Surprisingly, While Playing With Fire, Someone Almost Dies

Growing up in the woods, it was my job to come home from school and build a fire to warm the house in the winter.



Here's some tips for potential parents: 1) don't leave your kid to his/her own devices after school. Studies show that latchkey kids have troubles later in life; and, 2) Don't leave an unsupervised kid in charge of FIRE.



The only other kid in the neighborhood was Mike. Since we were the only boys in the same grade, it was pretty much a given that we had to be best friends. We were able to get into some pretty good trouble together.

Once we stole a bottle of whiskey from his dad's cabinet and took it, along with our friend Jon, out into the woods one afternoon to drink it. Splotchy snow still lay on the early spring ground. Walking along a familiar path and drinking the hooch, we happened upon a small pond still frozen from the winter. Mike and I, being fairly diminutive, ran out onto the ice with the bottle. Jon, who at 11 years old had been 6' tall and close to 200 pounds, was wisely hesitant to follow us onto the weakened ice. Mike and I walked the the far side of the ice and commenced drinking. As soon as Jon circled his way around, we would walk over to the other side, much to his chagrin.

Jon was afraid of falling through the ice. Not that he could have fallen through and drown. It was really more of a large puddle, perhaps four feet deep at the center. He just had enough sense to know that hypothermia was a pretty significant buzz-kill.

As I stood in the middle of the ice, laughing at the silliness of it all, my right leg gave out from under me. Or, more precisely, the ice gave way under my weight. I sank to my knee in freezing, fetid swamp water.

"Oh shit!" I yelled, as I scrambled to pull my leg out. The pressure put down by my left foot trying to free my right was enough to shatter the ice under it, plunging my left leg in over the knee. The harder I fought, the more ice gave way, and the harder Mike and Jon laughed. I was finally able to fish myself out, soaked to the waist and stinking of filthy pond water.

Suddenly very sober, I realized that I had to get warm. Fast. The two miles to my house was a long, long walk. Soon enough, my wet jeans froze solid. Trying to walk without bending my knees must have been an hilarious site. I wasn't laughing though. I was cold like I'd never felt, and scared of hypothermia.

My drunken friends laughing at me didn't help matters much.

I made it home. I stood by the fireplace, but had to cut my shoes off, as the laces had frozen tight. I peeled the stiff jeans off my cold blue legs and left them to defrost where they fell, and quickly made my way to a warm bath to try to get feeling back into my legs.

I survived, even though I missed Jon getting sick and puking int he middle of the street. (Jon always had a weak stomach, and it never failed to get a hearty laugh from me.)

But that's not the story I wanted to tell.

This one involves fire, not ice.

As stated before, my daily chore was to make fire. Since my task involved making and maintaining fire, I figured that playing in the fire was a perk of the job. One day while hanging in unsupervised, albeit cold bliss, Mike and I discovered a way to project lit matches at a pretty good distance.

How to describe this? Hold a book of matches in your left hand, palm down, with the striker facing down as well. Hold the tip of a match on the tip of your right index finger and place it against the striker. In a brisk motion, run your index finger along the striker, sparking the match while simultaneously thrusting it away from the body. It flies a pretty impressive distance.

So, Mike and I discovered the way to project fiery matches at one another. And oh what a laugh we had doing it. Match fights! One match fight was truly epic in scope, and went on for hours in the basement after we had gotten the fire rolling.

My parents arrived home to find the floor littered with a blanket of burnt matches. They were nonplussed. Imagine working so hard to raise a family and buy a house for them to live in only to come home one day and find that one of your progeny, through sheer stupidity, could have burned it all to the ground. It was about this time that Mike remembered he was late for dinner and beat a hasty retreat.

I should have learned a lesson. Scratch that, I should have had a lesson beaten into me. But it was not to be. I'm sure I got the "Not mad, but disappointed" routine. I'm sure I put on my poutiest pout and my most puppy-eyed eyes. I don't think any grounding or corporal punishment came from it.

Which is probably why this next bit came about.

