Setting the field on fire

We burned trash in a 55-gallon drum about 40 feet north of the shed and on the edge of the three-acre garden plot.

There was no EPA then to tell you what to do with your trash, nor did the county government set up rules for getting rid of the detritus accumulated by every household. People then would have pitched a fit and dis-elected any county commissioner who said “You can’t burn trash.” The nearest towns did not have garbage collection, so even town people burned trash.

Back then, too, grocers and butchers didn’t wrap food and meats in plastic. Everything was in paper wrapping or paper boxes. When you had, as my mother and father did, five kids to feed and clothe, trash built up. There were things we grew, but most of what we ate and all of what we wore came from stores.

Daddy set up the 55-gallon drum by punching holes in the bottom sides and by making a screen cover. The holes allowed ventilation, and the screen kept burning paper inside the barrel.

We burned just about everything – newspaper, food containers, butcher paper, cans, bottles, jars. The dogs ate leftover food and bones.

Burning trash was an easy job. The trash was always in paper sacks. There were no plastic bags. Burning trash was my job. Every other day I took the trash sack from the kitchen to the barrel, removed the screen, put in the sack and then struck a kitchen match or two and got the sack going. Then I put the screen over the barrel and usually waited until everything that could burn, did.

One year Momma and Daddy did not plant the three acres north of the house. That three-acre plot had grown a lot of food the preceding years – corn, snap beans, green beans, purple hull peas, watermelons, cantaloupe, potatoes. I don’t remember why there wasn’t a garden. Maybe the tractor was broken.

For whatever reason, there wasn’t a garden. But there was prairie grass, tall and summer-dry.

One day, somehow, burning pieces of paper got past the screen and landed on the tall grass. Within seconds, the grass was on fire, and the fire threatened to spread across the three acres and past the barbed wire fence to the north, into more prairie grass and then to the neighbor’s house.

I was dry-mouth scared. Burning trash was my responsibility, and so was keeping the fire under control. Something had happened, and it was my fault.

I didn’t yell for help. Instead, I ran to the shed and got a shovel and went back to the fire and dug dirt and threw dirt onto the burning grass and if I could get it out … What? Nobody would know? Well, of course Momma and Daddy would know. It’s not like I could hide a burned-out area.

But I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. I was trying to put out the fire.

I dug dirt and threw dirt and dug and threw …

And then Momma and Carolyn came running, carrying the galvanized wash tub half filled with water they had drawn from the well, and Frances, Bill and Patty running too. Momma and Carolyn had two buckets, and between their throwing water and my throwing dirt, we got the fire put out.

We were all tired and sweating. Momma asked, “What happened?” I told her some burning paper got loose. She said, “Well, why didn’t you yell for help?”

I gave a teenager’s answer for almost every question: “I don’t know.”

I couldn’t very well admit it was my fault and that if I took care of the problem by myself … If I had taken care of the fire, I could have said, “The grass caught on fire, but I put it out.” That’s all I wanted, to get the fire put out and then I could admit to a mistake and tell of a solution.