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M and I took off for the lake after lunch today, to hang a door on the
screened shelter and do a few other chores at our lot. We finished up and
headed home around 3:30, and had gone about a mile down the farm-to-market
road when we rounded a curve and beheld a column of smoke against the blue
sky. The source came quickly into view. An old pickup truck was burning
beside the roadway. As I slowed down and we took in the scene, we saw an
older man sitting with his head in his hands up against the trees that line
the road, about 50 feet behind the conflagration.
I pulled the car over and M yelled out the window asking if anyone had gone for help. The man seemed disoriented, but he got up and came over to the window to talk. M asked again if help was on the way, and he said we should go tell the people at the Rocket Club, back up the road, that his truck was on fire. A tire on the front exploded from the heat as he went back over to sit down. We did a quick U-turn in the highway and called 911 on the cell phone. The operator had already heard the news. We drove a couple of miles back to a honky-tonk where a dozen pickup trucks were parked outside, their owners inside drinking beer and watching football on a Sunday afternoon. M went inside and looked for someone to talk to. She took her glasses off to see better in the sudden darkness, then noticed they were her clear glasses, so that didn't help. As her eyes slowly adjusted, she noticed that the bartender was the lone woman, so she related the story to her. The bartender asked, "Was it a blue truck?" M said, "Well, it may have been blue at one time." The bartender looked at a man sitting nearby and said, "That must be Horace." Nobody seemed to be moving very fast, so M came out of the Rocket Club, and we drove back to the scene to see if anyone had shown up. There was a Suburban stopped where we had stopped earlier, with Horace talking once again to the driver. The truck was now completely engulfed in flames, and we weren't too keen on being nearby. Since Horace was safe, and we couldn't do anything to put out the fire, we drove on around the inferno toward home. It crossed our minds that some of the guys who respond for the local volunteer fire department may have been there at the Rocket Club, but we didn't hang around to find out. We're hoping we never have a bad day like Horace at our little ramshackle place there in the swamp.
10/20/02 |
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Last Update 4/3/04 |