The very same summer of 1991, that my husband bought me my Craftsman lawn tractor; he also made me another present. All summer long while I so diligently kept the lawn so beautifully mowed, he'd had the thankless job of trimming the grass that grew so abundantly along our five rock walls. He'd eye the new growth all week long, knowing that come Saturday, there was another trimming job waiting for him because for some obscure reason, I'd been unable to learn how to use that noisy, dangerous machine. I'd become proficient in the use of the rototiller, the lawn sprayer, the lawn edger and all the other machines one needs to keep their property in pristine condition but me and the weed eater didn't like each other one dite!
Always anxious to master any and all household and lawn equipment, I just couldn't make heads nor tails of that dreadful machine. I'd tried endless times to make it work and do a really fine job of edging and trimming around the multitude of rocks and such to no avail. So, I'd finally conceded the point and relinquished that thankless job to my husband.
Then, one evening as he was watching an old World War Two movie on television, he suddenly let out a loud yell and scared me nearly to death! Hurrying into the living room, I asked him what was the matter. He turned down the sound and gestured for me to look at the grainy scene now being played out on the television screen in front of us. I squinted my eyes and watched as a group of soldiers marched over to a cave on some Godforsaken island somewhere in the South Pacific and thrust a long device into the mouth of the cave. The next thing I saw was a long jet of flame as they turned it on and set fire to whatever was hiding in the cave.
I turned to him aghast at the horrible carnage playing out before my eyes and asked him what he wanted me to see. Upon hearing my question, he gave me a look like I was totally stupid and again he had that light in his eyes. I got an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach as I watched the soldiers using the flame thrower and when they tell you to trust your instincts, do it! I could see that he was planning another trip to Sears and only God knew what in the friggin hell he was going to make next.
Bright and early the next morning, true to my inner warnings, he headed out the door for Sears and Aubuchon's Hardware in the search for God knows what. He was gone about two hours before I again heard his car come up the drive and it wasn't too long before I could hear the clanking of metal hitting metal and just as I decided to go downstairs to see was taking place in my normally quiet basement, he came flying up the stairs and into the kitchen.
The flame of the zealot was in his eyes and he was bubbling over with happiness. He spied me skulking around the side of the refrigerator and he rushed over to where I was trying to hide, grabbed me by the hand and drug me down the cellar stairs to see his latest "creation."
There in the middle of my once clean cellar was a Sears moving dolly and on the bottom rung, he had welded a wide metal platform. On the platform, he'd placed a propane tank and this was attached to the dolly with a bungie cord. And attached to the propane tank's valve was a long, rubber hose with a nozzle on the end. Seeing that nozzle, a bell went off in the far reaches of my brain.
I turned to look at my husband as he danced around me, all the while gesturing and explainin how this and that was supposed to work. "Really honey!" He exclaimed. "Won't all the neighbors be jealous when they see you rollin your flame thrower along the rock walls and burnin all that crab grass to hell and gone!" Seein the look on my face when I heard the use of the term "flame thrower" he stopped dancing and looked at me. But his enthusiasm overtook him once again and he went on. "I mean, think about it!" He chortled. "No more using that friggin weed eater that doesn't work half tha time! Every couple of weeks or so, when the new grass starts to grown back, you can wheel this puppy outside and voila! No more weeds, no more grass and no more friggin plastic string breakin every time you try to use it!"
Visions of myself being blown sky high raced through my addled brain as a hot flash hit and I tried to comprehend all that he had just said. I looked at him and shook my head "no!" He stopped his prancing and his mouth fell open. "What's wrong with you? Don't you recognize genius when you see it?" 'Honey," he pleaded; "This is the answer to all our problems. Just you wait en see. I'm goin to fire this puppy up and you come and watch me. All the horrible trim work will be done in a matter of minutes instead of hours!"
He grabbed the dolly handles, expertly turned the bulky contraption around and headed out the garage door and down the drive with the "flame thrower" clanking along behind him. Upon reaching the nearest rock wall, he stopped, turned to me and said, "Honey, all you have to do is turn the valve all the way to the right, light your match and stick it in the end of the nozzle. It couldn't be simpler!" As he was instructin me about what to do, he turned the valve all the way to the right, lit a match and stuck it in the front of the hose. The gas rushed out just like he said it would and when it met the match's tiny flame, a huge flame roared out of the open nozzle. We did indeed have ourselves a "flame thrower."
Leo grabbed the handle of the dolly and proceeded to pull it along the ground behind him as he ever so carefully burned all the offending grass and weeds that had grown along the rock wall that separated our property from our neighbors. Consumed by excitement that his idea actually worked, he didn't wait till all the fires he'd so happily set had burned out either.
He rushed along the rock wall like a fire bug of the highest order, holding the burning nozzle close to the ground and away he went, leaving me to follow along behind him in a cloud of smoke and propane fumes, trying to stamp out every burning ember and blade of burning grass. I must have looked the royal fool to our neighbors as I hurried along behind my firebug husband, stamping, jumping and swearing as I scuffed my non-flame resistant slippers over the singed grass and weeds. I'd never had so much hot aerobic exercise in my entire life!
When I'd finally made it around our entire two acres and all the fires were out, exhausted, sweaty and smellin like a singed pig, I collapsed on to the top of the rock wall and sat there in a dumbfounded stupor. "If I ever make it back to tha friggin house, I'm going to kill him!" I said to myself as I wiped the soot off my burning face.
Hearing a loud laugh, I looked past the row of Lilac bushes and saw that Leo was standin next to the telephone pole at the end of our driveway and he was explainin to one of our neighbors jist how his contraption, the "flame thrower cum weed burner" worked. As the southerly wind shifted in my direction, I heard him brag, "Yes sir, my little wife is the only woman around Brighton Hill that has a "flame thrower" for her own personal use!" As I digested that statement, I watched in horror as he turned the valve on the propane tank to the right, lit it and pointed the foot long arc of flame towards the offending grass that ringed the long-standing dried out telephone pole.
Our neighbor, seein what my husband had in mind, backed up across the road to the safety of his own property and waited for the inevitable to take place. The age-old lesson about what happens when old, dried out wood meets red, hot flames, well, you've got it! The ancient telephone pole burst into flames and it was then that Leo had an inkling of what he'd done. He danced, he pranced, he swatted, and he batted and by sheer accident and God's good grace, he finally got the fire under control and out.
Wiping the sweat out of his eyes, he turned to talk to our neighbor but the neighbor had backed up until he was clear across to the far side of his property. Leo gave him a feeble wave with a fire-singed hand, wiped the beads of sweat off his blackened face, turned his buggy around and headed slowly up the drive for the shed at the back of our property. He'd had enough weed burnin to last him for a good long while or for another week at least.
From that day on, my husband could be found most anytime of the day, sitting on the swing on our shady front porch, sippin a nice cool drink or baskin in our hot tub on the back deck at peace with himself and tha world, knowin in his heart that there wasn't any situation that he couldn't handle.
Copyright (1st Rights) retained by the author, Martha Stevens-David 2003. She can be reached at lmdmsd@megalink.net.
