GranolaBox

I’ve always wanted a fireplace in my back yard, but zoning ordinances and safety considerations always stood in my way. Finally, because of a narrow loophole in our town’s fire code, I can walk through town with my head held high knowing I’m not breaking the law by having a fire in my back yard, as long as I have some sort of cooking grate nearby and the fire is being used for cooking.

I sculpted a beautiful miniature ampitheater on the creek bed by digging out a little bit of the hill on the creek bed and replacing it with a makeshift retaining wall. I conceived the project and got complete license to dig from the Queen of my Universe (and environment) at the beginning of summer and have been chipping away at it ever since.

Finally after all the digging, hauling and battling ferocious horseflies (I only killed one of them) my masterpiece is finished. Tonight was to be the celebratory inaugural fire.

Tonight is my last night of freedom before the school year sort of begins so our neighbors, Mark and Shirley wanted to get together for a drink… so I figure it’s a perfect night to break in my new fireplace.
So I drag Mark, Shirley, Fico (lugubrious Labrador par excellence) and QoMU out of our comfortable houses to sit around the fire which I painstakingly built and raised to a pleasant roar.

So we’re sitting around enjoying the camaraderie of the fire, and we hear a loud POP. Really loud. It was a rock exploding. Freak thing we think.

We reminisce about explosions past. Mark talks about putting an aerosol can in the fire with his buddies and watching it shoot a hundred feet straight up in the air. I talk about how Guy Decker blew his fingers off by trying to string a whole bunch of M-80’s together. Shirley and QoMU figure it’s a guy thing.

Then ka FUCKING BOOM. The huge rock on the bottom of the fire pit fucking EXPLODES. (At this point my friend DOUG would poke you on the arm or chest and say “No… it FUCKING exploded) Cinders and small pieces of schrapnel are flying everywhere, but everyone is safe, only Fico suffered a little hair burn.

So, disgusted, I kick the now scattered logs into the creek. We start walking up the path to our yards and there’s a black, smoldering log about 20 feet from the fire… I didn’t kick it there.

So maybe all those obstacles were a sign from a higher power that I’m not supposed to have a fire in my back yard.

Or maybe it’s that I’m not supposed to line the fire pit with that kind of rock.

Filed under: General Observations on August 31st, 2009