A Little Excitement

At the end of our street there is a house - a pink house, no less – inhabited by the Darryls. We have no idea what the real names of the people who live there are (and we don’t want to, either) so we just call them all Darryl. They are VERY blue collar. They drive old beat up trucks. They have many cars in their yard. You never see the wife Darryl without a cigarette. You never see the husband Darryl without a cigarette and a beer. The daughter Darryl is out of high school (20ish) and quite a skank. The son, Darryl Jr., also out of high school, is about what you would expect out of a 20-something of such an environment. We’re almost sure they sell drugs out of one of the cars parked in the backyard. They got a puppy (some big dog breed, of course) and staked it out in the (unfenced) front yard, where it was bored and barked and got yelled at a lot. The kids, who still live at home have obnoxious friends that come over in their cars with really loud mufflers (that’s an oxymoron, isn’t it?) and play really loud music, drive too fast in the neighborhood and do other annoying things like that. Some of our neighbors suspect the kids and/or their creepy friends are behind the things that happen in our neighborhood like pumpkin smashing, car thefts, and other fun and frivolity.

Anyway, last night I stayed up a little later than normal because I was finishing a book that was due back to the library today (Summer Knight by Jim Butcher. Number 4 in the Dresden Files series. Very good). I turned out my light about 10:30 and tried to fall asleep. I had my headphones on for a while, but soon took them off. Just as I was drifting off to sleep I heard this really loud “WHUMP” sound. It kind of woke me up and I thought, “Huh, hope Greg didn’t just fall down the stairs.” I cracked open an eye and didn’t see a light or hear any swearing so went back to sleep. Then I thought I heard a diesel engine and thought, “Huh, hope the idiots across the street didn’t just back in to one of our cars,” then settled back to snooze without checking. About 10 minutes later, while I was in that zone in between sleep and awake, Greg opened my door and asked me to get up and look at something. From the office window I saw a bunch of red flashing lights and a lot of people standing around looking at something at the end of the street. Being curious I walked out on the porch and found what looked like a fire truck and a group of neighbors in their jammies watching something. I took a quick inventory, decided that I was presentable enough in my pajamas, and wandered over to find out what was going on.

Turns out there were TWO fire trucks and the fire chief’s rig with all those flashing red lights. No one knows exactly what happened, but the neighbors and I stood around in our jammies and shared the pieces of information we did know. Here’s the story as I was able to piece it together…Darryl Jr and his gang were doing something with some other delinquent and his gang. I think there were harsh words and then somehow the pickup truck full of hay which was parked by the Darryl house (I have no idea why) suddenly caught on fire. The other gang took off in their car. The hay, as hay will, started to burn. Mrs. Darryl got out her handy garden hose and watered down the fence (while smoking a cigarette). The fire crews show up and start putting out the fire. Apparently the “WHUMP” I heard was the gas tank blowing up. Well, at least that’s what someone said. I missed all the big flames. By the time I got there it was just glowing and smoking. So I hung out with Matt for a while until things got boring then went inside, reported to Greg and went back to bed.

This morning I decided to take some pictures to make this story more interesting. There was still fire foam in the street and a big pile of burned looking hay on the street. The fences was charred and the tree looked a little singed. Without further ado here are pictures of the aftermath. The pictures suck. I did the best I could, but I had some major problems with the focus and the flash. Only the two most important things in picture taking. You will notice a complete lack of any kind of vehicle that may or may not have blown up. I'll probaly never know what really happened.