Rambling through central Illinois, pondering why I care that teams that spend millions on their basketball team can beat teams that spend thousands.
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Last Saturday was not National Burn Day. Should have been. Should also have been National Burn Your Ditch or Grassy Field Day. The skies were filled with black clouds all day, leaving a smoky smell to linger over much of the area.
As anyone who burns regularly knows, there are only certain windows for a safe fire. Lots of factors come into play. Wind speed. Wind direction. Relative humidity. How much volunteer help you have on hand. And, as we learned Saturday, temperature matters too.
Normally for our March burns, we are working in 40-50 degrees. Normally, we prefer winds under 12 mph. We had none of that Saturday, but sometimes volunteer help trumps stats.
Even though we had a full complement of five Lampes, we started very cautiously, burning into the wind for 90 minutes and carefully spreading the fire, battling minor creepers of flame now and then. Those little flames can create big problems, so we stayed on them and generally, things went well. Much better than the year a creeper got loose and the three of us on hand could not stop the flames until they burned up a bunch of nice walnuts and oaks.
That was a bad year. That was also the year when the youngest, 12 at the time, said we can’t burn unless we’ve got a full crew. I was glad he said it, because now it’s gospel.
Plus, all our burns are trickier now that we rotate fires between the east and west side of our big prairie. A mistake could easily send flames racing through the other side, and then who knows what would happen.
But even all that safety-first backburning only works if the wind stays true to the forecast. Saturday was supposed to be south/southwest wind all afternoon. As anyone who burns knows, the wind doesn’t follow a script very well.
So when it switched to the southeast for a few minutes, things got dicey fast. At some point, you have to light the edge opposite your backburn so the fire will go with the wind and meet in the middle in a towering- but-safe display of flame.
That moment came fast. After a day of caution, I found myself running with the diesel-and-gas-filled drip torch, lighting the west edge of the prairie to meet a fire suddenly headed west faster than planned. The boys say the flames were the biggest ever. Their videos seem to back that up.
All I know is the last 5 acres burned in 9 minutes and the first 5 acres took 90 minutes. One heat draft almost knocked me over and I was more than happy to spend the rest of Saturday on the couch, watching basketball and hockey.
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Every day a new thought occurs to me … then I forget what that thought could have been. That reminds me of my friend Tim, who is older than me and says he has made a sign that he wants his wife, Bea, to hold up when the time is right.
“You are going crazy.” Tim said he wants her to have the sign written by him so he will believe it when it happens.
Thinking of that makes me smile, since Bea has probably already held the sign up a few times and Tim won’t pay attention when she really means it anyway. My point here is not to make fun of Tim but to be prescient. This is coming for many of us and I admire his planning.
That’s even changed one of my master plans. Once upon a time, I pondered writing a grand book of advice from father to sons. Then I realized if the boys are anything like me, they wouldn’t read the book until they were too old to use the advice.
So the notes of advice, I have decided, are best saved for me to read and reread. They are a simple cheat code against the brain changes ahead.
“They are correct about you needing to take showers.”
“Do not send money to every charity that sends a letter, even if they send 1. Return address labels, 2. Notepads, 3. Dreamcatchers, 4. Bumper stickers, 5. 10 cents.”
“Tip well. Never make your kids frantically throw bills on the table as you leave a restaurant.”
“Wearing the same clothes for three straight days is a very bad idea.”
Stuff like that. My only worry is that I will lose all the notes when they are needed most.
• • •
So far, Tiny Miller of Williamsfield is the lone person to take me up on trading trees for pie – though his liquid version of apple pie had quite a strong punch. But the offer still stands. Anybody got a rhubarb pie for some chestnuts? … Parting shot: The only real madness this March is learning how much some schools have paid to their “student-athletes.”
Contact Jeff Lampe at (309) 231-6040 or jeff@wklypost.com.
