The Great Family Legend of the Flamethrower and the Bees

(NB: Like all good legends, this one has been told and retold and transformed in the telling. The truths it tells about my family are true truths. I wouldn’t swear in a courtroom to the accuracy of some of the specifics, however)

Shortly after my parents married, they went on a quest to find some wide open spaces where their theoretical children could roam, and settled in an old farmhouse with a tottering, rusting barn on the back corner of the property. It became (or already was, and they just continued the tradition) a place to shove odds and ends that weren’t easily disposed of—old tires, riding mowers that neither rode nor mowed, piles of worn out carpet, and other similar junk.

But the west wind that comes ripping across the wide fields that surround my parents’ house are more powerful than rusted sheet metal. I remember watching through the back windows during a storm, as those metal sheets would arch back, flapping slowly and rhythmically. Over the years the bits of barn that remain were peeled off piece by piece, until finally the whole thing began to collapse on itself.

It wouldn’t do to have a giant yard for children to play in if there was a giant rusty metal death trap in the back yard, so my parents rented a massive dumpster from Ray’s Trash Service and had it parked next to the barn. Some big piece of heavy machinery came to visit for the day to pick up the busted riding mowers and other super heavy pieces to dump them in the back, and after that it was my dad and my Gapaw in work gloves. For several days, it was slow going.

Then one gorgeous morning, my sister and I awoke to a BOOM.

We scrambled out of bed and to our bedroom window, where we saw a mushroom cloud unfolding itself into the cloudless summer sky from behind the garage, in the general direction of the barn.

Knowing Dad and Gapaw, we were perhaps not as flabbergasted as one might have expected.

That morning, while we were still asleep, they had already been hard at work through the archaeological layers that were the wreckage of the barn, when some bees took exception to their work and started to buzz menacingly around them. After backing up and cautiously inspecting the area, they realized that under the giant pile of old carpeting that they had been attempting to clear, a hive of bees had made itself a home.

My dad hates bees. At least, that’s what he claims. I’ve since come to realize that when guys say things like “I hate bees” or “I hate bats” or anything else like that, what they actually mean is “I have a mortal terror of bees and/or bats.” At any rate, his aversion to bees crushed my childhood dreams of having my own beehives, in spite of my extensive research into the subject.

He and my Gapaw stood back for a long time, watching the bee sentries sternly patroling the perimeter.

Finally, Gapaw (the instigator) says slowly, “You know, what you need….is a flamethrower.”

“That’s it!” says Dad (the engineer), and runs to the garage, leaving Gapaw to watch the bees and wonder what sort of abomination of desolation he’d just unleashed.

My dad returned with the gas can he used for the (functional) riding mower, a pint jar, and a smaller box in his pocket. He filled the pint jar with the gasoline and tossed it on the pile of carpet.

More bees appeared to inspect this mysterious and vaguely threatening phenomenon.

Pleased, he tossed on another pint, and then one more.

The bees were really vexed now, a whole humming cloud of venom and sting.

Dad pulled out the box of matches from his pocket. He couldn’t get close enough to the pile of carpet, so he grabbed a fistful of matches and struck them on the side of the box in the same movement as he threw them.

Fwoom! The bees vaporized in the resulting fireball, and my sister and I woke up.

There was obviously no more work to be done on the barn that day. Dad and Gapaw watched the flames for awhile with satisfaction, and then went inside to tell Mom what had happened. Later my dad would return to the (now cooled) ashes to find all sorts of interesting treasures to show guests, like solidified pools of aluminum from an old mower deck.

They occupied a place of honor on the pantry shelf for several years before vanishing into the ether where all such sacred objects go, alongside the Holy Grail and the Art of the Covenant.