The fire, the oil, the shotgun 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
This story come from a little town in Western Ohio, a couple years ago. Sorry, but I do not remember the date. If I spend some time, though, I could probably dredge up a name for you to confirm. This ingenius fellow was actually a close relative of a family friend, so we seldom make light of it, even though it was really stupid. This is as best as I can remember the story.
Mr. M, we will call him for now, had no children that I know of. He lived out in the country, and worked on vehicles. He had a fifty-five gallon drum of old motor oil, from past oil changes, sitting around in the way. Well, it was fall, and there was a growing pile of trash and leaves back by the barn. So, Mr. M decides it is time to burn some of the trash pile. He gets a real nice bon fire going. It was really blazing away. This fire would have made Smokey cringe. Well, M get thinking about what else he needs to get rid of, and it occurs to him that the barrel of old oil would cost him a lot to have disposed of. So get gets the bright idea. “Oil is flamable! Oil is expensive to get rid of. I have a fire! Oil + fire = $” so he decides to put the fifty-five gallon drum of oil into the fire. Now I know what you are expecting, BOOM!
Well, that isn’t what happened. The drum, after risking life and limb to actually get it into the fire, just sat there. He had expected it to catch on fire or explode or something. He stood back and watched for a while. It just got hot. Really really hot. So, M decides he needs to speed this up before he gets caught. Mr. M figures that his problem is a surface area thing. He needs to poke a few holes in the drum so the oil can leak out into the fire. He also knows that he doesn’t want to touch it enough to poke a few holes the traditional way. It is then that he has the storke of genius. “I know how to poke a bunch of holes in it and not have to touch it!” So he goes in the house and comes back out with a shotgun. I’ll bet you think you know where this is going. Boom!
Well, not quite. You see, he had this all figured out. He knew that when the oil began leaking out, the fumes would likely cause the flames to jump. Now mind you, the whole time, this drum of oil has been sitting in the fire, sealed. The pressure was beginning to build up. So, he loads the shotgun, and walks over to the fire, up wind of course. He was not stupid enough to go down wind. Remember, he thought about this. Well, he backed about ten feet or so away from the edge of the fire, and raised the gun. He aimed right at the middle of the drum, which is ironically the area under the most stress from the mounting pressure. He pulled the trigger, expecting to blow the oil out the other side mostly. Well, ho forgot something. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. When he shot the buring, pressurized barrel of oil at close range with his shot gun, the burning, pressurized barrel of oil shot back. The hydraulic reaction launched the flaming plume of oil twenty feet back in the direction of the gun. He was unlucky enough to be ten feet away, holding that gun. Not much was left when the emergency workers found him.
Mr. M had successfully sterilized the gene pool.
Submitted on 04/16/2003
Submitted by:
Ohio Bumpkin
Reference:
A small town paper in Ohio
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