Halloween Ð Up the Creek or Pinheads Put Out a Fire Kathleen Jarschke-Schultze It was going to be a quiet Halloween this year. Last year Bob-O, Stan, and I dressed up and visited all our neighbors. We had the distinction of being the first Trick-or-treaters to ever knock on few of the local remote homes. Our hosts were amused and found treats for us even though they were unprepared. The treats ranged from cookies to scotch whiskey. We had a good time that night. This year, though, we had planned nothing special. That evening, Bob- O had just finished taking a shower. Our friend, Grizzly Bear, was getting ready to shower (we have one of the few working showers in the neighborhood). We were all having a cup of tea, waiting for the water to heat up again. The phone rang and Bob-O started talking to someone about a hydro unit, while still in his bathrobe. Suddenly we get a call over the 2 meter ham radio. It was an emergency call. The kind we all dread. It was Karen. There was interference on the frequency. All we could make out was that there was fire some where. It took two tries to find out the fire was at a close neighbor's place. Karen had already notified the local fire department, the California Dept. of Forestry (CDF). Bob-O hung up the phone and raced into his clothes. Grizz ran to our truck and warmed it up. I put on shoes, tied my hair back, and grabbed every fire extinguisher we had. Bob-O jumped in the truck to drive, Griz and I jumped in the back, standing up, holding on to the pipe rack. As we neared the barn, Bob-O jumped out and ran ahead to open the gate. Griz and I ran to the garden shed and grabbed two shovels, a pick, and McLeod. By the time we got back to the truck, Bob-O was jumping into the seat and heading out, fast. We sped along the rutted, muddy road. I hung on hard and kept my knees bent. We searched for some sign of the fire when we neared the house . We couldn't see anything. It all looked just the same as it always did. Then beyond the house and through the trees, we saw the column of white. We grabbed all the tools and extinguishers and ran towards the smoke. It was the outhouse. The two-holer was spewing thick white smoke and glowed a hellish red inside. Our neighbor was sawing down the tree limbs that hung over the outhouse. I used the McLeod and cleared the debris from the sides of the building. Griz and Bob-O started digging and shoveling dirt into the outhouse hole. That didn't seem to faze it. They used up one whole extinguisher firing it down into the hole. The smoke hadn't lessened. Our neighbor started carrying five gallon jugs of water from his house. Nothing seemed to faze it. Bob-O scraped the side of the building and uncovered the fire as it consumed the underflooring. Another fire extinguisher was used there to no avail. Finally, Bob-O took the pick and opened a large hole in the middle of the floor. More dirt and water was thrown down the hole. The fire began to abate. I was sent back to the house to call off the CDF fire fighters. Since they are our closest fire protection, we always call them first, before we call our neighbors for help. However, they were already on their way and couldn't be turned back. I went across the creek to the main road to wait for the trucks. I wanted to turn them back before they got really stuck in the mud further on. The first vehicle to show up was our local rescue squad. Judy, the driver, came up the road and drove all the way to the outhouse. After having determined that no one was hurt, they had to back up to leave. Meanwhile on the main road, a CDF pickup arrived. He wanted to go ahead so I directed him to the ford in the creek. Then a big firetruck tanker drove up. I told him he better just turn around there cause there was nowhere to turn that baby around anywhere further on. The next one along was the incident commander. He just parked in the field. I brought him across the creek to talk with our neighbor. The fire had started because our neighbor had cleaned out his woodstove and thrown the ashes down the outhouse hole. I guess they burned buffalo chips for a reason. I was in the local Post Office a couple of days later when an acquaintance came in. "Sorry to hear about your outhouse," he said. When I inquired how he had heard, I found out the call went out over the police/fire radio. I explained it wasn't our outhouse at all, but our neighbor's. In November, Bob-O got a call from a customer who lives across the county. "Sorry to hear about your outhouse burning down," he said. I guess we'll never live it down.