Cabin Fire

Yesterday, I was looking through some old film transfers from when I was young. There were a lot of Christmases and rarely anything else. That is, until I was old enough to discover how much fun it was to operate the film camera.

One of the funniest, I was laughing out loud while watching this, was from 1972, when Dad had us cutting the grass at our cabin in East Texas. I was running the 8mm film camera while my brother Johnny was pushing the lawnmower, Donny was using the sling blade, and Dad, well, he was taking care of the tall grass under the wooden pole fence. He was pouring gasoline under the fence, then threw a match on it. The fire under the fence ignited quickly. Suddenly, a geyser of water erupted when the plastic water line to the cabin ruptured in the fire. You could tell I was laughing by the way the camera was shaking, but I kept filming. Dad was telling Johnny to get the van and bring it out onto the road. He wanted the water geyser to wash the van.

Dad was a true rocket scientist. He not only played a part in building aircraft that reached Mach 4+ and putting the first man on the moon, but he also turned a bad situation into something useful.

I must transfer these memories to video files so I can share them with family. Years ago, I transferred them from film to Beta Cam, then DVD. We lost the original films, Beta Cam tapes, and our DVD copies in the flood. I borrowed these DVDs from my mom earlier this week.