The Operative Word was 'Diesel'

Stump and I go back a long way. We met on night at a pizza joint in the fall of 1974 after my bootlegging partner, Squat, got arrested for getting drunk and naked while dancing in a pasture that doubled as a parking lot for our high school. Squat's arrest presented me with a unique problem. I had my mother's stationwagon full of beer, wine, and liquor that our customers had 'ordered', and Squat, now fully clothed, was sitting in the Craighead County Jail with the list of who ordered what in his pocket. Ever since Stump helped me solve my distribution problems that fateful night, he and I have been close friends. We've hunted together, fished together, frog gigged together and partied together.

Friends help friends. When Stump bought 20 acres of land outside of Jonesboro and needed help fencing it, I was happy to help. This was in the early 80's which which happened to be the era of 'generic' beer, so we'd ice down two or three cases of that crap, and head out to his land each Saturday and work like dogs all day long building barbed wire fences. I'm not sure why we were building the fences because he didn't own any cattle, but for some reason, it was vital that we fence the place in. After the fencing was complete, we set about cleaning the property up some, so we tore down the old barn.

It was July or August. In Arkansas, those months are hot and dry. Stump wanted to burn the wood from the old barn because it was not worth re-using, and it was full of termites and bugs. I suggested that we throw the wood down into the old cistern and burn it down there because I was afraid that a wild fire would get loose in the pasture if we just piled it up and burned it. A cistern is a hole in the ground that is usually lined with bricks or stone, and is used to collect and hold rain water. Stump thought that burning the wood in the cistern was a good idea, too. So, together with a guy named Tom who Stump had hired for the day, we chunked all that wood down into this huge old cistern. It took the better part of the day to get all the wood down there, but finally we were finished. Stump sent Tom over to the truck to get a jerry can of diesel fuel, and had him pour it into the cistern. The operative word here is 'diesel'. Diesel fuel burns and starts a fire. Gasoline explodes and starts a bigger fire.

Stump and I were standing about 10 feet from the mouth of the cistern, and we had a torch which we were going to toss into the cistern to light the 'diesel' and get the fire going. Holding my generic beer in one hand, I took my zippo lighter out and lit the torch. Stump tossed it under handed toward the cistern. Just as the flaming torch entered the cistern, a tremendous explosion erupted from the cistern, blowing flaming wood all across the tinder dry pasture and giant chunks of earth and bricks about 100 feet into the air. The cistern opening had been about five feet across. It was now about 15 feet across.

If you've never been near an explosion, it's kind of weird. An explosion consumes a lot of oxygen, so it kind of 'sucks' you toward it just a bit, and then as the oxygen and the explosive combine, it then 'blows' you back. Another thing about explosions is that they are loud. They are so loud that your ears feel like you stuck them in an amp at a ZZ Top concert. Finally, explosions mean a hot, firey flash. Got eye brows?

The blast flattened me and Stump. When you get blown down like that, it kind of jars your brain some so it takes a minute or so for you to come back to your right mind. Lying there on the ground looking up, I watched the fire ball grow and rise into a mushroom shape, and saw the flaming wood scatter across the pasture. Dirt and broken bricks rained down on us.

I sat up and shook my head. I looked over at Stump. He was smoking some, and his eye brows were gone. I said something to him, and I couldn't hear me and because he didn't react, I figured he couldn't hear me either, so I shouted at him. Tom had been standing a bit further back, so he came running over. He was real excited and was saying something and pointing out at the pasture, but I couldn't hear him. I hollered at him to talk louder. Stump was looking at his pasture. It was on fire, and the wind was taking it toward the creek. This day was going downhill fast.

It took a good while and a lot of help from neighboring farms to get the fire out. At the end of the day, exhausted and out of beer, I got in my car to go home. I was dreading tomorrow.

Stump had asked me to help him pick up the wood from the barn again. We were going to put it in a pile in the pasture and burn it. There wasn't any danger of the fire spreading. For about a half mile in any direction, we had already burned everything that would burn. All we needed as some beer. We still had a jerry can of diesel.