Wednesday, January 6, 2010

#3: Fire Starters

Something strange happened on December 24th. I went to bed the night before in Oklahoma and managed to wake up in North Dakota. I guess Old Man Winter decided to take a trip south and something along his route made him angry. The weather Christmas Eve day started out bad and got worse. We even had a blizzard by the time it was over!

Everyone dreams of a white Christmas. It has been ingrained in our heads that snow for Christmas is the ultimate in Yuletide jubilation. Well, we got one and it was nothing but a mess. Bing Crosby can kiss my snowy white ass.

Two weeks have passed since the Great Blizzard of ’09 and we still have a significant amount of snow on the ground. Tomorrow we will face wind chills of -10 to -20 degrees. What the hell is going on?

I originally hale from northern Wisconsin. It gets cold there; very cold. When I was a younger I used to be one of those a-holes who would walk around and say, “This is nothing! Back in Wisconsin…” You know the rest. Now I’ve hit my mid thirties and have decided that the cold is no fun. Oklahoma winters are just fine. They are cold enough to bust out a new wardrobe but not so cold that we have to worry about frostbite. Apparently this year is going to be different. Yesterday my kids even asked for ski masks!

When man first crawled out of a cave one cold January morning and grunted, “Cold sucks,” he looked for a good way to stay warm. Finally, he banged enough rocks together over a pile of wood to discover fire.

It’s hard to beat a roaring fire on a cold winter night. For that matter, it’s hard to beat a fire on any night. Staring at the orange flames is cathartic. A friend of mine refers to fire as caveman T.V.

Unfortunately, my fire starting skills are subpar. Setting a pile of wood ablaze is usually an ordeal and unfortunately my wife frowns upon using gasoline to ignite an inferno. So that leaves me searching for the perfect fire starting material. Well, as we all know, I have to go no further than the trunk of my car to find the ideal catalyst. Newspaper is one of the best fire starters known to man. I firmly believe that if primitive man had a subscription to the Wall Street Journal the industrial revolution would have happened 500 years earlier.

Tonight I plan to embrace the subzero temperatures and sit in front of a roaring blaze. What a perfect way to relax and do some reading. Too bad I will have burned up my newspaper to get the fire going.

Use #3: Starting Fires

John Hansen has been issued a driver’s license by the State of Oklahoma where he has free reign to drive on any public road he desires. Along with Zak Hathaway, he has penned the mega-hero novel The Power of Zahn considered by some to be too dangerous to publish.

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