One afternoon while finding ways to entertain ourselves with fire, Mike and I discovered the cabinet under the sink full of aerosol cans. Furniture polish, glass cleaner, bug spray. It was all flammable, and all ours! Oh joy of joys! The mischief in our eyes must have been ablaze! Quickly we scooped up cans into our arms, hustling off to the wood stove like looters.

Imagine if you will our delight as the first can we tried, spraying into the fire, erupted in orange and yellow flames. We would start our improvised flame-throwers in the fire and draw them out, howling as we waved the raging flames in the air.



Perhaps it was the giddy delight of a budding pyromaniac. Perhaps it was inhaling far too many fumes. Eventually it turned disastrous.

Mike grabbed an extra large can of Raid bug spray. In my memory, the can is dark purple, with yellow letters. He holds it toward the fire, his finger on the trigger, his excitement eclipsing his good judgment, he doesn't realize that he had the nozzle pointed backwards. He presses down with destructive glee, and instead of seeing yellow fire blasting from his hands, he sees nothing, because he has sprayed poisonous bug-killer into his face, his mouth, his eyes.

He dropped the can while shrieking in pain and surprise. "Ahh! Oh! Oh shit! Ooooh!!" He howls, spitting, eyes clenched.



This has somehow gone horribly awry. Imagine that. I dropped the can of furniture polish in my hand and tried to steady Mike. I led him, blind, through the house to the bathroom upstairs, where I pushed his head under the faucet, splashing water into his face, yelling at him to keep his eyes open under the water.

He survived. We still played with the aerosol cans in the fire, but warily. We made damn sure that the nozzle was facing the right way.

But even that isn't the ultimate story I want to tell.

Not long after the bug-spray-in-the-face incident, Mike got shipped off to Montana to live with his mom. I don't remember the circumstances that led up to his moving, just that I was losing an old friend. This was before the Internet, so keeping in touch was a challenge, and eventually became impossible. Diminishing returns, I suppose. We eventually lost touch.

Until 12 years later.

My parents were celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary, and I had borrowed my roommates car to attend the celebration. I made a solemn promise to check the oil diligently and add more as needed, which was almost certain. After leaving the party, I rolled into one of two gas stations in town to fill up with gas. After checking the oil, I walked around the back of the car to pay, only to run into Mike, standing there smoking a cigarette. I stopped short and almost fell backwards against the car.

"I thought that was you," he said, "Wish I'd known you'd be stopping by, I woulda saved that joint."

Through some cosmic misstep, he had landed back east, working the late shift at a gas station, and I had happened to come by with a dry tank. What the fuck was this? It was like seeing a ghost. We talked for a while, each of us with a quizzical look on our faces. For my part, I had thought I'd never see him again. And here he was, smoking a butt.

We exchanged numbers. Since he was in the area, and I wasn't too far away, we made a promise to meet up and reacquaint ourselves. I drove away with my head and hands shaking. "That was fucking surreal," I kept saying to myself. In my amazement, I had forgotten to latch the hood of the car, and had to make an emergency pull off when it threatened to flip up at highway speed.


Weeks pass. We lose touch again. I remembered laying in bed with my girlfriend, telling her about how I had lost my dear friend for a second time. He had died twice.

The very next night, she and I were sitting around trying to figure out what we were to do with our Friday night, when the phone rings:

"Hey it's Mike. I'm gonna be passing through town in about an hour. Wanna hang for a bit?"

This guy really has a flair for the dramatic, I thought. Of course I wanted to hang out. I brought my girlfriend out to meet my old friend. We settled in to a table at a local bar. Eventually we started telling Jill stories about growing up, until Mike dropped this little ditty:

"Yeah, we were messing around in the fire one day, and Brandon sprayed bug spray right in his eyes..."


I leaped to my feet, the chair falling behind me, my finger outstretched, pointing right between his eyes.

"YOU SON OF A BITCH!" I bellowed, as heads swiveled to look our way, "That was you! How long have you been telling that story?!"

