This happened when I was thirteen, in 1960.

In those days one of my best friends was a guy named Bubba. We were the same age, about the same height, same brown hair, and people sometimes mistook us for brothers.

At that point the similarity ended. I was bookish and a little shy; Bubba was athletic and outgoing. I was cautious; Bubba was a daredevil. He was the first to attempt the four-foot jump to the warehouse roof from the top of the boxcar always parked on the Colfax Street siding.

I and others eventually ended up making the jump and doing most of the other things Bubba did. But he was always the first.

Bubba's grandparents lived across the alleyway behind my house, and every Wednesday evening he and his family, who lived at the other end of Podunk, would visit. After supper we would meet in the alley, sit and smoke the cigarettes we had swiped from our parents' unguarded packs, and plan an evening's worth of mischief.

The alleyway itself was one of those old-fashioned affairs you don't see anymore, at least in newer neighborhoods - a narrow, maybe fifteen-foot wide passage between backyard fences. Each homeowner was responsible for upkeep on the half of the alley directly behind his house. (Of course, that translated into extra mowing every Saturday morning for me or my brother Herb.) In some earlier time I suppose garbage or milk trucks used those alleyways, but by 1960 that function had long since ceased.

The section of the alley between my and Bubba's grandparents' houses - with its shielding trees, bushes, fences, and garages - provided the perfect place for a couple of aspiring juvenile delinquents to smoke cigarettes.

On this particular night as we were lounging on the grass in the cool dark of an early autumn evening, contentedly puffing our Winstons, Bubba told me about a discovery he had made: in his grandparents' garage - no more than ten feet from where we sat - was a large can filled with gasoline. Probably for their lawnmower.

Now, for two thirteen year-old boys on an autumn evening with not much to do, a can of gasoline has limitless possibilities. But where my mind contemplated torching an ant mound or lighting a small fire in the trash barrel (in those pre-EPA days people sometimes burned some of their trash in alleyway barrels), Bubba's leapt to grander visions. He wanted to light the can. All at once.

And carry it, lantern-like, down the alley.

Wow.

I thought that might be something worth seeing. I said, simply, "OK".

Without any hesitation Bubba ground out his smoke, got up and disappeared through the fence into the darkness of his grandparents' backyard. Several minutes later he returned carrying the can and a large white cloth.

"For my hands", he said. "The can may get hot."

I marveled at his foresight.

He handed me the matches and began wrapping his hands in the ends of the cloth. As he did, I studied the can. It had once been a paint can, identifiable by the metal loop-handle and indented rim. Gasoline filled it almost to the top. The aroma was powerful.

When he finished he looked like a boxer wearing white gloves joined together by a thick rope. He bent over, took hold of the can, and gingerly raised it to chest level. Holding it just so, he reminded me for a moment of Father O'Connor at Mass, chalice raised before the altar. Prometheus in bluejeans.

For my part I was beginning to have second thoughts: something about the volume of gasoline was troubling. But I was able to quickly shrug it off. Besides, he was the one who was going to carry the can. I was just going to watch. Such is adolescent logic.

"Ready?", he asked.

I nodded.

"OK", he whispered. "Let's do 'er."

In the darkness I fumbled a match out of the box and struck it. The metal can gleamed in the sudden light. I have a vague recollection that in that final moment, my mental image of what I was about to see was a gentle blue flame floating placidly on the surface of the gasoline.

Sometimes on the threshold of momentous events there is a pause between the present and the next moment not yet born - a fleeting interlude when the future still has more than one path open and participants are given a last opportunity to alter the course of things to come.

More quickly than it could be contemplated on that autumn night in that dark Podunk alley, that moment came and flew away. My fingers opened with a will of their own.

"Ah...", I said.

The match dropped.

As soon as match hit gas the alleyway went supernova. It was like the sun had risen. There was a whump! sound, like when you throw a match on a barbecue pit you've doused with too much charcoal starter. Only louder. Much louder.

Simultaneously there was a whoosh! , as a column of flame shot skyward, carrying most of Bubba's eyelashes and eyebrows with it. In my memory of that flash-frozen moment I can still see him standing there in the nuclear glare of a ten-foot high pillar of flame, grimacing, arms stretched as far away from body as possible, head turned to one side, tiny wisps of smoke curling up from the charred stubble above his eyes.

The heat was fantastic, but amazingly, he did not let go. I think he knew on some instinctive level that to drop the can and create a burning lake in that confined alley with wood shingle garages and wooden fences all around would have been catastrophic, and what was merely a dangerous situation would instantly become property- and life-threatening.

So there he was, riding the tiger with no way off.

