your own eccentricities, and generally buy some time of your own.  For instance, I’ve noticed that only one of my four kids watches the news, so when visiting the others’ families I tend to sneak the news at the motel we stay at.  Probably the best example is our annual family reunion in Estes Park.  Last year we had 30 people with genes similar to mine or were married to one.  The saving grace, though, was that each branch of the family had its own cabin to that each of us could have visits on a daily basis without turning the entire get-together into a stay.

MORAL:  The entire story is a moral; don’t stay— visit!

THE WEDDING RECEPTION TO END ALL RECEPTIONS

Municipal court vignettes

 “Life’s tough, pilgrim, and it’s even tougher if you are stupid.”—John Wayne

             As with most all municipal court cases,  I didn’t know the miscreants who came to court.  Most law abiding speeders pay their fine or take defensive driving.  Those charged with drug paraphernalia, public intoxication, simple assault, school truancy, and even loose dogs or chickens have to personally appear.  Thus it was that a nice-looking young man showed up in court one day with his mother.  His mother was charged with public intoxication, to which she pled guilty, and the young man with allowing his dog to be loose…..it was a sizeable hound and had chased a small dog down and was proceeding to dispatch it when the smaller dog owner broke up the fight and called 911.  The young man, too, pled guilty, and the judge seemed to know both of them but treated them in a friendly manner.  The judge, of course lives nearby and for a town of 1750, you know most everyone, especially if you have sons and daughters in the public schools, as parent supported extracurricular activities dominate life in this small town.

After court adjourned, the judge leaned back and said, “That boy sure looks different than the last time I saw him.”  I asked what he looked like the previous time, and the judge related the following story, carefully supplemented by the police officer acting as the court bailiff that day:

The young man (let’s call him Daryl) and his mother (let’s call her Kim) both lived in a run down trailer park in the north part of town.  One Sunday afternoon, as it was getting dark, the police received a 911 call about a public disturbance at the trailer park, so the officer on duty responded.  When he got there he quickly surmised that there were several dozen rather inebriated people, many hooting and hollering and generally carrying on.  The officer recognized Kim from some previous run-ins with the law (primarily involving alcohol) and walked up to her, police flashlight in hand.  Naturally he asked what was going on, and she told him that it was her wedding reception, that she had just been married again.  She was in a formal dress, holding a green plastic Solo cup, and one of her breasts was hanging out of her dress, literally.  The officer asked her whether she had been drinking, and she responded that she had not.  When asked what was in her cup, she said “Green tea.”  That’s when things turned ugly.  Daryl, also having had too much to drink, jumped the officer from behind, and the officer, being larger than Daryl and quite sober, flung Daryl over his shoulders onto the ground and proceeded to beat Daryl into submission with his flashlight, the policeman in attendance noting that the flashlight were also defensive weapons that could be used as clubs.  Daryl lost several front teeth in the fray, and the officer then handcuffed him, walked him to his patrol car, and pushed him into the back seat.  The officer then returned to the crowd, saying “This party is over.  Disburse and go home immediately or I will call for backup and there will be more arrests.”  Of course the sullen, alcohol laden group disbursed, and the officer then returned to his patrol car to take Daryl to jail.

As he was driving, the officer smelled something rancid, stopped the car, and realized that Daryl had vomited all over the back seat of his car.  The officer spent the rest of the ride to jail thinking of additional charges to lay on Daryl since he, the officer, had to keep his own vehicle clean.

You’re probably wondering what the judge had to do with this.  Well, a municipal judge is also a magistrate—someone who holds a hearing on alleged criminals who have been put in jail and sets the release bond if the person is a candidate for release.  The judge got to see Daryl at 8 am the day following the wedding reception….he smelled of alcohol and vomit and his blood-caked mouth revealed two missing front teeth.  At least at Daryl’s second appearance before the judge, he was in a better frame of mind, dressed well, and somehow had his two front teeth back.  I sometimes wonder where Kim and Daryl are and what they are up to.

MORAL:  Don’t attend wedding receptions held in trailer parks.  Don’t assault police officers.  Alcohol and ignorance are a bad combination.