The Barn Burning

It was a sunny September day.  I was enjoying a lunch with my  father-in-law.  The older kids were in school, and my baby was down for a nap.  It was quiet in the house except for the sound of our conversation.  And yet, every once in a while, I heard a crackling sound.  It was weird.  I wondered if wasps were trying to get through the roof again.  I looked around but saw nothing. 

And then I heard it again.  I asked him what that sound was and he said he wasn’t sure.  We resumed eating.  But the sound became so insistent that we had to look for the source.  We looked out the window and found our answer.

The barn, which he had been painstakingly taking apart and burning in the burn pile, had caught on fire. The flames were crackling,sizzling and hissing. The sky was ablaze.    It was impressive.We ran outside and pondered what to do.  I asked him if he wanted me to get the hose.  “No,”  he said, his natural optimism taking over.  “It should be fine.”  We watched for a few minutes, and then noticed that the flames had reached out and caught the red barn on fire as well. 

At this point, the panic set in.  “Get me the hose!” my father-in-law yelled at me.  I rolled it out as fast as I could.  “Do you want the nozzle?”  I asked.  “No”.  “It should be fine.”  he said distractedly.  He hucked himself over the fence and tried to feed it under the fence.  [Or maybe it was over the fence.] At any rate, the hose got stuck.  It took some doing to get it unstuck.  He hucked himself back and forth over the fence several times to free it.  Each time, something else happened to make it further stuck.  And by this time, the flames were advancing over the roof towards the other side of the red barn.  Finally he freed the hose enough to drag it over to the red barn.

It soon became apparent that the hose wasn’t going to reach – even putting his thumb over the fitting didn’t make that water go any higher.  “GET ME THE NOZZLE!” he yelled.  I handed him the nozzle.  As he attached the nozzle, my father-in-law was praying out loud ‘Oh dear God, please help..God…helpp!!! Please help! Oh Jesus!  Helppp! Oh Oh OH!” Thankfully, the  spray from the nozzle was strong enough to reach the top of the roof.  He sprayed for a while, when suddenly he saw that there was smoke ascending from the other end of the barn.  He decided to climb up on the top of the roof to get the flames under control.  He was wearing hiking boots.  The water on top of barn roof, made everything really slippery.  Now I was the one who was praying “Oh, dear God, please help…God…helppp! Dear Jesus Helpp!”  I feared the worst.  He was going to slide down the roof and into the manure pile - or the wheelbarrow which was parked just before the manure pile. 

I mentally began to compose a letter to his fiancee.  They were due to be married in a few months.  “Dear No-Longer- Future-Mother-In-Law….I just wanted you to know that my father-in-law loved you very much…he was looking forward to getting married....”

Shortly after that, God answered my prayer in the form of the fire department.  As the big truck rolled onto the driveway, and the firemen exited the truck, I decided to leave the scene and let him sort it out with them himself.   The burning ban had not been lifted.  He might have some “’splainin’ to do”. 

I retreated to the house and called my husband at his office.  I started the conversation with “Let me just say, that the fire department has arrived”.  He knew exactly what I meant.  We had another story to add to our book about the misadventures of my father-in-law.