Mike had gotten it backward. Maybe because it made for a better story. Who wants to relay a tale of one's own misfortunes? I was so angry at him. Even after convincing him that, yes, it really was him and not me who ate bug spray, I stayed agitated and slightly hostile. I made him promise to make it right to me by correcting himself to anyone who had heard that story. Who knows if he ever did it.

The Crappiest Job

I thought I would do a bit about all the awful jobs I've ever worked. I have at least one anecdote from each that illustrates how ridiculous, terrible, or ridiculously terrible each one was, and perhaps how it crafted me in some small way into the industrious young man I am today. Or maybe it will just be good for a laugh. At me, not with me.

Without further achoo, Part I:

The Line House.

I grew up in Southern Maine, where the youngest that one could legally work was 14. So, as soon as I was eligible, my friend Mike hooked me up with a job washing dishes with him.

A lot of young men in this country get their start in the working world this way. It doesn't take a whole lot of brain-power to do. It is, however, one of the crappiest jobs on the planet. The smell is the worst part. A pungent blend of bleach, industrial soap, grease, and old food, it really sticks with you. On rare occasions I will walk into a restaurant and catch a tiny whiff of that scent and be transported back to the late 1980's, scrubbing away in that tiny little back room.

The Line House was situated on the town line (get it?) between Kittery and York, Maine. It served your standard diner fare, blended with a few nods to the surrounding fishing industry. Think fish and chips and clam chowder, but nothing more elaborate than that. Burgers and fries, brunch on the weekends, that sort of thing. The burgers were pretty good, however, and it was here that I tasted Cape Cod potato Chips for the first time. One "perk" of the job was unlimited fountain sodas, which, as a teenager, is really all you need in life.

As I said, I worked in a small room with a low-ceiling in the back designated for dishwashing. It couldn't have been more than 12 x 12 feet, with most of the space taken up by a chest-type freezer, two industrial stainless steel sinks, a drying rack, and shelf space on either side: one side for clean dishes, the other side for dirty.

Dave was the line cook, a diminutive guy with tight, curly red hair, who thought nothing of tending the grill with a Marlboro hanging out of the corner of his mouth as he worked the spatula and barked at the waitresses as items were 86'd. He would torment the dishwashers in a good-natured way, and smoke a joint on the back steps with the waitresses after the place had closed for the night. He took to calling me Metal Head, as I had a habit of wearing Megadeth T-shirts and wearing my hair in the mullet style. I'd walk into my shift and be greeted with "METALHEAD!!!" Putting on a white apron, I'd smile, flash The Goat, and walk into the steam-filled abyss of the crappiest job ever.

Washing dishes sucks. It sucks. As a dishwasher, you are wet from your chest to your thighs all the time. Your hands will turn into pink prunes and smell of garlic and bleach for days. They will also blister, from the combination of the industrial chemicals and the searing heat of the washing process. That apron I mentioned does nothing to protect you, either from the water or the food and grease that ends up sticking to you like a ghost. But, as a fourteen year-old kid, I didn't have a lot of career options.

One Saturday in particular, the restaurant was slammed. Packed to the gills. Crammed into a small, greasy, hot and dangerous place, people tend to get a little cranky. Dave was screaming at the waitresses, and I was scrubbing like mad to keep up. Woe be unto the lowly dishwasher if the cook runs out of frying pans. Steve was the owner/boss, and he came into the back, needing more wine glasses. I looked around, and could only see three in the dish room. I washed those quickly and gave them to him. Shortly after, he came back again, and asked a little more pointedly, for more wine glasses. "I don't have any. Every glass in here is out front," I told him, getting a little testy as well.

A few minutes later, he came to me and said, "this is what I need you to do."

The Line House sat on a plot of land owned by Steve's sister, who had a house down a dirt road about 200 yards behind the restaurant. I was to jog down the road, open the garage door, go through the laundry room, and into the kitchen, where a case of new wine glasses was stowed in a cabinet next to the sink. Being the loyal foot soldier that I am, I clicked my heels, saluted, and jogged down that road.

