Burning the Ranger

A couple of our friends have made the trip to Iowa to hunt pheasants on our daughter and son-in-law's farm.  The pheasants haven't been particularly plentiful, but the guys assured us that the purpose of the trip was more to spend some quality time with their dogs than the number of birds harvested.  We did warn them that Iowa was a bit notional about their weather.  The reports home included a few birds gotten and lots of miserable weather.  "Man!  It is COLD out here!",  reported one of the hunters.  "I've got on everything in my suitcase."  The only real problem was an ice storm that left the ground covered with sharp, ice-covered blades of grass.  This caused the dogs severe discomfort and earned them a night in the motel room with warm foot baths. 

The hunters treated my daughter's family to a dinner as a thank you for their hospitality.  Naturally enough, the conversation turned to the subject of her daddy and some of his more memorable escapades.  Hubby picked that time to call and was informed that they were having a wonderful time and had just finished telling the hunters about how he set fire to their new ranger.  "Oh, no" hubby moaned, "They'll rib me to death when they get home!"  He's right...it's too good a chance to pass up.

Hubby is a neat freak.  He just loves to tidy things up (on the farm, not so much in the house).  He likes everything put up and  picked up.  This includes fence-rows, ditches, blown down limbs,  and the various odds and ends of things that collect in barns and sheds.  His favorite method to get rid of these things is to burn them.  There is nearly always a pile of limbs, old pieces of lumber, brush, feed sacks, and so forth ready to burn somewhere on the farm.  The man just loves to light that pile and watch it burn.  We're used to him and just try to keep an eye on him so he doesn't burn up my favorite yard bench or the magazines I haven't gotten to read yet. 

We had made a trip to Iowa not long after our daughter married.  We were trying to help the young couple change their house from a bachelor camp to a home.  While I worked inside hubby was busy cleaning up the yard and taming some of the landscaping.  He was also enjoying playing with the brand new Polaris Ranger that my daughter had bought for her hubby for Valentine's day.  My hubby was loving how easy it handled and how fast it would go over all kinds of ground.  I could already see a new piece of equipment in our future.  Ever so often he would pop into the house and report on his progress with the yard and his excitement with the new ranger.

About mid-afternoon he made one of his pop-in visits that was a little different.  The first thing we noticed was a strong smell of burning, then we looked up and saw hubby standing in the door in a pair of scorched coveralls, a charred hat, and no eye-brows.  Jumping up in excitement we ran over with exclaims of concern.  "Are you alright? Are you burned? What happened?"

It seems that physically he was unharmed but he was more than a little mortified.  Bit by bit the story came out.  He had been cleaning up a sadly overgrown asparagus bed and decided that instead of just hauling off the load of old stems and brush, he would burn it and get rid of it for good.  He piled up a goodly amount and then went back for another load.  When he returned he lit the pile and watched it leap into life.  He then decided that he would drag the second load from the ranger bed onto the burning fire.  He didn't take into consideration the Iowa wind and the very combustible nature of his load.  The fire blew into the stems as he was dragging them off the bed of the ranger, leaping up the dead stems and into the very bed of the ranger where they set the whole load on fire!

Hubby, realizing the danger, grabbed his hat and tried to beat the flames and push the burning stems out of the ranger.  In the process, he lost a hat, his eyebrows and sadly singed his coveralls, but he did get the debris drug onto the ground.   Fortunately he wasn't burned.  Unfortunately, he couldn't say the same for the ranger.   It wasn't a total loss, since only the bed was damaged, but it sure wasn't new any more.   We stood around silently, staring at the blistered and bubbled bed.  Looking at his daughter's tear filled eyes, he mumbled "I was only trying to help." 

We laugh about it now, but it wasn't too funny to our new son-in-law for quite a while.  Our new ranger got put off for some time since we had to purchase a new bed for their ranger.

Our son-in-law has now established a firm rule on the farm...Hubby doesn't get to have any matches!