The heat was really ramping up now and I had to step back a few paces. I remember the beads of sweat glistening on his still-smoking forehead.

"Damn!", he shouted, and started running.

"Storm drain!"

Now, if you've never seen a thirteen-year old boy running down a nighttime alley carrying a ten-foot high jet of flaming gasoline, let me tell you: you have missed something. It was spectacular! Any Israelites in the vicinity that evening would have been proud to follow that pillar of fire.

For Bubba though, I don't think pride was part of his emotional equation at the moment. He was holding the thing off to one side as he ran, so the fire wouldn't be blown back into his face. (Again, I could only marvel at his mental adroitness.) However, every step he took sloshed a little of the burning liquid out of the can onto the cloth, so he was rapidly losing his heat-shield. Some also fell to the ground, leaving what looked like a trail of shining footprints in his wake. Some fell on his tennis shoes, and I was treated to the sight of Bubba's feet actually glowing as he pumped away down the alley. Tree-shadows danced on the sides of houses as he passed.

All in all, it was the sort of thing you don't see every day.

Now, at the end of the block where the alley T's into Glenarm Street, there was a decision to be made. The nearest storm drains were half a block away in either direction, where Glenarm intersected with Hoffman to the east, or Shotwell to the west. Too far either way. (Probably a good thing. I don't know what kinds of gases accumulate in storm drains, but the vision of nearby manhole covers firing into the night sky still triggers an occasional shudder.)

The heat-shield was deteriorating rapidly. It was at this moment, confronted with a split-second decision of great consequence, to be made literally on the run, that Bubba rose to the occasion and displayed a wisdom greatly in excess of his years. Directly across Glenarm, the alley continued on between the unfenced Miller and Raney backyards. When we were little kids, we had often played baseball on a toddler-sized field laid out in the Miller's backyard, and stored deep in Bubba's experience bank was the memory from those days of a three-foot deep water meter hole in the alley into which unwary left-fielders would occasionally stumble. It was for this hole that flame-jet toting, sneaker-glowing Bubba was making a beeline.

(You may be wondering what I was doing all this time. Well, what could I do? Offer to help him carry it? Anything I might attempt would only slow him down. That being the case, I observed, with keen interest.)

In less than five seconds, Bubba crossed Glenarm, traversed the deep ditch on the other side, made it to the hole, and dropped the can in. The fire, no longer confined, instantly roared to even greater height, volumn, and brightness. It was easily twenty feet high, reaching almost to the overhead telephone lines.

At about this time lights began coming on and doors began opening, and we turned our attention to putting as much distance between ourselves and that roaring beacon as possible. Bubba scampered back across Glenarm, beating the smoking remnants of the cloth against his pants leg the whole way. We paused for a quick look at our handiwork, turned and ran as fast as our thirteen year-old legs would carry us until we reached a safe vantage point several houses away.

Within five minutes the fire trucks arrived, and within two minutes of that the fire was out. The show was over. Other than Bubba's facial hair and the cloth (which I'll get back to in a minute), there had been no real damage. Very quickly, we ran into our houses to await the return of our parents/grandparents, who were among the throng gathered at the scene of the crime. The whole neighborhood must have been there.

"Son, where have you been tonight?"

"Gee, Mom, we were playing over at the railroad tracks and just came back when we saw all the fire trucks."

Yeah, right

Of course, everyone knew we had done it. Even without the evidence plainly visible on Bubba's forehead they would have known. They knew the two of us too well. My butt was sore for days afterward.

But boy, it had been some show.

It doesn't end there. When thirteen year-olds make bad decisions their decisions are bad all the way.

The following Sunday morning, just when I thought the incident had faded away, my mother got a phone call from Bubba's mother. It seems that instead of simply - wisely - throwing the ruined cloth away somewhere, Bubba had taken the opportunity while awaiting the return of his parents and grandparents from the fire to put it back where he had found it. Where he had found the cloth was his grandfather's closet. What the cloth had been, prior to its participation in the night's festivities, was his grandfather's Sunday-go-to-church shirt.

In addition to wondering in the intervening years what the neighborhood must have thought when the gasoline first ignited, I have often tried to visualize the look on his grandfather's face as he pulled his best shirt from the closet that Sunday morning as he was getting ready for church. Did it come out in his hand in one piece, or segments? Was it still even recognizable as a shirt, with burnholes and chunks of sleeves missing? Of course, what I wonder about most of all is why? I know I asked Bubba that question and I know he gave me an answer, but for the life of me I can't recall what it was he said that prompted him to put that shirt back.

If you're out there somewhere reading this, Bubba, drop me a line. I'd really like to know.

T. H.