Do You Smell Smoke?

My husband is a fireman's son. His father worked in Fort William (now Thunder Bay) during my husband's childhood. I often suggest to him that that is the reason he loves fires today! He can't wait until winter so that he can start a fire in our fireplace in the evening. Not that he is a "firebug" or anything, but he does like to build a nice fire and watch the flames as the fire crackles in the fireplace.

As a child, he and his friends loved to build forts in the piles of evergreen trees that were piled up at the end of the street after Christmas. In Ontario, where he lived it was still very cold in January so he and his friends would sit, scrunched down under the pile pretending that they were in a tent. Someone (and of course my husband won't say who) suggested that they should build a fire and boil some water, the way they did when they were really camping in the summer.

The idea caught fire right away (chuckle) and once the little flames started to warm everybody's hands they decided to put more leaves on the fire. I don't have to tell you what happened next. You can use your imagination and think about how quickly flames would rise to the top of the "tree tent" and spread to the branches above them.

Thinking of it now, I realize how dangerous it could have been but when he tells the story you forget about that and only remember what happened next. The little boys scooted out of the "tree tent" and split up, running home to safety.

While he remembers nothing about the consequences he does remember hearing the local fire engine rushing down the street towards the pile of trees that were now burning very brightly. I asked him what his mother had to say about the whole thing and he says he only remembers taking of all his clothes, putting them in the laundry basket and announcing he was taking a bath!

I can only imagine her thoughts when she watched her small boy, in the middle of the day, stripping naked and dashing to the bathtub to take a bath! He never got into trouble for that little escapade, but he learned a good lesson and never built fires in the discarded Christmas trees again! Maybe she thought that it was a lesson learned without much more ado.