Luke’s Corner

History Day has a way of lingering above your mind, taunting you with the feeling that it is never done. Kind of like a heavy schedule at school, when there is always something springing at you from ahead that needs to be done. Never, do you get to feel that important element that our founding fathers called, ‘Freedom’ until the third week of June.

On Monday, with our third person, Parker, taking a much deserved break in tropical Hawaii, I took a little trip over to my friend Niki’s house so that we can prepare our History Day project for the State contest coming up in a few weeks. However, little did it occur to me before that our Honors’ English teacher, Mrs. Reichner, would have drained us of life and will with her hellish Revolutionary Project. The first twenty hours of my stay at Niki’s house was spent working on that essay, along with breaks that included Wii play and watching Indiana Jones, with much to be obliged.

Working at Niki’s computer, the two of us just conversing about things varying from girls to trekking the world after graduation, I noticed Niki’s dad beginning to dispose of yard waste by the means of a small fire. The only problem that I saw with that was that it was in the corner of a vast field of light, golden, hay-like grass about two and a half feet high. No sooner did I say “Hey, Niki, do you think that he should be burning that stuff there?” did it suddenly triple in size, quickly gaining ground.

I didn’t know if he was doing that purposely, or if the fire had suddenly escaped all control. But Niki’s mom frantically racing towards the house solved that question for me. Before, she had come back to the house, Niki and I had already found our shoes on our feet and out in the yard with buckets from the garage.

The fire was growing at a tremendous rate and mowing down the dead grass towards a large, dry shrub. Niki only took one or two buckets of water to the prospering blaze before he began attacking the outer most flag with a damp towel. Meanwhile, I continued to take bucket after bucket to hell and back before I began to use my expert foot-stomping techniques and smothering the flames close to the bush before they could overwhelm it, if this had happened, stopping it would have only become worse.

With great haste, Niki’s dad and I tore at a mess of knotted hose in hopes of untangling the mass of rubber and to bring it over to the spreading flame. I never thought that I could untangle something so fast…(probably from lots of practice of undoing infinite messes of AC cords and adapter cables). Finally, the hose was undone and I raced to the fire only to find that the water was struggling to come forward. But by then, it didn’t matter. Nicki, beating the pleading flames like it was a disobedient child, had it under control, the fire was receding back to the pile of dry foliage that was originally supposed to be burned, leaving behind a mass area of about twenty by twenty feet of charcoal black field.  

The excitement had exhausted everyone, but did not stop Niki from grabbing his camera afterwards and taking photographic proof of the catastrophe that nearly desecrated our humble town…

I also want to add that Niki is a natural born firefighter with an interestingly massive aggression against the blaze even after it was nearly dead (The disobedient child). Good Work Niki, Smokey would be proud!