It’s not every day that the local fire department comes to your hot dog roast, but it happened to us tonight.
I called our city this morning to get a burn permit for the pile of garden refuse we planned to burn. After Hubby got home we hauled the cornstalks we’d been using as porch decorations out back and added them to the large pile of garden litter. Then while Hubby and Bug went to a band meeting at the school, the girls and I started the fire. (We waited until after work so that we could roast some hot dogs for dinner.)
Whooee! You should have seen the smoke. It billowed above the fire and drifted over the house. The fire had been burning for about half an hour when I heard sirens wailing. They seemed to be heading toward the highway to our west. I wondered if there had been an accident or if there were some sort of fire. I surveyed the horizon but couldn’t see any smoke except for what was coming from our fire.
Hubby and Bug returned from the band meeting, and by that time our fire was mostly embers and some smoke. Hubby came back to see how things were burning and rearranged a couple logs that we intended to roast the hot dogs over. The sirens were still wailing, but were still fairly close by. Hubby and I looked toward the intersection near our house and saw a local police cruiser with its lights on stop and turn back around the way it had come. "That’s funny," said Hubby, "for a minute there, I thought he was going to turn our way."
Well, in just a couple more minutes, the police cruiser was back again, and he did turn down our road. He drove past our driveway, turned around, and pulled up by our garage. I had Loula Belle run in and fetch Hubby to come out to talk with the officer.
Apparently someone had seen our smoke and called 9-1-1. I guess the smoke had drifted clear down to the highway and looked as if it was coming from a computer business along main street. That’s why the sirens headed that direction but then headed back. There was no fire on main street. The only fire was in our backyard!
Fortunately, we did have our burn permit number and weren’t in any serious trouble. At one point we had two large fire trucks, two smaller fire trucks, and two police vehicles in front of our house. I also saw another large engine and two smaller emergency vehicles head back toward the fire station without coming our way. All told, I’d guess that there were probably ten or so vehicles out looking for our fire.
As a side note, our bishop had been out in his pasture working with his horse when he saw smoke and flashing lights down our direction. He hopped in his pick up and came down to see what was going on. I guess Lou Belle and Bug talked with him and assured him that we were just have our family home evening activity – roasting hot dogs.
One thing is for sure -- tonight’s family home evening sure was exciting!
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