Fire! Fire! Or The Blame Game

During my earliest years - in the early 1960's - the Gough's lived across the street from our house. But, one day (what seemed to me, anyway) they up and moved. I mean, they didn't just move themselves and their belongings, but they moved their entire house! So, the property across the street lay vacant never to have a house stand on it again. That meant that our next nearest neighbors, the Glembin's - who lived about 1/4 mile to the south of us - were the only people around who had any children our ages. Early on, we were good friends with them, but as we grew, we grew more distant. I think it was mostly because we attended public school, and they attended the Catholic school. The Vilas - Oneida county line also ran between our properties, so when they went to High School, they went to Three Lakes instead of Eagle River.

One fine late summer day, Kurt was out in our field playing on a rock formation that we used to pretend was our fort, or a ship, or whatever we came up with at the time. This rock formation was sort of in the middle of a field bordered by trees. The grass was tall, and the summer had been quite dry. Thus, the grass was very flammable.

Kurt had been out there playing army with his army men and toys. I think Kirby and Karson had been playing there with him as well. Kurt thought it would be great fun to try and use firecrackers and make it seem like his army men were really being blown up (yes, we usually had some contreband firecrackers from South Carolina around). Well, as one can imagine, with the wind blowing and the extremely dry grass, and if one is not careful a fire can get away in a hurry. I can imagine the horror that must have run through Kurt's mind as he frantically tried to stomp out the fire, but the flames would just jump to more grass until it was way too big for him to control.

I was maybe 10 or 12 at the time, and saw the smoke billowing up from out in the field. I ran and told Dad, then grabbed one of the fire beaters he had around the place and headed out to start stomping out the flames. Dad, Kevin, and anyone else who was around grabbed the fire extinguishers, and other firefighting equipment and drove out to the location. We fought frantically for about 10 - 15 minutes before all the flames were extinguished. It was the closest I ever care to be to a forest fire.

When everything was settled down, and we were certain no more flames would crop up, attention focused on Kurt, and how the fire started in the first place. He began to relate a story of how the youngest Glembin boy - I believe is name was John - came over and started lighting matches willy-nilly around the place until the grass caught fire. He began to elaborate on how John wanted to get him into trouble, and didn't care what he did with the matches.

Well, Kurt's story didn't make sense, because we didn't have much interraction with the Glembins by that time, and it didn't make sense that suddenly one of the boys would think to come over to our property and just be malicious. However, Dad was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. Then along came supper, and Kurt was told he had to stay in his room to figure out what had happened.

In the end, Kurt finally fessed up that HE was the one playing with matches and that one got away from him in the wind. He did feel bad he was not able to put it out, but then instead of coming to get help he tried to run away and let it all go. I think it was a life-changing lesson for him that day. We all grew a little bit that day. I felt some responsibility of a grown-up, because I just responded by grabbing the firefighting "whomper" (as I used to call it) and was a big help in getting it put out.