Tales of Spontaneous Combustion

Act One: It was a clear, crisp, pleasant August late afternoon (yesterday, to be exact), and certain carpenters were preparing to leave their jobsite (my house, to be exact) for the day. A certain M.A., whose humor is so dry and deadpan that I still, after almost a year of regular dealings with him, cannot decipher when my leg is being pulled, calmly and casually mentioned something about a pile of oily rags spontaneously combusting and not putting them too near the house. What he was saying kind of "went in one ear and out the other" until I noticed the aforementioned linseed oil-soaked rags in a neat little pile, smoldering and smoking away.




Act Two: It was a hot, steamy summer day in North Asheville (a recent day this summer), and L.C. was busily working in her family's garden shop in Woodfin. All was ho-hum daily grind, until L.C. noticed that a coconut hull- lined hanging basket had burst into flames upon receiving a concentrated ray of sunlight from a nearby ornamental glass garden globe. Rushing to the site of spontaneous combustion, she grabbed the flaming planter and tossed it into the small creek which runs between the shop and its garden- the very same creek that a poor raccoon met its fatal fate a recent night in a flash flood and became rather grotesquely "hung up" on the small bridge which crosses the little creek.






Act Three: It was a cold late winter day in South Asheville, and J.L. (aka Lil Razz) was enjoying a rare weekend day alone in her shared house. She stepped into the kitchen to find a little snack, and noticed a small round burnt spot on the counter top, where earlier that day had lain a solitary Advil pill. The burn spot was the size and shape of the Advil, and the Advil was gone. After several minutes of concentrated investigative thinking, J.L. realized a ray of sunlight had streamlined through the kitchen window and through a clear glass pitcher of water on the counter in perfect relation to an Advil to cause a "magnifying glass" combustion of this particular over-the-counter muscle relaxing pain pill. Pity the pre-menstrual housemate who came home to discover the pill had ceased to be available.

Act Four: It was a warm spring evening at the Asheville Pizza and Brewing Company, where three friends awaited a cheese pizza. One of the friends stepped out for a breath of fresh air and a look about, and noticed billows of smokes rising from the mulch on the side of the driveway of the neighboring food enterprise "Heavenly Ham". She quickly ascended the steep and uneven steps between the two parking lots and discovered a sizable "mulch fire" just outside Heavenly Ham. Too hot to stomp out, the fire needed "a little something more." The investigative pizza customer noticed a group of young Heavenly Ham employees loitering around a dumpster not far away, smoking cigarettes and laughing. She approached the posse, and said, "There's a mulch fire in your mulch." One of the Heavenly Ham employees sighed and said, "Not again," before casually retrieving a bucket of water and tossing it upon the smoldering wood matter.

When you think about it, there is danger everywhere. Matter waiting to spontaneously combust. Fires waiting to burn. Danger, I tell you. Beware, fellow flesh-wearers, of material that generates its own heat and of glass that magnifies light. As M.W. so poignantly put it: "Prismatic-like objects- they're not just for rainbows..."