Father-in-Law's car caught on fire, with a pic!, and the OTHER time a car caught fire...

BLOT: (16 Apr 2013 - 11:18:54 PM)

Father-in-Law's car caught on fire, with a pic!, and the OTHER time a car caught fire...

My wife passed this article on to me: Car catches fire in front of Huntsville business. The car in question being my father-in-law's red Volvo.

When the car caught fire, my mother-in-law was in the checkout and they first announced it as a black car, and then went "Oh no, that was a red car, we mean..." and well, I wish I could say that hilarity ensued but at least no one was hurt. I don't know any details, but that car would have been just a few years shy of 20 and with a lot of hour long drives between Huntsville and Grant under its belt so it probably just committed suicide rather than sweat through another Summer of such trips. RIP, Red Volvo.

Changing gears just slightly, trip down Memory Lane with me for a second. There was a time in Evergreen that my brother Danny and I saw a car catch on fire, the only time I can think that I was standing next to a vehicle that wasn't supposed to be burning but was. Back a decade or two ago, when you came into Evergreen from the North, there was a pair of gas-stations right first up, slightly past the high school and junior high, which were the first sight you saw coming into town after the funeral parlor and gravestone-buying place. The one gas station is a franchise deal, but the other one, the closed one, the one we used to frequent, I can't recall the name but can still picture it fairly well. Old building. Old pumps. Half-empty shelves. Bought my first porn magazine, there, shaking like...you know, a guy buying his first porn mag. The building is still there, if you are ever down that way.

Anyhow, Danny and I were going in to get drinks back when we lived in town. Probably had been visiting our parents, since they live North of town. When we came out, saw one of the other cars in the parking lot was on fire. Ran back inside and told them to call the fire department. We could just imagine all the horror scenarios that start with a burning vehicle next to a gas-pump. Turns out the vehicle was half-abandoned (the owner parked it there, and then walked off or rode off with someone). And it turned out what was burning was junk in the backseat that was ignited by a unfinished joint that was either tossed back there or left back there and forgotten about. And there was a fairly sizable quantity of weed in a big ole baggie next to it.

So there we are, two good Samaritans, and the fireman holds up this bag-o-mary-J and stares at us, and Danny just goes "Time to leave!" and me and him walk off, get in his truck, and drive without looking to see if anyone was waving us back. Found out later that some people were trying to weave us into it, via Evergreen's pre-Facebook asshole rumor mill. Theories included that we planted the weed. Or that it was somehow our weed and we were...I don't know, don't think they thought that one out. Or that we were trying to set up someone by setting fire to their weed. If you think about a place where two guys who try to stop a stoner's car for burning down, and people assume they were preventing this fire maliciously, you'll have an idea why no one needs ever live in Evergreen.

In yet another almost gear change, when I tried to see if there were other pictures about the Red Volvo going up, I did a Googly and found this article, which I'll end my post with: Huntsville man sets himself on fire in front of police [from about one week shy of two years ago].

Me in 2013

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: April 2013