Californication

~Smurf Dawg

This is my good friend Joe "Smurph Dawg" Murphy. He's the President and CEO of Select Sales and Marketing. He's been in the consumer products business for over 30 years. This picture was taken shortly before the fire got out of control.

Considering Smurph is a long time corporate executive and works in an industry where attention to detail can be the difference between success and failure, you might have thought he would've noticed the grass around his brush pile hadn't seen much water in quite some time, before he set it on fire. Once he did, the pile of "extensively dry sticks" took off like a shot, which interestingly didn't stop him from gladly posing for this iPicture, shovel in hand. For my part, once the fire was clearly out of control (which ironically was mere seconds after I took the iPhoto), I tried to act like it was no big deal/regular stuff as I worked frantically in an effort to help my friend contain what could now be officially referred to as a "brush fire". In short, order our situation looked like it was only a matter of time before it officially became a forest fire-like the one's you see nightly on Southern California's Eye Witness News.

As I beat and stomped and whacked at the flames I had visions of making our "Live, Local, Late-Breaking" 6 o'clock news with the lead in, "Two local men set Hobbs State Park on fire and burn it TO THE GROUND". The thought of being known far and wide as one half of "Two Local Men", is something I didn't want any part of. Any story where you and another guy are referred to as "Two Local Men" rarely if ever ends well and more times than not involves the police or some kind of tribunal, especially if you live in Arkansas. I was now clearly sweating the situation.

As it turned out, we must have been living right as we eventually got the fire put out before any of the surrounding homes were engulfed in flames. One humorous memory (it was funny later that day) occurred when I looked up and didn't see Smurph anywhere around. After several minutes went by of "No Joe anywhere in site", I saw him come stumbling up from nearby Beaver Lake with a frantic look on his face, dragging a 48 qt ice-chest that after much tripping and stumbling now contained maybe 2 or 3 quarts of water at best. When he threw the contents of the cooler on the fire there wasn't enough water in it to make even a little bit of an audible hiss. I looked at Joe like, "Serioiusly"; then we both went back to stomping and shoveling dirt. Later, when I asked him about the cooler caper, he told me it sounded like a great idea at the time.

The moral of the story: keep an eye on California....and do the opposite of what they do.