Turning onto our gravel road from the highway, I saw there was a little foreign-looking car parked smack dab in the middle about half-ways to our farm. Any car parked on our road is considered suspicious as the road is basically a dead end and you’d have to be nuts to want to go there most days.

Slowing down, I was ready to pounce on the stranger when a lady jumped out and started flailing her arms and screaming at me that I would be burnt alive if I drove any further. Thinking “cult” or worse, I eyed up a speedy three-point turnaround as the woman approached my car.

“I’ve called the fire department and am blocking the traffic so no one will be harmed,” said the woman. I eyed the smoldering cornfield and realized the poor gal must have led a secluded city life, as she obviously had never come across a field being burned on purpose. I got the giggles and imagined what the gal would think if she was ever in the middle of one of our “real fire” catastrophes.

Every farm kid burns a barn down, right?

According to Dad, it wasn’t on the “smart things to do list” for children to use authentic candles in a stall while practicing for the Sunday school nativity play, and we were grounded for life. Grandma spilled the beans a while later, and Dad had to set us free after we found out he had burned down not one but two barns as a youngster.

Hauling horse muck to a pile behind the barn and burning it is a normal, everyday activity. Not so normal is when the fire spreads to the surrounding dry grass and threatens to burn half the farm down. When this happens more than once during a week’s time and Ed is called in off the tractor to help put out burning horse poop, aggravated hat-stomping and the words “glue factory” are used.

One spring after a huge rain, my shins were totally black and blue after the wheelbarrow kept making an abrupt halt in the mud on the way to the manure pile. With a few well-shod horses in the corral next to the barn, the ground was soon packed down enough to make a fresh muck pile in the midst of it. Not thinking, I lit the pile on fire and went back to the barn for another load. Old Nellie must have had an internal death wish as she lay down and rolled next to the burning heap, catching her tail on fire. “Stop, drop, and roll” doesn’t work with a thousand-pound horse, but a well-aimed garden hose saved the day. Nellie’s name turned to “Stumpy” after that little incident, and I kept her well-hidden until her tail grew back.

Bottle-rocket wars were the highlight of every Fourth of July until the neighbor kid built his combat dugout next to Dad’s straw stack. Our entire ammunition dump was confiscated, and it took us kids a week to rake up the burnt straw.

Every family has a “firebug” and ours is no exception. On the first official day of fall, rain or shine, Uncle Curt is out burning anything he can reach with a torch from the four-wheeler: cornfields, ditches, thick grass around the culverts, and anything else that looks like it may cause a hindrance for the upcoming winter’s blowing snow.

It took seven summers of hoeing our shelterbelt of newly planted trees before they finally produced enough foliage to catch the wind and snow. I got a little nervous when Uncle Curt made a drive-by in the morning and again that afternoon, slowing down by the corner next to our trees. Peeking out the side window of the house, I kept a close eye on him, and dang if he didn’t drive right through a nice stand of dry ditch grass and onto the edge of the combined cornfield, aiming his torch.

With just a little breeze blowing in the opposite direction, I didn’t worry too much as Ol’ Smokey did his little fire dance and ignited the cornstalks.

I went about my business and semi-forgot the burning field until Uncle Curt came flying in on his four-wheeler, plowing straight through the small trees, over the lawn and up the front steps of the house. Yelling “Fire, Fire!” and pointing toward the field was about all Uncle Curt had left in him. “Holy Moly!” and 911 was all I could comprehend as over the top of the trees I spotted an enormous inferno!

Panicked and trying to dial for help with the television remote, I don’t remember talking to anyone, especially the gal that kept insisting on an actual address instead of “five miles east and one mile north” of the nearest town.

The neighbors had seen Uncle Curt’s giant smoke signals and were there to help an hour before the local F Troop of volunteer firefighters showed up. Apparently, the official fire assistants were busy with their annual search-and-destroy Miller Light party, and all had left their beepers behind.

Exhausted after the last ash was stomped out with only a few trees lost, we all had a great tale to tell for years to come. Captain Yogi and his sidekick BooBoo would be the first chapter each time as they had parked their volunteer fire truck right beside the north trees for safety… the ones that had burned up…