Except that I was driving down the road and there was a fucking volkswagen completely ingulfed in flames in a bank parking lot.
Walmart, it turns out, does not have hummus. I searched high and low. I asked. No, Walmart does not have hummus. So I bought my bagels and orange juice and drove down to ingles for hummus. As I neared ingles, I noticed that there was a particularly horrible odor in the air, even for papermill country. And there was an awful lot of smoke blowing across the road.
Some crazy hillbilly no doubt burning trash, I thought, and turned into the parking lot at ingles and fucking christ is that a car on fire?! I parked sideways and ran to cross the street, but the one fireman there wouldn't let that happen.
He couldn't do anything except watch, the fire was uncontainable. The red VW bus was flaming bumper to bumper and just sitting there. There was a tiny car-sized fire extinguisher sitting in the parking lot, obviously used up to no avail. I tried to zoom in, but my camera was shitty. I'd have killed for my canon, but at least I had something.
I called Pete... I had to tell someone. There is a goddamn car on fire! I am watching it!
Glass and metal fell burning to the asphalt spreading debris and making the firemen jump back. I couldn't feel the heat in a physical sense.
How in hell does this even happen?
Finally a truck showed up, and there was more attention paid to extinguishing the van than to a kid running across traffic.
Perhaps I am a horrible person, I didn't even think to ask if there'd been anyone inside until after it was well out. There had been, but they had, after exhausting their fire extinguisher, gotten the hell out and watched it burn.
Go to flickr.
Goddamn.
MUSIC: guided by voices: the finest joke is upon us
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