JILLIAN: Sayde is one of my chapter mates and she’s a wicked cool chica! She’s a lot of fun and has a varied career as a flower grower, cowgirl, horse-riding hot momma, now novelist! Here she is, show her some love. AND, she has a giveaway at the end. Check it out.
SAYDE: Hello everyone! I had originally planned to discuss my upcoming release Rawhide Angel, but I received a hilarious email from my husband today which brought back so many memories of my childhood. I’m going to share this email with you all first then share a story about my brother, myself, gasoline, oil, and a large bile of bushes we’d cut down.
Boys will be boys….. Don’t know who wrote this but he has a way with words that makes one visualize being right there beside him. Good read. Life as a child growing up inOklahoma…
Around age 10, my dad got me one of those little badass compound bow beginner kits.
Of course, the first month I went around our land sticking arrows in anything that could get stuck by an arrow.
Did you know that a 1955 40 horse Farmall tractor tire will take 6 rounds before it goes down? Tough sumbich.
That got boring, so being the 10 yr old Dukes of Hazard fan that I was, I quickly advanced to taking strips of cut up T-shirt doused in Chainsaw gas tied around the end and was sending flaming arrows all over the place.
One summer afternoon, I was shooting flaming arrows into a large rotten oak stump in our backyard. I looked over under the carport and saw a shiny brand new can of starting fluid (Ether). A light bulb went off in my head. I grabbed the can and set it on the stump. I thought that it would probably just spray out in a controlled manner once pierced by my arrow. Lets face it, to a 10 yr old mouth-breather like myself, (Ether) really doesn’t “sound” all that flammable.
So, I went back into the house and got a 1 pound can of pyrodex (black powder for muzzle loader rifles). My intention was to sprinkle a little bit around the (Ether) can but it all sorta dumped out on me. No biggie, a 1 lb. Pyrodex and 16 oz (Ether) should make a loud pop, kinda like a firecracker. You know what? I’m going back in the house for the other can. Yes, I got a second can of pyrodex and dumped it out on the stump too. Now I’m cookin’.
I stepped back about 15 ft and lit the 2 stroke arrow. I drew the nock to my cheek and took aim. As I released I heard a clunk as the arrow launched from my bow. In a slow motion time frame, I turned to see my dad getting out of his truck… He just got home from work. OH SHOOT!
So help me God, it took 10 minutes for that arrow to go from my bow to the can. My dad was walking towards me in slow motion with a WTF look in his eyes.
I turned back towards my target just in time to see the arrow pierce the starting fluid can right at the bottom. Right through the main pile of pyrodex and into the can. Oh wow!!!
When the shock wave hit, it knocked me off my feet. I don’t know if it was the actual compression wave that threw me back or just my reflex jerk from 235 fricking decibels of sound. I caught a half a millisecond glimpse of the violence during the initial explosion and I will tell you there was dust, grass, and bugs all hovering 1 ft above the ground as far as I could see. It was a low fog layer full of grasshoppers, spiders, and worms.
The daylight turned purple. Let me repeat this: THE FRICKING DAYLIGHT TURNED PURPLE.
There was a big sweetgum tree out by the gate going into the pasture. Notice I said “was.” That sumbich got up and ran off.
So here I am, on the ground blown completely out of my shoes with my thundercats T-Shirt shredded, my dad is on the other side of the carport having what I can only assume is a Vietnam flashback:
“ECHO BRAVO CHARLIE YOU’RE BRINGIN’ EM IN TOO CLOSE!! CEASE FIRE. DAMN IT CEASE FIRE!!!”
His hat has blown off and is 30 ft behind him in the driveway. All windows on the north side of the house are blown out and there is a slow rolling mushroom cloud about 2000 ft. Over our backyard.
There is a Honda 185 3-wheeler parked on the other side of the yard and the fenders are drooped down now, touching the tires.
