Jim Medding’s Blog

A few years ago, I had, shall we say, an unusual event occur. On a Saturday I was shuttling my sons and a couple of their friends to and from a local event in between doing my usual weekend projects. After dropping one of their friends at his home, I pointed the van towards our home. We were coming up the hill towards our house when all of a sudden things started to happen. Cars were honking their horns and my son, calmly, says “Dad, there’s smoke coming out of the vents.” I pulled the van over towards the curb, open the door and as I put my left foot on the ground, a Good Samaritan yells “There are flames coming out from under your van.” That’s about all I needed to know, bless his heart. I simultaneously turned the van off and told the boys to get out of the van and move away. Then I called 911. OK, your standard van fire, no big deal. The fire trucks show up and put the fire out; what’s so interesting about that?

Well, the interesting part, at least to me, is that as I was talking to the 911 operator, waiting for the fire truck to come, I watched traffic continue to squeeze by my van as it was spewing smoke and flames. At this point I realized that…Saturday’s are busy times and people are not going to be put out by the threat of death and destruction. Places to go; things to do; no time to wait for some rube’s silly van fire.