YOU'RE NEVER TOO OLD TO PLAY WITH FIRE

I've spent a good chunk of four days out of the last two weeks helping the Chowan-Edenton Optimist Club sell Christmas Trees to raise money for less fortunate kids in our county.  It's a good cause, with some good, old-fashioned male bonding mixed in, and even a chance to dabble in manual labor (what was it Jimmy Buffet sang?..."any manual labor I've done was purely by mistake.").  And cold weather (at least by eastern North Carolina standards) arrived, too.  Fortunately, we've got an old, metal, 55-gallon drum with some vents drilled in it that we use to keep a fire going at the Christmas tree stand.  Keeps the body warm on those cold Carolina nights.

(My son Josh stoking the Optimist Club Fire)

Of course, standing around the Christmas tree stand, watching grown men in their 30's, 40's, 50's and 60's stoke the fire, throw things in the fire, round up brush and branches for the fire, talk about the fire, stare at the fire, and reminisce about playing with fire as kids left me with one unmistakable observation.  The primal male fascination with flame is not something we outgrow!

Oh, we find safer ways to meddle with the blaze.  We come up with better excuses.  We quit trying to come up with new ways to napalm GI Joe or firebomb our Tonka Trucks.  We begin burning brush, or building bonfires, or burning trash, or firing up the grill.  Sometimes farmers get to burn off entire fields (the lucky devils!).  And Firemen...man!

When I was a kid my parents, teachers, and old man Tom Goodman, the full-time fireman who lived across Broad Street from my childhood home, all told me repeatedly and emphatically, "Don't play with fire".  And, of course, I never listened.  David Dail and I almost blew ourselves up with gasoline one afternoon in my backyard.  Andy Whitson and I had my father's stack of firewood smoking and smoldering in the shed behind my house - took several buckets of water to douse that one.  We singed eyebrows, torched toys, started small grass fires, nearly blew off digits with illegal fireworks (imported north from South Carolina, where everything apparently is legal).  

On the occasions grown-ups stumbled across our arson-driven shenanigans they'd give us a good dressing down.  Little did I know they were probably just trying to get us to go inside so they could finish the job for us.  Kids, don't play with fire.  Leave that to us grown-ups!