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I was born on the 12 of September at 38,7° North and 120,4° West or better known as El Dorado or the Eldorado Fire.
Daddy blasted a pyrotechnical device during our gender reveal party that burnt 22,744 acres of woods and lasted for over 3 months.
My parents named me Yogi to try to hide my identity but and from the age of a toddler I was always smoking -not cigarettes or anything, it was just my attitude. For my birthdays parents always lit fireworks and I would spin like a firenado, laughing and spinning 'till I was too dizzy to stand.
I was also a Boy Scout and at the age of 8 I got a medal for lighting more forest fires that anyone. But later on at school, I got into manifold trouble to the point I had to see an ear doctor because I set off so many fire alarms that my ear drums had a melt down.
My mom sent me to a shrink to get me out of the frying pan because I had recurring dreams of Bobcat, Creek, Zogg, Glass and my own El Dorado fire.
In my dreams The smoke was rising higher than the ceilings of the Vatican, higher than the clouds of His Holiness who kept pointing his finger at me and saying: "burn baby burn".
At 16 my dreams went up in smoke: in 2036 most of all the forests had burnt down and there wasn't a fire to be had. I couldn't light or put out a fire if I wanted to. Temperatures were still hot but there was talk of another ice age.
Before graduation I set fire to the girls locker room and burnt all their clothes. It was a good time for an hour and then I knew I was between two fires as my friends had sisters who lost their belongings.
Fortunately, my friend Ted who was captain of the Lacrosse team, pulled the bacon out of the fire by telling everyone it was Sally who lit the fire out of a fit of jealousy. That was cool and I stayed friends with Ted forever.
When I went to college my parents divorced. I tried to keep the home fries burning for Mom but she rarely cracked a smile and the rest of her life was a Chinese fire drill; just chaos.
In 2040 I graduated in pyrotechnics, like the science was saying temperatures were dropping and there was a need for fires that would burn a long time with little wood. The trick was to use trash, there was a lot of old plastics that granted would melt and make a nasty smoke, but it would keep you warm.
I liked to believe I was a principled person, holding his feet to the fire, never abetting anyone to do wrong.
Before I sign off, here a little poem I wrote that I thought you might like. It goes like this:
My first job I loved burnin' tires
I admired
The black smoke on fire
However, every day I was required to
Pray before a friar
Who lost his hearing and
Spoke through an amplifier
My second job was a quagmire
Not fit for a raccoon or a blind
Umpire
I had to extract muck from a waste zone
Load it in a pickup truck and
Drive to Yellowstone
There we would burn and bbq the catch
Of the day
There we would perspire and dream of Norway
My third -and last job
Was to swab throbbing noses
Under diagnosis
At times irascible clients sneezed my way
Which made my hair a premature grey.
People stopped calling me "feuremester"
And I stopped acting like a ringmaster
Rather relax with a gin
And read Dante's Inferno.
