Where there's smoke.....

There's my brother.

This afternoon I noticed smoke across the field at mom and dads. I had just been shopping with my mom so I knew it had nothing to do with her. But, I also knew that my brother and his wife were home for the weekend. They have a small log cabin in the woods behind my folks and spend a lot of weekends relaxing there.

My phone rang a few minutes later and it was mom, jokingly saying that I should disregard the smoke I was seeing, it was just my brother burning off a little bit of yard trash. Then she paused and said, "actually, he is doing an awful lot of stomping." She then saw my sister-in-law run down the driveway toward where my brother was stomping. Mom hollered out to them to see if everything was under control and found out that they had called the fire department.

From there it got really crazy. My cell phone rang, it was a friend from church that is on another area fire department. He had heard the call through central dispatch, recognized the road, looked it up in the phone book and knew it was my brothers. Oh, and just to add to the excitement, he said they were calling it a structure fire!

The kids headed out to the swing set to get the best vantage point to observe the fire trucks. Soon we could hear the sirens, and then they all drove right on by. PROBLEM!!! Cindy had called from their home phone number, which is a different house number then the actual driveway to get to the house. They share a driveway with mom and dad, so the address Cindy told them to come to was right (mom and dads), however, the system registered the wrong place. On up the road they went, finally turning around and coming back slower, trying to figure out where they were suppose to be. By then, Terry had gotten the fire out himself, so there was no smoke to help guide their way. The fire department started to turn into the neighbors driveway, but she told them where they needed to be and they finally rolled up the driveway about 5 minutes after the fire was out.

A couple minutes later, down the road came the grass unit, as they had been updated that it was a grass fire rather than structural. They flew on by, went up the road, turned around and headed back to the station. I am sure one of the other trucks told them they were no longer needed.

My sister-in-law called me shortly after it all settled down to discuss the upcoming birthday party we were planning for the twins. Earlier in the week, a cookout sounded really good, but that has changed. Cindy is more inclined to head to Saucy Dogs for supper and leave the fires out for awhile. I think that is a good idea too.

In the meantime, my brother told my mom that people really should burn the dead grass and weeds each year, to which mom replied "but can you do it without the fire department?"