Wife checked out (2)

[2ltl2lt]

Where we live the weather can be rather unpredictable. The general landscape is flat and the soil is sandy. The creeks and rivers are shallow, slow and lazy. As a teenager me and the few friends that I had were always fishing and riding dirtbikes and three wheelers on the creeks. During Spring Break of my freshman year two of my buddies and I decided to camp along a major river right where it met with the creek that we had spent so much time on. We had a small canoe that barely held all of the supplies we brought. It had rained pretty hard the week before and the river was moving faster than we had anticipated. My moms BF dropped us off at the bridge and it was about a mile upstream to our planned campsite. This was before his affair and during the time he and mom were partying all the time. They couldn't care less about three 14 year olds camping alone for three days.

Anyway, we loaded up in the canoe and start paddling with every ounce of strength in our bodies. We didn't make it to our original spot and just pulled out at the closest clearing to set up camp for the night. We built a fire and set out trot lines to try and catch our dinner. We sat around the fire talking about girls and life and al of the things that young men do. We were having a great time. We had a few snacks with us but we're relying on catching some fish for our main sustenance. About this time I see one of the limbs that we had tied a line to start to shake . I ran down to see what we had caught and quickly realized that it was something of size. I grab the line and try pulling it up on the bank while the other two were excitedly watching. As I got it closer and closer it struggles more. The string was cutting my hands and the creature on the other end was pulling harder. When I finally got it close I saw that it wasn't a fish but a gator. And a good sized one at that. As soon as it saw dry land it bolted straight for me! It was tangled in the line and thrashing about. I grabbed my knife to cut the thing loose and it slipped back into the water. We didn't catch any fish that night.

The next day the river had slowed back down so we loaded back up in the canoe to continue our adventure. We paddled for awhile until we found a good spot to fish and relax for a few hours. One of the buddies got out of the boat to go #2. He was gone a little too long so we went to look for him. He came out of the woods and said he found something cool we had to check out. He was the crazy one of the bunch so we knew it had to be something worth looking into. Me and my other friend follow him back to his discovery. It was a gas pipeline valve sticking up out of the ground. It appeared to be surrounded by a large puddle of water, which didn't seem all that unusual because of the recent rain. Well the crazy guy swishes a stick in the puddle and says watch this. He breaks out a cigarette lighter and strikes the flint, the stick he put in the puddle immediately burst into flames. We didn't know what he had found. Then he throws the burning stick down into the liquid surrounding the valve.

As soon as it hit the puddle we see this giant fireball develop and all the air around us rushing toward the flame. We ran like hell back toward the creek. Jumped in and watched what looked like something the Enola Gay dropped on Hiroshima! The biggest explosion you could imagine was going on less than 50 yards away. Then it was just a huge cloud of black smoke billowing into the air. We got back in the canoe and started back to the bridge where we were dropped off. It wasn't long before a police boat pulls up next to us and they order us to board their vessel. They took us back to the station for questioning.

For some reason they had me pegged as the mastermind of the crime. I didn't want to eat on anyone and denied everything they accused us of. We stayed in jail for 36 hours. Then the company that owned the pipeline sent an investigator to find out how three dumb kids were able to blow up this thing. They had all kinds of theories ranging from homemade pipe bomb to high powered rifle. Once they realized that their equipment was leaking all charges were dropped and we were free to go. We had made the news and I was the star of live at five. One of my football coaches saw me on the news and gave me extra duty for life. I had to stay an extra hour after practice every day running and bear crawling until my last practice of my senior year. I kinda became the leader of extra duty.

I guess I'll leave it here for tonight.