It Was the Summer of '99

Nothing burns quite like a car. I should know, I’ve started a lot of fires. As a child, I was so good at starting fires, the Boy Scouts of America gave me a certificate. No one was more surprised than I when they threw me out for drinking and not arson. Now that I think of it, back then I liked fire more than Knightrider, Pee Wee Herman, and my pogo ball all rolled together.

Not that I was a child in the summer of ‘99. In fact I had just gotten out of the Army and moved back to my hometown. All my friends were still around and still doing nothing. With my ambition low, I was wont to join them. Because we did nothing during the day, my friends and I were able to spend the whole night drinking and generally causing a ruckus. The statutory limitations of a ruckus are surprisingly explicit in the state of Illinois; however, the rule book says nothing about flying port-o-potties.

The last decade of the twentieth century was a time of great change for my community. We were destroyed by a tornado in 1990, and as our little farm town rebuilt, the rest of the Chicagoland area decided to rebuild with us. I watched as my class of 100 students hemorrhaged at nearly 500. The fields that I once chipped golf balls into became housing developments. Our simple county roads bloated with traffic. Some colored folks even moved to town. This was a time for action.

Now I don’t claim any authorial credit for going to the construction cites and dumping over the port-o-potties. I imagine that it is the natural progression when the cow pastures give way to earthmovers. And I think the port-o-potty is more fun, in that every so often the weight will shift as you’re tipping it over and it will snap back at you like a boxing clown. But the idea of going airborne with these smelly cogs in the wheels of progress was entirely my own.

Most people know that an airplane gets its lift from the airfoil of the wings. What also provides lift is the fuselage, or body of the craft itself. That means even a plane without wings will fly given enough force. I figured that a station wagon was just the kind of force we needed. So with a fifty foot section of rope and three brave souls in the rear-facing seat, we began our reign of terror on urban sprawl.

As a port-o-potty is dragged along the pavement it makes a horrible sound. The wooden base screams and splits apart, sending press board chips spinning in its wake. The plastic roof liquefies from the friction, and the whole thing rolls and tumbles with every turn. Then at forty-five miles per hour the screams of this crude bathroom give way to the screams of the three brave souls as they see the miracle of flight. The manner in which a port-o-potty flies is liken to the June Bug, seemingly slow, and then, without notice, it crashes to the ground with a creationistic bang, destroying everything in its path.

As a gas station attendant, one would have to suspect that five young men buying a dollar’s worth of gas at three in the morning are up to no good. And we were. I’m not exactly sure why we began starting fires. I imagine that it began with someone saying,"We need to get rid of this couch tonight." or,"I’m not going to pay five dollars to recycle these tires." In any case, we always found something new and exciting to set aflame for some rube to happen upon.

Out of all the stupid pranks we pulled, I found the car burning to be most rewarding. Now of course we never targeted anyone’s actual car. As car fanatics, we viewed the automobile as a temple: something sacred. So, we looked for abandoned cars. I swear I never burnt a vehicle that I believed somebody actually owned. That would be wrong.

Driving past an abandoned car for successive days is like watching an animal decay in stop motion photography. First there is the ticket on the windshield. Then the second ticket. Then the tow notice on the radio antenna. Then the beaners smash the driver’s side window and steal the radio (no matter how worthless it is) and speakers. Then the kids smash the remaining windows. Then comes the spray paint graffiti of "J hearts M", or "Denny Rules!!!!", or (depending on the disposition of the artist towards this Denny) "Denny Sucks!!!!"

One thing that always amazed me was the fact that nobody ever slashed the tires of an abandoned car. Of course, if the tires were worth a damn (which they never seemed to be), they would be the first to go. Cinder blocks or worthless radios would be left under the exposed brake rotors.

The final stage of vehicular decomposition was always of my own doing. The fire. It began with a cursory scanning of the area to be sure nobody was coming. Then I would reach my arm into the busted out window and dump out whatever gas I had bought that night onto the front seats and floor. By this time the other guys would have gotten anxious and somebody would have already lit the roman candle (our preferred method of igniting a fire).

Usually by the third salvo, the red hot exploding star would land smack dab in the cabin of the vehicle. Then came the most beautiful sound in the world, the gasoline vapors all igniting simultaneously. A little black mushroom cloud would shoot out of every missing window. Sometimes if I was too close, my ears would pop from the rapid gas expansion.

For me this was the best part. This was the payoff for living a trite life with moronic friends. The cars never blew up like they do in Jerry Brockheimer films. They just burned and burned. After a couple minutes, somebody would catch sight of some headlights, and we would hasten back to our base(ment) of operations to critique each other on the night’s events until we passed out from drinking. By the time we woke up the burnt-out carcass of the car would be gone. Maybe the fire department came and put it out. Maybe the cops called a tow truck, as aforthreatened, and the smoldering wreck was carted to a junkyard unknown. The only thing left was a big black rectangle on the side of the road.

Is everything in this essay true? I don’t know. I drank a lot back then. We all drank a lot. In fact I had to drink two bottles of Southern Comfort just to write this essay. I don’t know why I wrote about this subject, or why I needed to get ripped to do it. But you know what? That’s just the way things were back in the summer of ‘99.