| When we were kids, family friends would come to the farm for chicken barbeques. Roger, a family friend, would always cook the chicken over our outdoor barbeque. He used a special recipe of his own for the barbeque dip and to say it was good would be using a superlative falling way short! After the meal, Tim and I would play around with the still glowing charcoal embers. We would throw them as high in the air as we could and make our own "fireworks". As kids, we used to put many varied objects in the road and watch cars and trucks run over them. After one chicken barbeque, Tim and/or I got the idea to spread all the glowing charcoal embers in the road! After we did that, we "went up to the barn window", which was at the peak of the barn roof. It was accessed by a ladder from the straw loft. The window was HIGH, about 12,000 feet in "kid perception" and about 40 feet high in "adult reality". From our lofty perch, we watched cars and trucks run over the glowing embers and saw all the sparks fly everywhere and totally surround the vehicles! We wonder now what the drivers must have thought as they saw billions of glowing sparks surround thier vehicles! It was really fun and entertaining for us! Our fun suddenly turned to terror as a BIG GAS TANKER TRUCK speedily approached the blanket of hot glowing embers! The driver didn't have a choice to go around it since we had covered BOTH lanes of the State Highway! As it sped through it, the whole rig was totally engulfed in sparks! That one really gave us a scare! We thought sure the whole rig, no doubt filled with hundreds of gallons of gasoline, would explode in one big fireball! After that, we returned to putting more innocuous things in the road (like stones, bicycle rims, cans, toys, etc.)! |
