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Flaming Mice and Other Frustrations…

Many moons ago, when I was a soldier in the beloved 82^nd Airborne Division of the US Army, we had a barracks tradition that the only difference between a "Fairy Tale" and a "War Story", is that the fairy tale begins with, "Once upon a time…", while the war story begins with, "You ain't gonna believe this…"

Well, you ain't gonna believe this.

My father sort of grew up in the woods. The deepest, darkest, most isolated woods of Upstate New York - about a hundred miles from sunlight, to hear him tell it.

Personally, I grew up in Virginia. I wore gray to my wedding, and still refer to Manassas and other significant landmarks by their proper names. But enough.

Dad was homesick for the North, for the Finger Lakes, for the cold, clear mornings up above the Mason-Dixon. Mom had kept him bottled up here for most of his adult life, and he had put up with it, for the sake of us kids. So we did something about it.

We bought a couple hundred acres of the most useless, desolate, ill-formed land on the planet - a farm in New York. My brothers, my father, and I pitched in - it would be the family "cabin."

Only it had no cabin. It had no barn. It had no outhouse, no fencing, no chickens, no cows, nothing but trees. And sand.

And mice.

Two-hundred thirty acres of sandy mice, with trees.

Well, we thought - clearly, we need a cabin! Let's build one!

So we did. Slowly at first, quick-Crete-bag by bag, the cabin foundation started to form. Then the floor. We put a wood stove in the basement, and an outhouse outside, for use when we got frozen in. We got frozen in - my 4WD pick-up had to be dug out about twelve times the first winter, but we worked on the cabin every weekend we had free that year.

By spring, the woodstove got stolen. That summer, the outhouse was stolen.

We built a shed, hoping to keep our tools from being stolen. A porcupine ate it.

I am not kidding - it seems they like the salts in the plywood. My brother was sleeping in the shed one weekend after the stove got stolen (the shed was warmer), and woke up to a porcupine sniffing his face - he moved. Quickly. To Alabama. A week later, all of our tools were stolen.

So, we thought, enough. We have got to get this done or forget it.

We planned it out. I twisted arms, flew my brother back from Alabama, enlisted my cousins and nephews, and ordered materials. We sent an advance party to get everything up on the mountain, for when the crew arrived. We arranged air tools, generators, everything.

And in one short weekend, we built a house. Complete with a new, cheap woodstove that the porcupines did not eat (it was in the shed), and was too heavy for anybody to steal. Our last project was to carry that stove into the basement and hook it up. It took six of us to carry it in from the now-very-drafty shed.

As a finale, we fired up the stove. This one, like the first, was in the basement - with pipes up through the house and roof. Heat the bottom, the next floor will be warm, too.

I wadded up some paper, tossed it in, a chucked a match. Slammed the door.

Stove got hot - so far, so good. We checked the chimney pipes - no leaks.

Now, picture this. The basement of this cabin, newly-built, is full of tar for the roof, extra shingles, left-over lumber, a chord of wood we have stacked up for the next snow, gas for the generator, and other flammables. Notice that I have not mentioned a well? We have yet to drill one - we have maybe 4 gallons of water on hand. The cabin above is made entirely of - you guessed it - very dry wood.

My brother says, "Let's fire this sucker up, and see what happens!" So he opens the stove to throw in some wood.

And three flaming mice jump out, running for cover.

Now, I feel for the mice - really, I felt sorry for them. But consider our situation - flammable house, years of effort, filled with explosives, no water in sight. Heck, no water within miles.

Ever seen six guys try to stamp out a flaming mouse?