Well I guess this one isn't so much a story as it is a collection of many stories. I don't think I've ever had a single bonfire that was so crazy that it was worthy of it's own story, but if you take all of the crazy moments and smash them all together...

You see, fire and I are old friends. Long ago, fire tried to blow me up. I was lit up by about 8 ounces of black powder contained in a tin can. I've since forgiven Fire, and we have been good friends ever since.

Upon acquiring my own house, I began hosting small, late night bonfires. Gee... who would have ever guessed that I'd have stories to tell about the bonfires... alcohol, fire, extremely flammable accelerants, a few witnesses and participants... It was just a matter of time!

Flammable Furniture

In my back yard, there used to be a picnic table. Picnic tables are flammable. I no longer have a picnic table. Get the picture? It was a pretty beat up - worn out picnic table anyway. One night while we were having a bonfire, Brian sat on the picnic table. The table then proceeded to throw Brian and everything else that was setting on it to the ground. The table had seen it's last days. I didn't feel like repairing it. What I did feel like doing was picking it up, and setting it on top of the fire pit! It went up in flames pretty quick, but not before Brian and I had the chance to walk across it a few times while it was engulfed in flames! (Did I mention that I like to play with fire?)

Have you ever seen what happens when you mix lots of kerosene with an old couch, and put it in my back yard? I have...

This former posterior suspension device once resided in my living room. By the time I had a replacement for it, this was the only fitting way I could see to send it on to the furniture afterlife. We started out by suspending it over the fire pit on two saw horses, dousing it in kerosene, and waiting for the magic to happen.

This was a bad idea.

What I didn't know at the time was that a couch by itself burns pretty damned fast. A couch soaked in flammable liquid burns at a rate that rivals a nuclear reaction! Especially when you lift it off of the ground and give it good ventilation. I unfortunately didn't have the camera ready until the fire was well under control, but let me just say this... the flames were taller than my house!

It didn't take long before my power lines were engulfed in flames. (No, it wasn't considered good planning on my part to dig the fire pit right under my power lines...) The couch burned so fast and so hot that you could hear the aluminum siding on my house start to creak from thermal expansion! You couldn't even get within 10 feet of the fire without being in serious pain. Keeping that in mind, I was the one who had to go kick the saw horses out from under the incinerating couch! One convienient thing about fires that burn that fast... they tend to burn themselves out of fuel quickly. Luckily for me, the raging inferno only lasted about 15 to 20 minutes, but it seemed like an eternity while I was waiting for a squad car to pull up and arrest me for attempting to burn my house down!

Stop Drop and Roll!

While we all love Phil dearly, for some unexplicable reason we feel the need to abuse him for our own amusement. This was never more apparent then the time we set him on fire!

One of our favorite fire-time activities is to fill our empty beer bottles with either gasoline or kerosene, and then set it upright in the fire. What happens is the petroleum distilate starts to boil. It's vapors shoot out of the neck of the bottle and catch fire. The end result is a blowtorch that shoots flames up about 4 or 5 feet. This works great when the bottle is upright...

Bill, however, didn't set the bottle upright. He filled it with kerosene, and set it in the fire at a bit of an angle. Not to big a deal, except that he filled it so full that when the kerosene started to boil, it spattered still-liquid, hot kerosene out of the fire at an impressive distance of about 10 feet. Unfortunately, Phil happed to be sitting 10 feet from the fire and directly in its path. In an instant, Phil was running around the yard in flames, while the rest of us were laughing and screaming, "STOP DROP AND ROLL, PHIL!"

Now I'm sure you're thinking, "How evil! Your friend is being burned, and you're laughing at him!" For the record, what you're picturing is far worse than the acual event. It was just a little fire, and the only thing that burned was the kerosene. Phil never actually caught fire... yet.

Fire and Water Don't Mix

Here's why I don't like to plan these things in advance. I once planned a bonfire a whole week in advance. As luck would have it, it rained that day. Murphy's Law... That Murphy sure is an asshole!

For anyone that knows me, they know that I'm stubborn enough to take on Mother Nature and have my damned bonfire anyway! Well that's just what I did. I arrived at my house about 15 minutes before everyone else got there. I took that time to haphazardly erect a shelter under which we could stay dry and still be close enough to the fire to cook bratwurst! I really wish I had taken a picture of this, because words just can't do it justice.

My shelter was made from a huge plastic tarp. I scampered up a ladder with a drill and some screws and a corner of the tarp. Within a few minutes, I had screwed the tarp to the sofet on my house, and even stretched it over to the shed. Then I took 2 4x4 wooden posts and screwed the other end of the tarp to the tops of them. When I stood them up, the tarp created a huge shelter that left us plenty of room to stay dry. I had to make a few modifications as the night wore on to keep it from blowing over, such as using bungee cords to attach a weight at one end. I even had to punch holes in the tarp in a couple of spots to keep water from pooling on top of it, and collapsing it. I have to admit... it wasn't the most structurally sound thing I had ever built, but I only had a few minutes to design and assemble it! And I sure as hell wasn't canceling the bonfire!

It held for about an hour and a half before the wind picked up. Eventually, the screws tore through the tarp, and the whole thing came off of the roof of my house with a crash. And in true Murphy's fasion, it landed in the fire! I figured defying Mother Nature for an hour and a half was sufficient to demonstrate my stubbornness, so we moved the party inside from there.

Here you can see us crowded under the tarp. The big post at an angle next to my leg is the 4x4 post holding one of the corners up.