Wildfires and Secrets Grandkids Keep

We burned an eighty-acre hayfield that day. Scorched it, in fact.

In the fall of 1989, my grandmother and Ely finished construction on their new house. Across the highway from the old one. They sold the house and that tract of land, a small tract directly across the highway, and kept about a 7-acre piece adjacent to that. And built their dream home.

Ely's health was starting to go, though the massive cancer diagnosis was still a few weeks to come. But he was in the hospital for some issue, I just don't remember what.

You don't put your trash out at the corner in the country. You burn it. Foodstuffs, paper goods, occasionally an accidentally-placed lysol can which makes a rather loud noise upon explosion. But you burn your trash. Or at least we always did. The trash "man" as it was, was a family who drove an old, make-shift trash truck. You paid them 100.00 annually, and they came clumbering down the highway on Mondays to pick up what you didn't burn. Periodically you loaded the trash barrel on a trailer and dragged it out into a corner of the field where you dumped the ashes and started all over again. Occasionally, repeated heating would render your trash barrel useless, and you'd pay the trash family an extra 10.00 to haul it off.

On this occasion, the trash barrel was running full force, and we were cleaning out the last bits of trash and leftovers from the move into the new house. The wind was blowing farily steadily, and it was a clear, warm Sunday afternoon. My brother (in a two-foot cast from an ankle surgery) and I were going from old house to new house on the four-wheeler, basically doing anything we could to not be involved in cleaning or heavy lifting. We were on our way back to the old house, passing the mimosa tree known for its wayward limbs, and we rounded the corner in the driveway to see a patch of lawn, oh, about the size of a tennis court, completely ablaze. We yelled. John grabbed his cructches off the back of the 4-wheeler, and we took off towards the house. Mimi came running. As did Dad.

The first order of business was to keep the flames away from the garage and one of the outbuildings. Water-soaked towels beating against the ground commenced. Frantic hollering to, "Call Shack, Call Shack!!!" was heard. Shack was every man in the country. Firefighter, hay-baler, rabid dog-shooter. I ran in the house to call Shack, but guess what...no phones. They didn't live in that house anymore!

So I jumped on the four-wheeler and sped off to the new house. I remember finding a phone book and calling his house, and his wife telling me that he wasn't home. I didn't explain who I was or what I, at ten years of age wanted with her husband. I just slammed the phone down, jumped back on the four-wheeler, and headed back to the other house. By the time I returned, Mimi and Dad had successfully snuffed out the flames lapping at the perimeter of the buildings, and completely re-directed the blaze out to pasture. All eighty-acres of pasture.

At some point that afternoon, every migrant farm worker (we had let ours go after selling the land) within five miles arrived and stomped out that blasted fire. Praise be to God, they directed it also past a massive hay barn - full of hay - where probably a quarter of a million dollars worth of tractors were parked, so none of that was damaged.

I remember that afternoon. I remember when the blaze was put out. I remember my fairly-new dexter loafers being rendered henceforth unwearable from soot and ash. I remember dad ruining his florshiems. Always in slacks and forsheims. I remember John frantically stomping fire with one good foot with cructches under both arms.

And most of all, I remember Mimi saying, seriously and distinctly, with a threat of perpetual doom should you ever forget it...to never, never tell Ely. As far as SHE knew, Ely never got (smoke-filled) wind of it. But I think he knew. He had to. Everyone for miles around knew. He wasn't able to drive for period following this most recent hospital stay, and she refused to approach the house from the west for a few weeks until the fields greened-up a bit, but the two of them never spoke of the event.

I see Ely when I'm back at the farm. He died in 1990 but I see him on his tractors. I see the dogs that are no longer living, following closely behind him as he turned irrigation systems on and off. But no matter where I go, the smell of grass and leaves burning brings back that fateful Sunday in east Texas, when a single match brought eighty acres of hayfield to its knees.