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Fire!
During a summer drought some friends and I decided to light off some fireworks. My friend lives behind a major highway and has about 1/4 mile of grass between his backyard and the interstate. This seemed like a good place to light them. We were launching bottle rockets for about 10 minutes when one of the rockets decided to take a dive into the dry grass.

I quickly ran out to the spot where the rocket landed, but it was too late. A circle of flames about 2 feet wide quickly spread across the whole field. These flames grew to about 10 feet high. You see since there had been no rain, and the grass which is normally about 2 ft tall was just cut about a week before, it was like hay drying in the field. We ran around trying to get the hose out, filling up milk jugs with water, grabbing the shovel to try and throw dirt on it, anything.

The fire then quickly spread to the row of bushes separating my friend's backyard and the field. Many quickly ignited and spread to the backyard on their way to the wood fence surrounding the pool.

My friend was thinking of joining the Navy and had a recruiter scheduled to show up at the house. When he saw all of us running around fighting the fire, he quickly tossed his hat to the ground and proceeded to help us. White uniform and all!

The fire department finally showed up about a half hour after the fire started, and about 5 minutes after we put the fire out. Needless to say, I had no hair left on my legs. It was all burned off.

My friend's dad came home and we all had to apologize for burning down most of the bushes in his backyard along with most of his lawn. Unbelievably all he said was, "You kids are a bunch of dumbasses!" and laughed.

For the rest of the summer you could see this H-U-G-E burned patch of grass next to the interstate.

About 2 wks later I was riding in the car with my Mom and she said, "Boy I wonder what happened over there?" Of course I snickered.
(Tue 2nd Mar 2004, 22:20, More)