Where There's Smoke, There's Fire

"Where there's smoke, there's fire." Some of the cows didn't seem too concerned about a hay bale that was flaming just yards away from their morning buffet. But with 45 mph winds from the south, I didn't share their nonchalance.

A hay bale in a round feeder caught fire yesterday morning. We assume that it was caused by spontaneous combustion. Randy was returning from a doctor's appointment in Great Bend and saw the smoke. Since it was so windy, I'd opted for the treadmill in the basement, so I was oblivious that smoke was billowing from the south.

We grabbed shovels and went out to the pasture to try and keep the fire contained. Randy called Jake to fill a water container on the back of the 4-wheeler and to bring it to the pasture. 

The process of spontaneous combustion involves both microbial growth and chemical changes, according to a publication from Washington State University Extension. At the time, I was more concerned with putting out the fire and less with the root cause.

I began my campaign for Randy to call the fire department. The hay bale was south of a shelterbelt, and I was afraid if the fire spread there, the old cedar trees would light up like Roman candles on the 4th of July. That could spread all along the tree row, and my house and the old barn could be in danger, especially with the wind howling. Because the cattle congregate at the bales to eat, there was also plenty of manure to fuel the fire. There's a reason the pioneers used cow patties to heat their homes in the winter.

 

And, yesterday, Reno County was one of five Kansas counties in a National Weather Service Red Flag Warning for the possibility of "extreme grassland fire danger." (I always wonder how they designate the warnings by county lines. I'm guessing all of Kansas should have been in a red flag warning yesterday.)

"Any fires that develop will likely spread rapidly and become very difficult to control," the advisory stated. (I had just read that as I prepared my Central Kansas report for KFRM 550 AM radio, so it was fresh in my mind!)

So, Randy called 9-1-1.  We were happy to see the lights and hear the sirens racing towards us from the south.

It may have seemed like overkill to have two small trucks, a larger truck and a supplemental water truck arrive to put out a hay bale fire. But we are very thankful for the quick response from the Sylvia-based Reno County Fire District No. 6 crew.

Once they'd put some water on the fire, Randy helped them move the circular bale feeder.

Then they could pour more water on the still-burning straw. 

Jake went to get the tractor so we could spread out the bale and knock down more of the flames.

We are thankful for the service of these volunteer firefighters. There just may be cookies at the May fire meeting.

You can see in this photo how much dirt the wind was moving. It was WINDY! Here, the truck was getting a refill from the supplemental tanker truck.

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I'm linked to the Country Fair Blog Party hosted by:

Nicole of Tales of A Kansas Farm Mom; Taysha of Dirt Road Charm; Danielle of High Heels and Shotgun Shells and Laurie of Country Linked.

SHS: Memories Cling Like Smoke

Like the smell of smoke from the still smoldering ruins, the memories cling as tenaciously to our minds as smoke does to cloth.

On March 15, the old Stafford High School was destroyed by flames. We had been out of town and didn't know anything about it until Sunday morning, March 16.

The school sat just catty-cornered from the Stafford United Methodist Church. As I stood at the door and greeted people for the Sunday church service March 16, I kept glancing over at the front of the school, the upper floors blackened by soot and wood pieces hanging out of broken windows. When we saw flecks of white in the air, we weren't sure whether they were snow or ash.

After church, we explored, staying behind the yellow crime scene tape. As I looked at the 1916 date on the east doors, I thought about the history there.

1916 ... 98 years standing in that very spot.

But I was remembering another Sunday morning in December 1998. We had crossed the street after church that day, too. I had been taking photos outside the church, trying for that year's version of our annual photo Christmas card. 


But I wanted to mark another event. That Sunday, while Jill and Randy were dressed up, I took some photos of them in front of the school. A move to the new school just down the street to the east on Broadway was planned for February 1999. I wanted some photos of the two members of our family who had walked the halls of the grand old building as students. Randy graduated from Stafford High in 1974. Jill was a 7th grade student at the time, and the middle school attended classes there. (Brent didn't make the photos because he was a 5th grader and was still in the elementary school building.)

It was a minor miracle that I found the photos in my less-than-organized tubs of photos.

And then there were the photos of moving day, February 25, 1999. Bernard Bartlett carried mementos from the old school to the new one by a horse-drawn buggy.

Earlier, teams of students formed a version of a bucket brigade to transfer supplies from the top floors to the ground floor. They sat in the auditorium and listened to some history. Some of the students then carried desks and trophies to the waiting buggy.

Just as it had for many other families, the school was the centerpiece of the community. Randy's maternal grandmother Laura Russell (Ritts) graduated from there. So did both his paternal grandparents, Clarence Fritzemeier and Ava Hornbaker (Fritzemeier).

His Dad, Melvin Fritzemeier, graduated from SHS in 1948, and his Mom, Marie Ritts, got her diploma two years later. As I dug through tubs looking for old photos, I found a 1948 Staffordonian, the yearbook from Melvin's senior year.

The front of the yearbook showed the school through a window. Inside, someone had drawn a sketch of the school. (I think the artist may have been Lawrence Tretbar. Click on the photo to see it larger.)

Randy graduated there in 1974; his brother, Lyle, in 1976, and sister, Kathy, in 1984. Their graduation ceremonies were all in the old auditorium, where the memories were piled as deeply as the debris.

I took a photo of Jill on Moving Day 1999. The torch of education was passing from the old three-story building to the brand new addition a few blocks east.

It's there where Jill's graduation ceremonies happened in 2004 and Brent's two years later in 2006.

But last Sunday, I was remembering the old school. It's where I went to work part-time in the middle/high school office when Brent was a first grader. It was a teeny-tiny office I shared with Judy Clough. It's where I first accompanied for the high school choir under the direction of Presley Herndon. On several May days, I was one of four pianists who played Pomp and Circumstance on two pianos in the auditorium for SHS graduation.

