A bit off topic. But, speaking of bonfires….
Back when I was in Jr High, we lived in a neighborhood still undergoing development.
On a waterfront cul de sac was a cluster of three empty lots.
In the weeks after Christmas, we scoured the neighborhood for discarded Christmas trees and piled them up on the center of this lot.
With both adult supervision and a boost from a gallon or two of gasoline we set the pile on fire. No one at the time realized how intensely dead Christmas trees would burn!
People 300 yards away and on the other side of the canal felt the heat. It quickly drew a sizable response from the fire department.
Became something of a local legend.
You'd think I'd learned my lesson. 15 years later, my wife and I started burning small pieces of our first Christmas tree in the fireplace. It certainly got hot.
But we didn't realize that it had turned our chimney into an enormous blow torch and was raining burning embers down on the neighborhood.
At least not until the neighbors started pounding on the front door! Lucky we didn't burn ours or a neighbor house down.