I wish I knew what I said to my dad at this moment. I don’t know – I know I said something. I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t hear inside my own head. I don’t think he heard me either… Not that it would really matter. I don’t remember much from this point on. I said something, felt a sharp pain, and then woke up later. I felt a sharp pain, blacked out again, woke up later… Repeat this process for an hour or so and you get the idea. I remember at one point my mom had to give me CPR, and Dad screaming “Bring him back to life so I can kill him again!!!” Thanks Mom.
One thing for sure… I never had to mow around that stump again. Mom had been complaining about that thing for years and dad never did anything about it. You gotta give me credit for stepping up to the plate and taking care of business.
Dad sold his muzzle loader a week or so later.
I still have some sort of bone growth abnormality, either from the blast or the beating, or both.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, get your kids into archery. But only under close supervision. It will teach you parental responsibility.
Okay, so that story had me crying I was laughing so hard when I read it. This is a great example of writing something so real you feel like you are there with this kid. The sad part is, my brothers and I did crazy things like that all the time and as a mother I’m horrified that my son and daughter will do those things too!
One day my oldest brother and I decided we wanted to start a bonfire one afternoon. My parents worked shiftwork so we were alone. No parental supervision and they assumed we’d be okay left to our own devices. This was only days after my other brother stabbed his foot all the way through with a frog gig. Let me just say, that was horrifying and the brother still has a scar from us pulling that barb out! Anyway, oldest sibling and myself want to build a fire. No problem right? Wrong, it was late afternoon and it had rained earlier in the day. Of course all the wood we gathered was wet. Me, I’m maybe twelve, brother is sixteen so we’re really smart and decide that if we just pour some motor oil on it that it’ll start. Oldest brother runs to the barn, leaving me to arrange the firewood in the “best burn pattern”. His words not mine. I remember thinking, “HUH?” and him saying “Stack them crossways so the air can get between the logs and it’ll burn faster.” Okay, whatever. I don’t care so I just throw all the logs into one big pile that eventually was taller than I was. Let me just say, we were planning on having one hell of a fire!
So, older brother came running back down the hill holding a container of 10w40 motor oil, he looks at the pile shakes his head and cusses my stupidity. However, he did NOT rearrange that pile of wood! Nope, instead he poured the oil all over the wood. He then looks back at me, “You think that oil will burn?”
Ok, this should have clued me in that my brother had no idea what he was doing. He was asking the twelve year old for advice on starting a fire!
“How the heck should I know? I’d pour some gas on it to be safe.” I admit this wasn’t my brightest idea but again, he was sixteen and should have known better. I was just a kid.
“That’s a good idea. I’ll be back.”
Well, at this point I’d gotten bored. I roam off to the fence and start messing with the horses. As I look back, my brother is dosing the logs down with a FULL five gallon can of gasoline. The smell of the fumes was strong twenty feet away, so just imagine what my brother smelled. I should stop here and mention that over the years I’ve learned if you can smell gas fumes they can also be set on fire. That little fact would have been very handy to know as my brother leaned over the five foot tall heap of black oil covered logs.
As he pulled the matches out of his pocked he looks back at me, nods his head and smiles.
WARNING WARNING. That is what should have been going off, instead, I yell “Light it up!”
And with that my friends a bright ball of orange and red flames lit the sky, burning my corneas, horses scatter like roaches, and all I can hear is my brother screaming, “HOLY SHIT, I singed my arm hair off!”, as he’s rolling on the horse crap covered ground trying to put out the embers which had landed on his clothes.
Not only had he nearly melted my eyeballs out of the sockets, he’d also singed his arm hair, eyebrows, and created an explosion so loud and high the neighbors called the fire department who were there in remarkable time.
Years later, we told our parents about this and many, many, many more horrific but funny instances. Needless to say they were horrified but we all survived with little brain damage and a few scars. Plus we’ve got the best stories to tell! In every one of my books I try to bring a little of the crazy half cocked situations that I experienced as a child into them. Have you ever done something so insane that now as an adult you wander how you survived?
Thanks everyone, and I’ll be giving away one copy of my backlist to a commenter today!
Sayde Grace
For more information about Sayde please visit her website, http://www.saydegrace.com
Jillian Chantal 