**Note: I thought I was going to be slick and master this blogger page, so yesterday I set up this morning's blog to post automatically at 8:00am this morning. Well, the short version is... the below Forest Fire blog is not the one that was supposed to post today; it was originally intended to be tomorrow's rambling. However, since I'm such a major goober and the blog meant for today appears to be lost somewhere out in cyberspace because of course it didn't post as scheduled this morning, we're moving on to tomorrow's stuff. Of course the blog meant for today may pop up at any time and suprise us both?? Did I mention I'm really glad it's Friday?? Sincerely, Your not-so-savvy blogger friend
Forest Fires and Curtis Mathis
My heart goes out to those in Texas, Arizona, and other places devastated by wildfires this year. Any kind of natural disaster reminds us how little control we actually have over nature and no matter what dramas are popping up in our everyday lives, at least we aren't dealing with what those poor folks are handling at the moment. When it comes to scary disasters, for some reason I fear wildfires and particularly forest fires more than hurricanes and floods. When I see the video of the forest fires in Arizona for example with the raging firestorms and trees flaming like wicked torches, it just makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I guess this, like many adult fears, is rooted in the twisted imaginations of childhood? Until about age 12 I lived in the middle of a pine forest near Conroe. I guess it comes with the territory, but the forest service had a big presence in the schools back then and every year we would have presentations about fire safety and the whole Smoky Bear traveling roadshow thing. What really got me though were the movies they would show us of horrible out of control raging forest fires filmed up close from inside the fire. It literally gave me nightmares!! I mean seriously, showing that to 5 year olds who LIVE in the forest… it scared the poo out of us!! No way Mr. Smokey… you’ll never catch me with a campfire! In fact, my mother would walk around the yard smoking and I would stealthily follow along behind her to make sure she didn’t catch anything on fire. Yes, very twisted I know. I see that now. I was a total weirdo child.
When in a forest like ours you could only see the little patch of sky right above you. It was nothing like the wide open fields and pretty grass around Boling where you can sit on your back porch and watch a thundershower approach and say okay, now it’s at so-and-so’s house it should be here in about 4 minutes. When something was on fire you could see and smell the smoke but had no idea where, how big, or how close the fire was to you. A neighbor burning trash or pine needles would make me break out in a cold sweat as I imaged being a charred little ember as the whole place went up like a bottle rocket. Oh Smokey Bear, come save me! Ahhhhh!! Okay, I guess it’s kinda funny now but believe me it wasn’t at the time.
Living in a pine forest did have its advantages. We lived on an acre of land in the country in a deeply forested area. The number one advantage was probably having very little grass to mow because almost no vegetation survived in the little clearing where our house was. Though come to think of it our yard probably looked like total crap, mostly sand and pine needles with the few plants and weeds which were hearty enough to survive. But hey, what did I care because at least I didn’t have to mow grass that often – Yay! Instead of fields to play in we had “trails”. Trails to the creek, trails that shortcut to the neighbors house, trails to favorite spots to meet your friends. Also keep in mind this was the 70’s – where once we had passed the age of banana seats and chrome fender bikes, all cool bikes were 10-speeds with the curvy handlebars and super skinny tires. Super skinny 10-speed tires on sandy forest trails with lots of tree roots… now there’s an adventure (read accident) waiting to happen! Playing in our trails was also kind of like being in one of those rat mazes where you can only see out the top. After getting lost a time or two and wandering around, hoping to get home before dark (so you wouldn’t get the whipping of your life), most of us kids also developed a pretty good sense of direction out of sheer necessity too.
Anyway, aside from a deathly fear of forest fires the other major disadvantage had to be TV reception. Most adults my age have fun telling their kids and grandkids we only had three TV channels growing up. Well out in the sticks, we had ONE channel. And that was only if we were lucky, and you fidgeted with the outer dial juuuust right, and wiggled the rabbit ears with foil on them juuuuust right, then maybe perhaps a signal would dip down into our little hole in the pines enough to get more picture than snow on the screen. Once my Dad had this brilliant idea… we had a friend who painted towers for a living and had climbing gear. Dad got him to climb up into one of the tallest pine trees right behind our house and mount our TV antenna up in the treetop. Genius!! We actually got crystal clear color TV reception for all THREE channels! My parents went out and bought a huge console Curtis Mathis color TV in a cabinet big enough to bury about 3 people in. The TV was in the middle, the top lifted up on the left side to reveal a record player and on the right side was an 8-Track tape player. State of the art hi-fi electronics baby! We thought we were in heaven…. well, for about 6 months that is... until the first big lightning storm came our way. Yep, our antenna and TV got FRIED! Total toast. It’s probably a wonder it didn’t set our whole house on fire AND start a forest fire. Anyway, then we were back to setting our small black and white TV on TOP of the fancy fried Curtis Mathis and watching our one fuzzy channel. You children of the 70’s, raise your hand if you’ve ever had a TV sitting on top of another TV… yep, I knew I wasn’t the only one. The record player and 8-Track worked great though. Go figure?
Now of course TV is digital, fits in your pocket on your cell phone, and has a bazillion channels. Very handy for watching movies too. What? Did you say watching forest fire movies?? Ahhhhhhhh!!!!
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