Doug the Fireman

Greg, Doug, Chuck & Tony

The plan was to make stair railings for the cabin out of cedar harvested off our property. For quite some time I'd been gathering limbs off standing live and lying dead cedar trees and storing them in a pile stacked neatly beside the barn on a wood crib I'd made out of old 2x4's. I had acquired nearly enough and was planning on starting the project soon. 

My plans, however, changed one December evening a few years ago. I'd gone into the cabin to check on some potatoes I had frying on the gas stove (the range as my grandparents might have said) and to make sure the beer was staying cold. I'd left Greg (who left before the below picture was taken) Doug, Tony and Chuck by the campfire, telling lies about one thing or the other--either something they had allegedly done or were going to do. When I came out, the first thing I noticed was the fire was roaring nicely--much better than when I'd last seen it. The second thing I noticed was the nicely stacked cedar I'd been saving for the last year or so was gone. At first I thought maybe the guys had very thoughtfully moved my wood-stash to a safer location, away from the fire. When I looked back at the fire, however, I noticed something strangely familiar about the wood it contained: it looked a lot like cedar. In fact, it looked exactly like the cedar I'd been saving. I asked the guys where they got the wood for the fire and Doug replied, "I got it from the wood you had stacked up over there", pointing to where the cedar had been. I responded with something like, "Are you serious?". Turns out he was. 

It took me a very short time to get over it. He certainly hadn't burned up my awesome cache of perhaps one of a kind completely air-dried cedar "on purpose". Besides, it wasn't like we were going to run out of cedar trees on our Southwest, Missouri property any time soon. We actually ended up getting a pretty good laugh out of it. Before it burned down too much, I took a picture of Doug kneeling beside to the fire he'd so proudly built up. It was so hot, he couldn't get very close without being in danger of catching his hair on fire. Funny how things sometimes turn out!

Author, Doug, Tony & Chuck

Doug the Fireman!