Burning Man... 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
I was helping out a buddy of mine with some yard work. It was fall, and he had some leaves and branches that he needed to dispose of. Seeing as I'm from Texas, the traditional thing to do with yard clipping and leaves is NOT to put them on the curb for the trash guys to pick up, but to get a couple of 55-gallon drums to use as "burn barrels" And the only good way to start a burn barrel, at least to a couple of 19-yr old guys, is to use copious amounts of gasoline.
Well, we were in a hurry that day, so we were trying to get the leaves burned even faster. Since we were packing the drums too full of leaves, and there wasn't much ventilation coming through the bottom of the barrels, the fires would burn out quickly, and we'd have to restart them. After growing weary of packing a barrel, catching it on fire, watch it go out, get the gas can, pour some gas on the pile, and repeat, I got a smart idea. Seems that I had an empty plastic 20oz Coke bottle, and my trusty Leatherman, and not much common sense. The brilliant idea was to punch three or four holes in the lid of the Coke bottle, fill it half-way with gas, and I would have a perfect solution to my walking problem.
As bad as this sounds, it worked really well, at least for the first couple of times. The next time I used this bottle, I thought that the fire had gone out. Little did I know that it just wasn't breaking the surface. I didn't see smoke, and it looked like it had died, but when I took the bottle and gave it a squirt, I found out otherwise.
I started to watch as the fire ran up the stream of gas coming from the bottle in my hand. I quickly threw it to the side, and noticed that it was on fire. Still not thinking straight, I proceeded to jump on the bottle, trying to put the flames out. Needless to say, jumping on a plastic bottle filled with gas leads to nice 14 ft. flames shooting out in a line, catching grass on fire. This is when I feel this nice rush of heat around my calves, letting me know that the fire is climbing up my legs.
Where was my friend this entire time? On the ground laughing at me, at least until I started to drop and roll. He helped put out the fires that I had started, and luckily, all I suffered was the loss of some leg hair up to the knees, and my eyebrows. The coke bottle idea was not one of my shining moments. Submitted on 05/03/2003
Submitted by:
Anonymous
Reference:
Fall, 1999
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