It's where Jill debuted as Woodstock in "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown" in 1996. It was a high school play, but as a fifth grader, she got to play the part of the little yellow bird. (My attempt to find a photo is unsuccessful so far.) She remembers staying up past her bedtime to go to play practice. She says that if Dad took her to town for practice, she got to get a pop. (I guess Mom wasn't so easy.)

Then, as a seventh grader, she joined the cast of "Grease."  It, like Charlie Brown, was under the direction of Pam Turner. Jill and several of the middle school kids, were added to the large cast. Grandma Marie made her a poodle skirt.

Jill sang a solo as Teen Angel (bottom left in the collage above). It would have been the last play in the old auditorium, produced November 13-14, 1998.

It's been a week of reminiscing as crews have torn down the walls of the old school. With three days of working baby calves, I didn't witness it in person.

Photo by Stafford Emergency Services

But the school's demise was center stage on Facebook news feeds for Stafford residents and SHS graduates.

Photos in collage by Janet Vasey Hardin

Just one week later, the majestic east entrance is all that's left of the three-story building. The corner of Broadway and Park will never be the same.

But the memories? The good thing is that they don't just drift into the atmosphere like smoke. They are alive and well.

Telling the Story ... The Whole Story

If you're telling the story,

 you have to tell the whole story. 

It may sound like something Paul Harvey would say. But, instead, it's wisdom from my favorite farmer philosopher (aka, my husband).

Last spring, when a "controlled" CRP burn ended up being far from controlled, my first inclination was to keep it to myself. However, it's not like people in Stafford weren't going to find out about it. After all, we had volunteer fire crews from Sterling, Alden, Raymond and the Quivira National Wildlife Refuge arrive to help us. News like that gets around faster in a small community than ... well, faster than a controlled burn can become uncontrolled.

But, Randy wanted me to share the story on Kim's County Line. His theory:

If you're telling the story,

 you have to tell the whole story.

This week, I had my own fire. My first inclination is to hide it. I hate making mistakes. I probably hate revealing my mistakes even more. (It's really silly, since most of my shortcomings are front and center anyway.)

This is about more than kitchen disasters. As a life-long perfectionist and overachiever, I like giving the impression that I have my life together, even if I sometimes feel like it's an illusion that rivals any of my husband's collection of magic tricks.  I want to smother "bad news" as assuredly as that box of baking soda smothered the flames dancing in the bottom of my oven Monday night. But Randy's matter-of-fact admission of less-than-stellar outcomes kept burning in my mind as high as those orange-yellow flames. So, here it is ... the whole story.

I was co-hostess this week for PEO, which means I was responsible for providing the dessert. (If you know women's meetings, you know that's an important job.) I have a reputation for being a good cook. (My birth family knows that my true misadventures in the kitchen date all the way back to Meatloaf Mush when I was 13 or so, but that's a story for another time. Or ask my brother about it.)

Anyway, in order to uphold that reputation for baking delicious and beautiful treats, I was making cheesecake in springform pans instead of regular 13- by 9-inch pans. I had two springform pans filled with butter-laden graham cracker crusts and topped with cheesecake made from five whole packages of cream cheese, fresh lemon zest, sugar and other goodies. 

Wanting to "look good" got me into trouble when the butter started dripping into the bottom of the oven. I added a layer of foil so that it wouldn't make such a mess. But, when the timer rang for the first check, I discovered flames. Yes, real flames, not just an acrid smell and burned-on residue. (Thank you, Lord, for that compulsion to check and double-check things and for the timing of that oven buzzer.)

I also discovered that I didn't have the fire extinguisher I thought I had above the stove. (If I used it for another cooking mishap, I have successfully developed amnesia about it.)

Thankfully, the half-full box of baking soda I had was enough to put out all but a little remnant of the flames.

I stay fairly level-headed in a crisis. I calmly pulled my cheesecakes from the oven. After the fire was out, I salvaged the ingredients. I ended up separating the cheesecake filling from the crust and baking the cheesecake in a sheetcake pan (along with a little extra that Randy got to taste test to make sure it didn't taste more like scorched earth than cheesecake.) To serve it Tuesday night, I fancied it up with fresh fruit and a dollop of whipped cream on top. It got rave reviews.

I could have not told anyone (and I didn't at PEO). And believe me, that's my first inclination. I want to believe I'm not telling the story now because Randy already told the tale to our friend at the local cafe and to the lumberyard proprietor when he ordered fire extinguishers for the house.

I hope it's because I truly want to be real. This space shouldn't be just about posting fun trips to the zoo with our granddaughter or farming tales or yummy treats accomplished without an oven fire.

This is the same CRP field as at the top photo a couple of months after the fire.

Making mistakes is not a crime. (Repeat that to myself 10 times.) Experiencing unexpected consequences is part of life. A lesson in humility helps refine me. If I hadn't wanted to impress with a lovely springform pan dessert, I wouldn't be stuck revealing my failure.

I should be just as quick to share the fire (or any other shortcoming) because it's how people can truly know me - not just the image of me I'd like to portray.

I need to be more like a wildflower after a prairie fire.  We all have "fires" in our lives. We have times where the landscape feels as desolate as that blackened earth or the scorch in the bottom of my oven. We are lonely. We face health problems. We're concerned about our kids or our jobs or our community or a drought. The fires are different for all of us. But we all have them. We can get hot under the collar. We can feel like we're walking through flames.We can feel that all-consuming heat and wind surround us in a way where it's even hard to breathe.

But if we don't admit it to anyone else, it just might consume us:

If you're telling the story,

 you have to tell the whole story.