The Barn Burner They called him "Boots"

I remember this young man.  He was a strange walking, figure.  He was crossing the ranch with an unusual gait.  His uneven steps caused his body to jump up and down like no one else.  When he lurched up to me, I could see that he was missing one shoe!  He had crossed several acres of rough ground with close cut stubble under foot. He didn’t seem to notice.  I asked, “Where is your shoe?”  He didn’t know,” Perhaps in the car or at the house.”  He was noticeably, handicapped.  My tenant in #1 had known his family.  Some member had purposely killed himself in Boot’s presence.  It seemed that Boots was worse after that.  He couldn’t survive alone and my tenant ‘kept’ him handicap and all.  He could drive and was fastenated by cars.  He stole gasoline from his benefactor.  He didn’t leave a drop in the tank.  (It was several miles to Sun City for the first gasoline available.)  Boots had another bad habit, smoking!

We all do dumb things but Boots did them more often!  Yet, he could be helpful on the ranch.  (He helped me dig a trench for a water line to the barn.)** I don’t think that he did bad things to be bad.  He just failed to tie one thing to another.  Like cause and effect.

I used what had been a stable, farrowing shed and work shop, as a place to keep the tractor.  It had a cement floor and a tin roof.  I moved in a heavy workbench and stored tractor stuff there.

When I returned from a weekend at home, I was told that there had been a fire!  (A fire in the country usually means a burn down.)  A neighbor passing by on Gloria Road had seen smoke and flame.  He told me that he used a small **hose to put out a fire around my tractor. I hurried out to look for myself.

**Here, Boots may have helped provide the water line that was used to put out his fire.

A tractor is mostly cast iron, steel and tin!  I could see the broken glass of the sediment cup, on the floor. Bright solder showed how hot the tank had been.  The battery was an open oval.  A salad bowl of acid.  The steering wheel was blackened, the rear tires also.  The electrical wiring was charred and naked.  Someone had been stealing gas!  Someone stupid and in great danger!  A short, blackened, cigarette lay too close by.

Overhead, the wooden rafters and sheeting had been partially burned.  Most damage was right over the tractor.  The corrugated tin roofing had buckled and the galvanize coat had lost its shine.  I could see what had happened.  I was told more later.

Boots was doing two bad things at the same time.  (Crime is like that.)  With a live ‘smoke’ in his mouth, he smashed the glass full of gas under the gas-tank, hoping to drain it.  Burning gas splashed into his face and on to his hands and forearms.  The draining gas fed the flame as the plume licked the roof!

IMPORTANTLY, there was no explosion and no fatality.  And one of my Good Neighbors put out the blaze

-Repair of the 8 N Ford.  It survived to work for us again-

The tractor, if it could feel, suffered less than Boots.  I was able to install a new wiring harness and distributor cap, filter bowl etc. by myself.  The gas-tank didn’t leak. The tires were up. The radiator didn’t leak.  I had help shoring up the damaged rafters in the tractor shed.

I have wondered how well Boots recovered from his burns.  I wonder too if he could have learned from his mistake. (He has learned some other things along the way.)

We never saw Boots again.