Our Christmas season officially closed today as my brother and his family headed back to Nebraska. My mother who earlier had thought about calling Christmas off due to the financial meltdown, recovered and was able to shower all of us with gifts, and put together some really great meals as well. I was able to work my brother nearly to death for several days, and even managed to get my lawyer uncle to help me push some cattle through the "crush"(we call it a squeeze chute) yesterday. Mrs KF and I still have our tree up, I suppose sometime this week we will have to take it down and return the ornaments to the boxes, kind of a letdown, another letdown is after a two week vacation from work Amy resumes teaching children to speak correctly tomorrow, although one of her schools was damaged by what may have been a small tornado the night of the 27th(the night I thought our house would blow off the foundation) and the building will not be useable perhaps for the rest of the school year.
The day after Christmas may have been the most eventful of the entire year(I believe my days are right,it might have been the 27th). We outwinter in Kansas, on my one ton Chevy pickup(the one with the 454 that gets about 8mpg) I have a Deweze bale bed. Out in the pastures I use it to unroll big bales. The alfalfa tends to not want to unroll, and I often must go back and forth a while to get it to start. The day in question was the day it got to about 70F, and the frost went out of the ground, so it was slick. I had the pickup in 4WD, and the back and forth took me over the top of the unrolled hay, wrapping some around the front driveshaft, bringing it into contact with the manifold. The pasture was 2 miles from the house as the crow flies, but 4 on the road, about a mile into the return trip I smelled smoke, then saw it. Using my firemans instincts I knew that if I drove really fast the wind would keep the flames down, but the minute I stopped the fanning effect would let it explode(I had a good idea what had happened when I saw the smoke). I called the dispatcher and told her the situation, told her to send the firetrucks to my house as I believed I could make it home. Then I called Amy and told her I was on fire, and to be in the yard with the garden hose in hand and the water running.
Only recently has our county numbered our roads and given us addresses. In the old days, when you called a fire in you simply went by your name, or gave so many miles one direction or another from town. Most of us know where everyone lives, but most of us do not know the addresses, as was evidenced by the fact that Amy had heard the fire call over my pager(that I had not been carrying, but am now) but did not recognize the address given was ours. When I slowed down make the corner, the flames erupted from beneath the pickup, as I pulled into my farmyard I was proud to see my better half at the ready with water running, I hit a bump as I pulled in and shook much of the burning hay loose and it fell in the drive, I was able to get the rest out with the garden hose which was a good thing, because the fire trucks went the wrong direction at first, until I had Mrs KF retrieve my 2 way radio and I hollered over it that they were not on the right road. Alls well that ends well, remarkably no damage was done, other than to my ego.