Helping Smokey The Bear

Put a pair a pants and a jacket on a bear, give him a hat and shovel and we were supposed to believe that he can stop all forest fires. Come on now, I know I am only 8 years old but I don’t really believe this. Besides, he’s a bear for heaven sakes, he is not going to keep the clothes clean, the hat on, and has no idea how to use a shovel. But Michael did, he knew that Smoky the Bear made the woods safe for everyone and that he was always watching out for fires no matter what.

Michael was my brother, age nine, smart, knew everything, was never wrong and the leader of all our expeditions. Sunday morning started out as every Sunday did, we dressed up in uncomfortable itchy clothes that always felt funny, put on tight squeaky shoes and went off to the 9 o’clock mass at church. There we would sit, repeat the things we needed to repeat, look around for what few kids we knew from school as most of the kids went to another church and tried to sit still. Church lasted forever, and it wasn’t even much fun. Our family was big enough so we used up the whole pew and couldn’t even sit with someone different so when it came time to give the greetings to each other we had to shake hands with just each other, Yuk!!

After church there was always coffee and doughnuts down stairs. Mom and Dad always went down and talked, talked, talked with people while we had to stand around and be good. Nothing for kids to drink, and no doughnuts for us, oh no, it would ruin our lunch, or we had just had a big breakfast before we left, or some such nonsense to keep from trying something we never had at home.

Then we were headed home, quickly change our clothes and see what kind of fun we could get into for the day. Mom was starting to fix lunch; she must have liked her church clothes because she never changed right off when she came home. We couldn’t change fast enough but here she was getting lunch in her fancy dress and high heel shoes. It would be awhile before lunch was ready so Michael suggested we get the things together to take up to the top of the hill for a campfire after lunch. He had been saving marshmallows from other times so we would have something to roast over the fire. This was his big day as he was going to be doing this fire by himself without our Dad helping him.

In back of the house was a very steep hill. At the top was a crater where someone had started to dig a sandpit out and decided that the sand wasn’t good enough to use and just left things that way. It was as if someone had taken the peak off the top of the hill and that was where were going to camp out. There were tuffs of grass where some of the grass had grown back and there were still a couple of pine trees surrounding the edge. It wasn’t a very big area, just right for us.

Up the steep hill we climb, my brother, myself, and my two sisters, with papers to start the fire, some scrap wood, a bag of half dried marshmallows, guess Michael had not closed the bag tight again, and what looked like some water in a small jar to put the fire out with afterwards. We got to the top of the hill, dumped our supplies and decided we had time to put the fire together before Mom would call us down for lunch. It would be awhile, she was reading the paper first.

We all sat down around the little area we had picked next to the pine tree and put the paper down first. Then Michael put down the small pieces of scrap wood on top of that so the wind would not blow it. He took out a book of matches from his pocket and lit the paper. A small flame started and then went out. He tried again, the same thing happened. Discouraged, he put some pine needles on top of the paper and tried again. The fire flickered, waved a little and then went out once more.

Michael had more patience than the rest of us; he just tried until he had only three matches left. Finally he said he needed to get serious as we were running out of time and he took out that small jar of water. It was then I learned it was lighter fluid he had taken from the cellar and he dumped it on the pile. He lit a match and threw it down and whoosh!!! It lit, and burned not only the pile we had gathered together but the grass around it and started to spread. Feverishly we beat at it with our feet, trying to stamp out the flames. There may have been four of us, but the flames moved faster than our feet did. We knew if the fire got over the ridge it would not only burn down our house but the neighbors down the road. And if the flames continued to spread backwards it would burn down the apple orchard that belonged to someone else. We could play in the orchard, we could pick and eat the apples, but something told me we couldn’t destroy it. Our legs tired, the fire moving faster but we were right behind it just a-stamping away. All of a sudden it got to the pine tree and went flying right up the trunk and the whole tree burst into flames. That was all it took. Four pair of legs ran down that hill just as fast as they could shouting for Mom at the top of their lungs.

Mom came flying out of the house still in her Sunday finery. Up the hill she ran, her high heels sinking into the dirt as she tried to climb the hill. About halfway up we met her as we were racing for the house. She wanted to see how bad the fire was before she called the fire department. About halfway up the hill she stopped long enough to throw off her shoes and continued to race up the hill barefoot. When she came back down she called the fire department and made us all line up outside by the porch. She wanted to know where we were if the fire got real bad. The fire trucks went flying by the house with the sirens going, lights flashing. We had no idea where they were going as the fire was on top of the hill and there was no road to get there. But they somehow managed to get up the back side of the hill to the apple orchard and after some time put out the flames and the trees that had started to burn.

When the fire chief came down he looked at us standing there all lined up and told us the fire warden was coming out to speak to us and that we were in deep trouble for what we had done. Everyday we waited in worry and fear for the fire warden to show up to speak to us. Each day we had to wait made it worse. It took him two whole weeks. It didn’t help that Mom kept reminding us every day about how much trouble we were in and how much we were going to get punished by the fire warden for the forest fire we had started. None of us understood how come Smoky the Bear was not in the woods that day to help us.

The day finally came; the fire warden drove into the yard in his shiny red car. Mom called us out of the house and lined us all up along the side of the driveway. I don’t know about anyone else but I was terrified. The warden proceeded to tell us about fires and the work that Smoky does and all that went with it. And then………………….and then he got out some pins and pinned them to our shirts and said he was making us members of the Smoky the Bear Club. We had to sign some certificates that he put a seal on and we were good to go. Can you believe it no punishments? Mom sure wasn’t any happy; actually she was down right mad.

After the fire warden left we decided to go back up to see if we could figure out where the fire trucks had found a way up through the woods and to the apple orchard. We found the tire prints and started to follow them. Along the way we found a locked up house abandoned that we didn’t even know was there. We climbed on the porch and looked through the windows. Wonderful, another place to explore where we weren’t suppose to be.