Smoking Hot

    Our family project for Saturday began early with a hour & a half drive north to my Mother-In-Law's house.   Funny that it didn't even dawn on me to call it my Father-In-Law's house.  But that is usually the case, isn't it.  In the old days, we always went to Grandma's. But, if it's a farm, it's "my Granddad has this farm...". Okay, chased a rabbit there, back to the story.
     They had been gathering leaves & sticks and putting them in a common pile for about four years. I've known we would eventually have to burn it, but was hoping some act of nature, i.e. wind, lightening, tornado, flood, etc would manage to handle it for us. In leu of that not happening, we made the decision to get up early and go take care of it.
     I've had my share of big fires, having been on a volunteer fire dept. and having(several years ago) eight acres to keep up. For some reason, it isn't the fire, but the smoke that gets to me. With outdoor fires, the smoke can carry irritants such as poison oak or toxic chemicals from man made objects.  Plastic and styrofoam being just a couple.  We checked the wind direction and lit that sucker.
The sticks and leaves were all pretty dry, so it didn't take long till we had a nice blaze going.

   Thinking ahead, we had filled a couple of five gallon buckets with water to  have on standby.  She had three sections of garden hose which reached almost up to it as well.  I've only had one fire which jumped my fire line, and it taught me to be prepared because this stuff can get out of hand quickly.  So fast actually, you can need multiple fire departments and sometimes they can't save the important stuff.

      Let me get back to the smoke.  This one had a lot, and remembering all the danger made me think about my Dad.  He smoked two packs of cigarettes a day most of his life.  Therefore, I probably have some lung damage just from being around him during my youth.  He gave up the habit not long after the Surgeon General made tobacco companies put the warning label on the side of each pack.  But the damage had already been done.  Not long afterward he was diagnosed with emphysema, and I watched an otherwise healthy individual slowly loose his breath.
     It has to be a terrible way to die.  You begin to notice a shortness of breath when being active, then later even when at rest.  Coughing and wheezing slowly follow and your lungs fill up with fluid, further complicating the deep breath you need.  Dying from emphysema doesn't come quick, it can take years.  Finally, near the agonizingly long end,  an oxygen mask covers your mouth helping keep you alive.  You can't talk, except with short gasps, and your every effort  is concentrated on trying to get the air that is needed so desperately.  There isn't anything anyone can do except watch you slowly die!
     What makes it even sadder is that the early death caused by smoking all those stupid cigarettes, cheated your loved ones too.  Statistics say the average smoker would have lived another twenty years!  So the next time you think about smoking...  don't!