A little off the subject, not much, but a little.
When I was much younger and much, much dumber we had just bought our first house. It was the fall of 1978. We had several trees and my wife insisted we rake all the leaves and get rid of them. Now I grew up on a farm but we never raked or burned our leaves. Either the wind blew them away or they got mowed up the next year. Nobody in the family had time to rake leaves. It seemed like we spent a week raking leaves and dragging them on sheets to the back yard. Remember, I was much dumber. Our backyard at the time was wide open in the center with a few trees on the edges, so the leaves were piled up in the open area in the center. The neighbor was also raking his and because he didn't have a good place to burn I invited him to put his on our pile. I was trying to be friendly with the newly met neighbors and my wife thought it was a good idea. Remember the dumber part! It had rained a day or so into this odyssey so we had a pile of damp leaves about thirty feet in diameter and two to three feet high in the center. We tried to light them one afternoon and they would not burn. So I came up with the brilliant idea that a little gasoline would start the fire. I had enough sense to make sure the place I had tried to start earlier was completely wet down. Had a garden hose on the ground nearby. I explained to my wife that I would pour a little gas in the leaf pile, rake leaves over it, and pour a path back for her to drop a match on. I explained about fumes in clothes and that she had to let me get far away. So I'm out there in the middle and poured about a cup of gas out and she walks up and starts striking a match. I had a fit. Get back, get back, you're gonna get me burned. Hurt her feelings a little but she stepped back. And I poured a little more gas. She started to strike another match and I yelled at her again to stop. Lost my place there so I poured a little more gas on the pile not really watching what I'm doing but watching her. Took the rake and raked the leave around a little to cover the gas up. I was really dumb back then. Started pouring a trail back to her explaining that she needed to give me time to get away from the pile in case there were fumes in my clothes. Wasn't watching her but I heard the match strike and I threw the gas can as far as I could as she dropped the match.
Now we were ten or fifteen feet from the edge of the pile when the match was dropped. The entire pile of leaves exploded rattling windows all over the neighborhood. I had on jeans but she had on shorts. Let's just say that she didn't have to shave her legs for a couple weeks.
In my not watching what I was doing I had probably poured a gallon or more of gas on the pile of wet leaves. Raking them after the gas was poured and walking around on the pile while I argued with her had spread the fumes around and that entire pile burned in about thirty seconds with flames and burning leaves ten to twenty feet in the air. Luckily the ground was wet and the wind was still and we burned nothing else down. Around us there was just a flash of flame. How we escaped serious injury I do not know because we both stood there for a few seconds until the heat made us turn and run.
I do not use it to burn but if I must use gas to get wet brush burning I use a measuring cup that shows 1/4 cup and I fill it half full. But that is a very, very, last resort.
And I make sure I am the one throwing the match.
RSKY, now much older and not so dumb.
