5 am Wakeup Call 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
This is a true story from my childhood and is, therefore, undocumented as it did not lead to major injury or death.
On Labor Day weekend my family used to have a very large party that began on Friday and culminated on Sunday with a pig roast - Hawaiian style. We lived in the country and had enough land that we could, and did, have a lot of friends and family members camp out in our yard. Usually, we had between 90 and 150 people there. The party really began on Friday evening and by Saturday everyone is having a very good time, helped out with general doses of liquor.
In order to cook the "other white meat" properly, we had to start the fire [1 and 1/2 cords of wood] at 5 am to properly heat the ground and the lava rocks. As such, we always stacked the wood and rocks the day before to save time, as 5 am comes pretty early after being up until 2 am. My father decided to save even more time by following the teachings of John Wayne when it comes to fires. He proceeded to pour the contents of one jeep can of gas over the logs and then create a gas 'fuse', by dragging his heel 30 feet from the pit and pouring gas along the line. Then, with what I always imagine was a great flourish, he dropped the match.
The gas ignited immediately, raced to the pit and detonated with a ground shaking BOOM. This woke up all of the guests, as well as our neighbors on both sides of our property. The house shook, the glass rattled and all we could hear was swearing. I was a teenager at the time and was sleeping with my cousins and friends in an upstairs room. Everyone was instantly awake, asking "WHAT was THAT!!!!" and then proceeding to go outside to find out what was going on. I looked at my watch, told them it was dad waking us up lighting the fire, and went back to sleep.
The most humorous part of this was that the gas burned itself out almost instantly and dad had to stuff paper into all of the gaps, lighting the fire the old fashioned way. It seems he forgot about gas and water. The dew on the wood acted like a shield and the gas only fed on itself. The only good thing was the gas fire dried the wood out and made it easier to light the 'boring' way. We harrassed him about this for years after the event. Submitted on 05/10/2002
Submitted by:
Anonymous
Reference:
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