Fire!

Apparently, my grandfather's new hobby is setting things on fire.

This isn't the most healthy hobby, for him or for us, especially since our state is perpetually dry enough for fire warnings. This alone is ironic since the ground itself has been overly saturated since November (making us also perpetually wet enough for flood warnings), but the grass blades keep drying out. We've already had one grass fire on our property because our neighbor decided to burn some brush on a dry, windy day. The fire almost took out our goat pen. So, fire is bad.

A few days ago, my grandfather wanted to clean something with gasoline. Who knows what it was he was trying to clean in the first place. He poured gasoline on a crappy old sweatshirt that was some sort of synthetic mix. He cleaned whatever it was that so desperately needed to be cleaned with gasoline, and then didn't know what to do with the now gasoline-soaked sweatshirt. So he took it out to the rock driveway, laid it out, and then SET IT ON FIRE WITH A BLOW TORCH.

Yeah. My dad came home, saw this black gunk stuff on the driveway, and asked my mother what that was about. My mother explained to my father what HIS father had done. My father shook his head and then headed out to his garage where he could tinker with the car he's building and pretend like his father doesn't think setting gasoline-soaked sweatshirts on fire is a good idea. Later, my grandfather came out to join my dad, and he said, "did Paula tell you what I did today?"

"Yeah," my dad said with a little sadness in his heart.

"That was really stupid of me," my grandfather replied. My dad asked him what he had been thinking, but I don't think there was a response.

While one would think that my grandfather's lack of response would mean that he had learned his lesson, one would be wrong. No, he did it again. This time, it involved a shoe.

One day after the gasoline incident, my grandfather discovered some sticky substance on his shoe, so he headed out to his wooden shed where he keeps all of his chemicals and tools and golf clubs. He used some paint thinner to rub the sticky substance off of the sole of the shoe. He got the sticky substance off, but now the shoe was wet! So he grabbed his blowtorch AND DRIED THE SHOE WITH FIRE. And by "dried the shoe" I mean "set the shoe on fire". He had to put out the fire with his fire extinguisher.

Yesterday he wandered out of his wooden shed after a fire-free visit and announced that he was finally feeling old.