As I opened the garage door, I could hear the telephone ringing. On the other end of that line was Steve, trying to call to warn me about the large German Shepherd that his sister owns.



I walked into the laundry room and opened the door to the kitchen, where I was greeted by the biggest fucking dog I had ever seen. His head was lowered, and as soon as he smelled the grease on me, assumed I was either an intruder or lunch. Or both. He lunged forward and bit me right in the middle of my chest. I'm sure I screamed like a girl, but I know I ran faster than I ever have out of there, the dog biting me twice on my ass as I fled. The t-shirt I was wearing, I later discovered, had a perfectly symmetrical bite mark taken out of the bottom of it.




Everyone from the back of the restaurant had come out onto the back steps to see what was going to happen. Dave later approached me, "Dude! Metalhead! That was fucking inTENse!" My hands couldn't stop shaking for hours after that. When I told my folks about it, my dad was pissed. But I defended the place, saying that Steve was a good guy, it was an accident, they were good enough to give me a job, etc. I know now that I should have sued the hell out of that guy. But sometimes I'm too nice for my own good.

I'm Not From Here

This weekend Black-Eyed Susan and I rented a car and named him Bjorn. We pointed the prow of that ivory beauty north and spent the weekend seasoned by salt air, playing games, and eating all the foods we both know we ought not.

We left the city at about 2 o'clock on friday and landed shortly after 3 at Perkin's Cove in Ogunquit, Maine, to take a stroll along one of my favorite places, the Marginal Way. For years growing up around here I used to enjoy walking along this path, occasionally venturing out among the tidepools on the craggy rocks, poking around among starfish, anenomes, snails and crabs as they waited for the tide to come back in and rescue them from their temporary prisons. This day we were not so fortunate, as it seems the extent of the wildlife available was numerous snails and small, bluish little blobs that, despite their active movements, I was unable to identify.

From there we took Bjorn to York Beach, a place where I have spent many a summer and many countless brain cells. For B.E. Susan's benefit, who hadn't been around these parts since she was just a wee pup, I swallowed my local pride and consented to do some very touristy things, but which I enjoyed nevertheless. First stop was the York Beach institution the Fun-O-Rama, where we rolled some skee-ball and played a few rounds of air-hockey. Ask B.E. Susan who it is that rules at air-hockey. Hint: Me.



I was a bit disappointed by my lack of skee-ball finesse. The last time I came here was a few years ago. I had some time to kill and decided to throw a few wooden balls to pass the time. I got bored pretty quickly at the straight forward rolling of the balls, which usually only resulted in 10 points, so I got creative with my rolling and tried putting a spin on the ball. Then I tried banking them off the side rails, and what do you know about that, 50, 50, 50, 50. I had cracked the skee-ball code! I kept rolling, and the points kept scoring. The flashing light on this machine was spinning so fast and for so long, people were dropping left and right, induced into epileptic seizures by the pulsating glow. I heard a young man behind me whisper to his friend: "check this guy out, he's awesome!". Prize tickets were rolling out so fast that smoke actually began billowing from beneath the quarter slot. For a few salty moments, there amidst the lights and the din, I was a god among men.

But not this time... I fairly sucked at skee-ball, which meant that not only did B.E. not believe the above story, but now she had proof that I was full of shit. Alas.



Broken and defeated by my humiliating attempts at a game which excites 9 year-olds, we then visited a few tacky souvenir shops, where B.E. bought a coffee mug for her dad, an avid coffee enthusiast. I picked up a miniature keychain license plate with my roommates name on it, as a small thank-you for watching my cat Ocho while I was away. And then we were off to my folks' place, where we supped upon lasagna and listened, oh-so-patiently, to my Dad's long-winded gripes about our next-door neighbor, with whom a dispute has recently arisen regarding the property lines. Yawn.

