The first time I caught on fire was in December of 1985. I was over at my new girlfriend Lona’s house for Christmas with her whole huge family (mother, dad, brother, sister, grandparents, and a bunch of aunts, uncles and cousins). This was back during the beginning of my Grateful Dead/hippie days so I had long hair half-way down my back and I think the relatives were a tad suspicious of me. I was pretty nervous but I successfully made it through the entire dinner without spilling my milk or saying anything too stupid. But then it was time for the big family picture in the living room, and since I was not in the family I graciously offered to take the picture.
So everybody gathers in the living room. They are all sitting/standing/centered around the couch and I am looking through the view-finder trying to fit them all in. I am trying to be cool…directing, telling them where to go, scrunch together, smile, etc. All the while I am backing farther and farther up in order to try and fit them all in the picture…finally it’s all starting to come together. Just as I get them all in the frame and I am about to snap the picture, suddenly two things happen simultaneously while I’m looking through the view-finder:
1) They all start waving their arms and yelling and several of them rush me.
2) I smell the nasty, acrid odor of burning hair.
In my effort to fit the whole family in the picture, I had backed up so far that I was up against the mantle above the fireplace where several small candles were burning and I had set my long hair ablaze. Like I said several of them had rushed me and I put down the camera as they took turns beating me about the head to put out the flames. So damn embarrassing, but they all had a good laugh once they got the flames out and for some reason I think that won them over as I eventually married into the family.
The next time I set myself on fire was on April 13th, 1988 in the parking lot of the Rosemont Horizon in Chicago, IL. I was there with friends for the first night of a 3-night run of Grateful Dead shows, closing out their 1988 spring tour. It was a cold, gray, blustery day out in the lot and I was taking a break from selling tie-dyed tee-shirts to have a beer and hang with some friends. I had long since quit smoking pot by then, but I had no trouble being in a circle while bowls were being passed. I would just say no thanks, and pass it on.
So I was in the circle, wearing a big, warm, Guatemalan poncho with large, loose sleeves. Someone on my left passed me a pipe and I took it and offered it to the guy on my right, but he declined and said just to hold it for a bit. So I held on to the pipe and we all chatted for a couple of minutes till the guy on my right was ready and I handed it to him. He tried to take a hit but there was nothing left in the bowl. Just then he pointed to my right arm and said: “Dude, you’re on fire.”
The burning ember from the pipe had blown out of the bowl into the bottom of my poncho sleeve. The ember had smoldered for awhile and eventually caught the fabric on fire. As I looked down I saw the thick white smoke billowing out of my right sleeve and felt the flames burning my arm hairs. Then I saw that the flames had made their way through the sleeve and were licking up the outside of my poncho arm. I had seen enough, so I whipped the poncho up over my head, threw it on the ground and stomped out the flames while patting out the last of the little fires on my arm hairs. Again, slightly embarrassing but we all had a good laugh once I got the flames out.
Slightly interesting sidenote: After being on fire that day, I thought it would be a cool coincidence if the Dead played ‘Fire On The Mountain’ in concert that night (in it’s usual place in the 2nd set). Well they did not play it that night, but on the final night there in Chicago on 4/15/88 they opened the 1st set with the ‘Scarlet Begonias/Fire On The Mountain’ medley, which was extremely rare and cool for it to be in the 1st set. Another slightly interesting sidenote now that we’re on the subject of April 15th: As it was the final day of the tour, I was done selling my tee-shirts and just wanted to relax and take in the parking lot scene full of traveling hippies selling their wares. We found a dude selling $1 beers and settled in for a long afternoon of hanging out and having fun with my friends. After a few hours I suddenly I remembered the tax forms that I had hurriedly shoved into the glove compartment before I left Minneapolis for the tour. Dammit! I stumbled over to my car, pulled out all the paperwork, squinted hard, and set about the task of doing my taxes while inebriated in the front seat of a car in a parking lot in Chicago on April 15th. I got ‘em done…but then had to find a place to mail them. Nothing for miles around except warehouses, 10-lane freeways and O’Hare airport. I couldn’t drive, so I set out walking and after about an hour of wandering around I found a dude at some building who said he would mail them for me. I ended up getting a $43,000 refund that year so I must have done something right! Just kidding.
Okay, I digress. My third brush with flame was a couple of months later in the summer of 1988 on my front porch in Minneapolis. Me and about 10 other people lived in the old Pillsbury mansion just off 4th street a few blocks west of Dinkytown. A cool friend of mine from California named Pete Rhoads was in town living in his VW bus and needed a place to park it for the summer, so I said he could park out in front of the mansion. He could ‘live/sleep’ in the bus, but come inside when he wanted to eat, shower or hang out. Pete happened to have access to large tanks of nitrous oxide (laughing gas) so for ‘rent’ he would make sure that there was always a tank set up for us on our front porch for the summer.
So one afternoon we were sitting around the tank giggling like crazy when I came up with a brilliant idea. People like marijuana smoke, and people like nitrous oxide gas…so why not combine the two? Like I said I had quit smoking pot a few years earlier, but I decided for the sake of science it would be okay for me to go with it just this once to see if my ingenious idea would work. So one of my friends got a metal pot pipe going, screwed a metal cap with a screened hole on it, and then I quickly attached the rubber hose from the nitrous tank to the cap of the bowl. Do you see where I am going with this? Then I put the mouthpiece of the bowl to my lips and instructed somebody to turn on the gas. My theory was that the gas would push the pot smoke through the bowl, into my mouth, and I would get a nice combination of pot smoke and nitrous…two great tastes that taste great together!
Sadly, my 4 years in college had failed me miserably as I stupidly forgot how highly combustible gases are. So when my friend released the friendly gas it hit the burning marijuana embers in the bowl, ignited, and instantly caused a not-so-friendly explosion in the pipe. The exhaust from the blast had nowhere to go but up into my mouth, causing my cheeks to expand to Dizzy Gillespie-like proportions before rocking my head back. I spent the next few anxious moments spitting out chunks of red-hot pot embers and a white-hot screen that were burning my tongue, throat and roof of my mouth. Again, slightly embarrassing and quite shocking but we all had a good laugh once I got all the fire out of my mouth.
Lessons learned? None really on the first two incidents. My hair grew back, both on my head and my arm. With the third incident my cheeks hurt for a few days but shrunk back to normal size fairly quickly and I have never since tried to combine fire and gas except in the grill on my back porch. So I guess, basically…I learned that when it comes to catching on fire, it’s better not to. Oh yeah, and don’t put off doing your taxes till the last day.
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