Look Out Boys, She's Gonna Blow!

 

Back in the late sixties, when I was a teenager, my dad worked at Hayes Aircraft in Birmingham. Hayes was a bustling place back then—busy as a kicked-over ant bed. Besides refitting cargo planes for the government, they'd landed a big contract with NASA to help out on the Saturn V rocket program. Folks worked twelve-hour days, seven days a week, and even though the pay was good, family time was hard to come by. But once all the overtime died down, we started living more like a family again. We'd go on outings, visit with Dad’s coworkers, and even take trips together with other families from the plant.

One family we spent a good bit of time with was the Busseys—we went camping with them one week at Wind Creek State Park, and we took lots of weekend fishing trips down to Lake Martin or Eufaula. Dad had plenty of friends at Hayes, but one stood out for sure: a loud, funny, sometimes braggadocious fella named Cecil. He was the kind of guy who could light up a room just by talking a little too loud and pulling out a hundred-dollar bill like it had just surprised him in his own coat pocket. “Well, would you look at that?” he’d holler, waving it around before tucking it into his wallet, laughing like it was the first time he’d ever pulled that stunt—even though it wasn’t.

Cecil had two boys, Joey and Jimmy. Joey was my age and Jimmy a couple years younger. On weekends when he had the boys, they’d come over, and our dads would plan little father-son getaways. That’s how we ended up on all kinds of misadventures together.

Now, Dad was a country man through and through—raised on Wolf Creek Road, where you made what you needed or did without. He could rig up a turkey call out of a Coke bottle and a rubber band or patch a busted gas tank with a bar of Octagon soap. I’m not kidding. Once, on a camping trip out by Golden’s Lake, our car hit a rock and cracked the tank. Next morning, Dad rubbed that soap into the hole until it sealed tight enough to get us to a garage. Cecil loved that story, retold it to anyone who’d listen. "I swear," he’d say, shaking his head, "LeRoy could fix a rocket ship with a roll of duct tape and a toothpick."

Joey and I got to be good friends. So one weekend, I was invited to stay with him and Jimmy at their mom’s house in Irondale. She let us camp down by a little creek that ran behind her place. We packed up sleeping bags, a few snacks, and some marshmallows for roasting. Just as we were heading out, Joey ducked into the garage and came back with a can of kerosene.

“Just to help get the fire started,” he said.

The fire did start, but it was slow and smoky, and we wanted a real campfire—the kind that roars and crackles like the ones you see in Westerns. So Joey grabbed the kerosene and poured it straight on the flames.

What happened next felt like it played out in slow motion. The fire whooshed up, a trail of flame shot into the can, and Joey flinched, dropping it right there in the dirt. It landed upright—blazing from the spout like a Roman candle. Without thinking, I yelled, “Look out, boys! She’s gonna blow!” and gave the can a hard kick.

It sailed toward the creek—but not before it sprayed a trail of burning kerosene right across Jimmy’s pant leg.

He screamed, took off running, and only made it worse. Joey tackled him and smothered the flames with a sleeping bag. Somehow, we put it out, and Jimmy was still in one piece. But we were scared stiff. We begged him to keep quiet and sleep it off. “You don’t wanna get us all in trouble,” we pleaded.

Jimmy wasn’t buying it. Within minutes, he was hoofing it home. We trailed behind, dread building with every step.

His mom’s reaction was... memorable.

She took one look at Jimmy, then turned to me and shook me like a rug. “You almost killed my boy!” she hollered. She called my dad, and I got sent home in a hurry. Jimmy ended up at the ER with second-degree burns on his leg.

I didn’t see much of Jimmy after that. He showed up at our place once more, just to show off his scars like a badge of honor. “See that?” he grinned, lifting his pant leg. “That’s from when y’all set me on fire.” He wasn’t mad—if anything, he seemed proud.

Cecil and Joey still came by now and then, and though we all laughed about it years later, I never forgot that night.

Looking back, we were just a bunch of boys trying to play grown-up. There was danger, sure. Dumb choices too. But we learned from it—or at least, we hoped we did. I think about how lucky we were that night by the creek, and I’m thankful for the way boys become men—through fire sometimes, both the literal kind and the kind that comes from being held accountable.

And every now and then, when I smell smoke from a campfire, I hear my own voice echoing down through the years:

“Look out, boys—she’s gonna blow!”