How Phil and Spence Burned Down the Big Hill By John Edward Boyd January 30, 2004 OK then. We lived at the lake, Eagle Lake, a little ways north of Willmar. About 6 miles probably, Not the first lake north of town. That was Foot Lake. It was shallow and had a muddy bottom. Robins Island was in the middle of it and there was a narrow road on a dirt berm to get out to the island. Sometimes we would see out-of-state cars parked near the lake and people out wading in it. But no locals ever went in the water on purpose. There was a picnic shelter on the island and some swings and stuff. Once the scouts, Troop 302 from the First Baptist Church, had a winter campout in the picnic shelter. You could close off the windows with shutter boards, but there was no heat. But thats another story. This story is about how Phil and Spencer burned down the Big Hill. Thats what the story is called, but it wasn't really the Big Hill. There was another hill called the Big Hill, and that is not the one they burned down. That one had Decathelineaus house on top of it and you could hardly ride a bike up it, it was so long and steep. Unless you had a new Columbia two speed bike with a special hill-climbing gear. Which I didn't, but some little kid did, so I usually borrowed it to do my paper route. Jim or Spence I think. The other little kids were mostly too little to even have bikes at the time. So as I was saying, the hill they burned down wasnt really the Big Hill, and we didn't call it that, but somehow the story got named how Spence and Phil burnt down the Big Hill. Even though that wasn't the name of the hill. See? Oh, and Decathelineaus had a couple of girls. The cutest one was called Blanche, and Jim was sort of sweet on her. She was about his size. But nothing ever came of it that I heard about. Past their house was where Brusses lived. They had a girl about Margaret's size, Carol Bruss I think. She and Margaret founded the Horse Club, to which no boys were ever admitted. In fact, I don't think anyone else was ever admitted. But it was quite the club and became locally famous, with its name serving as a useful nickname for Margaret if she ever displeased any of her brothers. The hill in question was right across the street from our house, which happened to be painted yellow and white at the time. In those parts, all the houses were on the lake side of the road, so there weren't any houses across the street. But there was a little hill, and on the back side of it, looking from the road, there was an old barn with pigeons in it. Not much else, maybe some hay or something. The hill was pretty much covered with a field, but it was never a planted field that I can remember. I think it was just pasture. But I don't remember seeing any stock in it, ever. So there was lots of tall grass, and the lack of livestock caused there to be hardly any cow pies whatsoever. So it was a good place to go for a walk or roll down the hill, or practice smoking grass and weeds and what not. One of the best features of the field was that after you were only a little ways into it, maybe 50 yards or so, you couldn't see the house, nor could anyone in the house see you or what you were doing. So one cloudy fall day Phil and Spence went over to the field to mess around. I guess. They never actually said what their plan was, come to think of it. No one missed them particularly. You didn't have to check out to go over there or walk around the neighborhood unless you were a really little kid, like Chuck or maybe Howard. We called him Howard in those days, but now of course that he's all grown up, his friends call him Howie. His first name is William, but he never went by that or any of its variant forms like Bill or Billy or Will or anything. We all thought he was Howard. Imagine our surprise when he was really old, like 40 or something, and we found out that he was called Howie at work. Couldn't believe it. Not that theres anything wrong with that. Its just that its always such a shock when you find out you don't even know the name of your brother. So he wasn't allowed to go on unauthorized expeditions that involved leaving the yard, since he was only about 5 at the time. Let alone Chuck, who was about 1 or 2. But Phil and Spence were older, about 8 and 11 or so I spose, and they had freedom commensurate with their maturity. But of course with that freedom came a measure of responsibility, which I'm not sure they kept really in the forefront of their minds that day as they set off on their expedition across the road to the field with the little hill, which as I earlier explained, in this story is called the Big Hill. Even though it wasn't. But we covered that already. And after they had been gone for some time. Phil came running back across the street and into the house. He seemed excited about something. Spence was several steps behind him, trying not to show so much excitement himself. "Quick Mom!" says Phil. "We need a bucket of water!" "What for?" says Mom. She always liked to have the big picture. I think it helped her to prioritize her actions. With seven kids in the home, she had apparently learned that not all requests were equally important. For instance, sometimes a little kid and a big kid would need different things at the same time. So she couldn't do them both of course and had to choose one over the other in a sort of priority fashion. That's why we were called the big kids. "Because the Big Hill is on fire and we need to put it out," says Phil. Or maybe he shouted that. I can't remember for sure. So Phil, Spence, Mom, and five or six of the rest of us hurried over to the field to see what was going on. Well, some of us wanted to see what was going on. I think a couple of us already knew. So when we get there, sure enough, there is a grass fire smoking and flaming around the edges. It wasn't too close to the barn, but not all that far away. I think the fire was maybe 15 feet across by then. Someone decided it was too far from the house for a hose, and it was obviously too big to put out with buckets and jars of water. In a little while the fire department showed up and somehow got the fire out. We weren't allowed to watch them work though. No idea how they did it. Mom got ahold of Spence and off they went to discuss causes and effects and so on. Spence came clean pretty much right off, explaining how he had had a couple of matches in the pocket of his jeans and when he was running he tripped and fell down. That, owing to a piece of particularly bad luck, caused the matches in his pocket to ignite, more or less spontaneously, and, darn it, set the Big Hill on fire. (I made up the darn it part just now. We weren't allowed to say darn it because that was just a euphemism for some real swearing, so naturally we didn't say it and Im pretty sure Spence didn't really say darn it. But it makes the story better if he would have so I just stuck that in there.) So then Mom collars Phil and gets him sort of off to one side by himself. "OK, Phil. I want you to tell me how this happened. But before you do, I should tell you that Spencer explained the whole thing just as it happened. So don't try to make anything up because I'll know right away if you are lying. So go ahead and tell me. I want to get your perspective on the events of the afternoon too." Being thus assured that dissembling was hopeless, Phil figured he better just say it how it happened. "Well, we were trying to smoke some of the dry grass in the field. And somehow Spence just started a fire there where we were sitting. It was pretty little, and we tried to blow it out. But the more we blew, for some reason, the bigger it got. So when we saw how big it was getting, we decided to come and get you so you could help put it out." "Oh." "Is that what Spence said?" "Pretty much," she said. So thats how they burned down the Big Hill and thats why they got spankings (belt spankings I think) when Dad got home that night.