Why, in a bonfire, of course.
So my friend Seth calls me up at about 10:00 tonight and says "We're going out to Haley's pit. There's gonna be a bonfire out there."
I figure, what the hell, I'm not doing anything. Just deciphering "The Da Vinci Code". I'll take a ride out there.
So I did. Who's Haley, you may be wondering, and what is his pit? An old ramshackel house? A ditch filled with vipers?
No, my friends, Haley's pit is a small gravel pit (it has to come from somewhere) where we used to go and drink beers when we were in High School. I'm not sure who Haley is. Some guy, probably. Maybe a girl.
Anyway, it was too late for me to run into town to grab some beers, so I figure I'll just smoke the cigars that have been hanging out in my glove compartment since this summer. They're still good, right?
So I get out there and, sure enough, there's a fire...surrounded by a bunch of underage drinkers. After playing in the fire for a while and being extremely bored, someone decided it owuld be a good idea to throw in old tire into the fire. Up here, we're all environmentalists.
The accompanying billow of black smoke could probably be seen for miles in any direction, if there were people anywhere for miles in any direction. The tire actually looked pretty cool aflame, which made me wish I had brought my camera out to snap a few photos. But I didn't, so the night was a bust.
This isn't the extent of fun we can have here in Northern Minnesota, oh no sir-ee. After my, let's say, Freshman year of college we were all out at my friend Zac's cabin. It was haven for us when we were younger, to drink beers where there was little to no chance of police involvement.
Anyway, we were drinking, and we all know how judgment becomes impaired after the alcohol astarts to flow. Someone had the bright idea of tying one end of a cable to the chimney and the other end to the bumper of a truck, hence making a zipline. We had done this before, of course, and figured that the chimney was a sound anchoring point for this expedition.
Everyone, except me, took their turn on the old zipline. Good times, we all had. After about nine zips, though, something bad happened. Seth had just landed safely on the ground when the chimney tumbled off the roof, landed in precisely the same spot that Seth had occupied only moments before. We were, understandbly, a little shocked. Zac came rushing out of the cabin. We were all prepared for him to go berserk and chase everyone out of the place. Instead, he started laughing fit to split. The humor of the near death experience was more than the rest of could handle, and we all broke into an orgy of laughter, the first few nervous chuckles quickly giving way to full belly laughs.
Afterward, I asked Zac what struck him as funny. He replied "I was just trying to think of how I'm going to explain this to The Old Man. Hey, Pop, did you HEAR that wind last night? Whew!"
We're from Northern Minnesota, and this is what we do.