We later went out to visit with some friends of mine, but it was not an easy task. Susan, born and raised in Brooklyn, is used to the occasional streetlight. They ain't got none o them fancy-shmancy streetlights in Maine. Them's for city-folk and queers. (Whoa, sorry about that! A couple hours back Down East, and I pick the accent up pretty easily. Just ask me how to say "ayuh" and you'll understand). Regardless, Susan was a little stressed out about the lack of light on dark, twisty, narrow roads. Having cut my driving teeth along them, I hadn't seen a problem with it, but that just shows how unconcerned for others I am. After numerous detours, several miles spent driving in circles, and white-knuckle angst from B.E., we arrived at the Dover Brickhouse, a classy little joint in downtown Dover, New Hampshire.

It was Monique's birthday, and it was great to see her and her husband Thor. Matty was working the door, and later Kate The Great showed up fresh from another birthday shindig with her Dojo Bros. Gazpacho, an 80's cover band, was playing upstairs, something we didn't much care for. Until, that is, we heard strains of Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" coming through the ceiling. We hustled upstairs and had quite a hoot watching these guys. They did a pretty good job of the song, and at this point had been playing for hours, an impressive feat in and of itself. Susan and I were less impressed, however, by their cover of Prince's "Let's Go Crazy". You really can't half-ass that one. You gotta sell it, and it seems Gazpacho was phoning it in. In the end, a good time had by all.

DAY TWO

After a night "sleeping" on an "air mattress," I was eager to get on the road and continue our adventure. We started out heading to Rick's All Season, another York institution. This place caters to all clientelle. The staff wears t-shirts that say "Bikers Welcome" on the back. But they also welcome tourists, locals, fishermen (that's why they open at 5am), high school truants (totally not speaking from experience here), hung-over partiers (ditto), those still coming down (double ditto), and anyone else looking for a decent no frills breakfast. The kid manning the register could not have been older than 15, and he doubled, nay, tripled duty as host, busser, and server. The service took a while, but it wasn't an impatient wait. BE Susan ordered decaff with milk, and got the unleaded, but without cow juice. Once our waitress realized what was wrong she apologized, saying "I have no excuse". I found this incredibly endearing, and it earned her and the crew at least an extra 10% tip. As far as the food, I had the "Fisherman's Special" and got all the goodies that breakfast should entail, for a good price, and coffee refills are gratis. I highly recommend this one.

Once we put me as an eligible driver on Bjorn's list, I spent a good hour and a half adjusting all his fancy gadgets just how I liked them, and we were on our way north to our destination of Portland, Maine.

Once we were settled in our yet-to-be-named motel, Susan and I headed to Portland's Old Port, where we were to catch the Ferry to Peaks Island. We found some municipal parking, secured all that we thought we wouldn't need, packed all we thought we would, and headed toward the Casco Bay Lines terminal to purchase tickets. At one point, looking down an alley, we spotted a very drunk, possibly homeless man hugging another human dressed in a full sized, furry lobster costume. It was then that we both realized we had forgotten our cameras at the car.

Fast forward to the ferry ride, each with our cameras, but without our lobster/homeless photos. We connect with a bunch of our (meaning: BE Susan's) peeps. We're all here for not a wedding, but a post-elopement celebration. I've never been to Peaks Island, so I'm grateful for the opportunity. The shindig is taking place at the Fifth Maine Regiment Memorial Building 1888, what I later learn is a summertime retreat for troops during the civil war. It's a beautiful building right on the water.



Inside is a "museum" dedicated to the men who had valiantly served the Union during the Civil War, with a fascinating array of souvenirs from the war and ephemera from the era. It was great, as I like to learn about these things. I took ample photos, including this one:



I took a lot more photos, and admittedly got a little crazy with it. Housed in this former R+R locale were portraits of heroes of the Civil War, one of which was named Horatio Bumpus. It was only later, when I used the men's room located at the front of the building that I saw the sign: "Absolutely No Photography Or Videotaping Without Express Written Consent..."

Whoops. I'm really sorry, American Heroes. You should post a sign at the back as well telling us not to pop shots. So instead of heroic military legends, here are some pics I took on the grounds of flowers: