"Pete Keillor" wrote in message
...


Me, too. It was Mom's 15 yr. old collection of Sears and Monkey Wards
catalogs she finally realized were useless. She said burn 'em in the
burn barrel. I dumped them in the empty barrel, which they just
barely fit. Knowing they'd be difficult to burn because of the
tightly packed pages, I decided to help them along with about 1 gal.
of av gas, then realized I'd forgotten the matches. To keep all that
good gas from getting away, I put a torn open fertilizer sack over the
barrel (you can see where this is going). When I got back with the
matches, a couple of neighbor kids and my brother had arrived.

I proceeded to strike the match, lift the sack, and flick the match
in. In the next instant, we were all knocked down around the barrel
by the concussion, and I had an impressive view of about a 150' tall
column of catalog pages with fire between them. Then the damned
burning pages drifted into the dry grass in the pasture next door.
After Dad pounded me, we got to spend the next 30 minutes putting out
the grass fire. The neighbors about 1/4 mile away said it shook all
their windows.

A rather unique tech I had working for me once spoke my favorite quote
of all time. " I believe the best value for your entertainment dollar
is gasoline."

Pete Keillor


i used to know a guy, i think his story was like, as a kid he was told to
rake the leaves, he had an abandoned well (that had gone dry) in his yard, i
think the story was that it had stone slabs over it but there was a large
enough space between them were he had the idea to rake the leaves down into
the well and then burn them there (or, maybe it was that he noticed there
was a large accumulation of leaves that had fallen down the well between a
smaller gap?) he too wanted to accelerate the process and so poured
gasoline down the well onto the dry leaves. i think the story was that the
"rapid oxidation" caused the stone slabs to be thrown completely free from
the well. there was a lot more hysterically funny detail that i've
forgotten. i think, like the first story, his father may have just arrived
to see the show too, can't remember.

b.w.