Carnal Fire Knowledge

Isn’t fire wonderful? Keeps you warm, cooks dinner, and fun to watch. Caveman technology, but it can still beat a computer in a fair fight. Fun to play with, too, right kids?

Many life-changing lessons are fire-related. Vividly I remember looking at the kitchen stove and wondering: is it still hot after the gas flame goes out? So I touched it, what more straightforward test could there be? My first blister, and my best tear duct work-out since infancy.

Soon thereafter, I dripped wax from a burning candle onto Grampa’s new Stetson (a “cowboy” hat popular with bogus cowboys since that’s all there are, really). Grampa never said a word, but mom administered my first serious bun-warming. The lesson here was “Don’t Piss Mom Off.” At five, probably not in those words.

A bottle cap at a campfire re-taught me the heat retention capability of metal. A melting plastic car, driven by a toy soldier, taught me that burning plastic sticks to you when you touch it--and keeps burning.

As a kid we used to go camping for weeks at a time. What a great place to play with fire, when the old farts weren’t looking! 

Then Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, bigger fires and far less supervision. Sometimes they had fire building contests!

The “Safety” part of the “Fire Safety” badge was just a smoke screen, you still got to play with fire. Most importantly: a can of beans, strategically placed in a campfire, will blast hot beans everywhere when it bursts.

Massive desert bonfires, of pallets swiped from behind supermarkets, lit our teen beer parties. Nothing draws folks together for drunken revelry like a 16 foot tower of flame.

Though none of us goodly youth were pierced or tattooed in those days, some have nice scars from hot coals and pain-tolerance one-upmanship. A contest usually won by the numbest. Afterwards, more beer was always the prescription for break-through pain.

To guarantee myself at least four camping trips a year, I took each of my four sons on an annual birthday camp-out. Being allowed to play in a fire is a fantastic gift for any eight-year-old! With me by their side, or a few feet away because of all the damned smoke, they could run their own field tests. Metals glow red after the paint burns off. Aluminum cans eventually melt into an ashy puddle. Plastics are best—what serious camper has not experienced the thrill of watching a plastic bread bag, impaled on a stick, in flames and dripping colorful little fireballs?

You can tell a kid over and over to “be careful or you’ll get burned.” After their first painful self-cooking, you never have to say it again, even to your stupidest.

For 17 years I have heated my home with a wood stove in the living room. It’s ashy, smoky, a danger to drunks, idiots, and babies--and dirt cheap ‘cause I burn scrap lumber and old pallets. We can connect with our prehistoric past by the glow of the fire, while watching untalented modern humans make asses of themselves in the glow of our electronic amusement device. I want to integrate the experience, but the TV won’t fit inside the stove. Might have to axe it.

(Note the duct-tape jacket repair)

The yearly “Burning Man” gathering in Nevada is just an excuse for adults to go play with, and around, fire. We have no need to go; we are still living that dream. Even now we fiddle in the flames when camping, how can anyone help it? Final life lesson: it’s OK to play with fire, as long as you don’t poke anyone’s eye with a burning stick. This has worked for us so far, anyway.