We lit afire a pile of tires.
Now hear us out before you pass judgment. We figured there was no other way to adequately dispose of them in here this neck of the woods, having already thrown together a hasty pop-up shop in an attempt to somehow sell those tires (in the wake of that huge indy car race to end all indy car races–I’m sure you’ve read about it somewhere, what with all the invasive media in our modern lives). We knew we definitely had the market cornered when it came to tire-related memorabilia, and seeing as how there would be no more of these particular sporting events (primarily due to environmental concerns), we figured it would be a good enough idea to set up shop and see what kind of interest we could generate with a genuine tire fire sale.
It was almost as though the universe had pre-ordained this turn of events. We didn’t have anywhere in particular to go for a couple of weeks, since our boss basically gave us no choice other than to take a bunch of PTO hours for the sake of our sanity. I suppose we’d been burning the candle at both ends while balancing on a tightrope suspended over a lion’s den, so he had a point there.
Anywho, we gave the fine local people eight full days to come over and check out our wares, but not a single customer even graced us with their presence. In retrospect, they really would have had to go out of their way in order to find us. There was probably a better chance of someone stumbling upon us accidentally while hiking through the woods, though that sequence of events didn’t transpire either.
There were thousands of tires left lying around in the aftermath, resigned to living out their years ensconced in weeds. No way, we thought. We had to rescue as many of those fallen warriors as possible, to give them a grand send-off. Now, without a large body of water on which to conduct a proper viking funeral, we just looked around for locations where we wouldn’t inadvertently start a forest fire due to our shenanigans. It took us–working in perfect harmony–about three days of scouting and schlepping, to the point where if there were only one of us to undertake something so ludicrous, it would probably never have gotten done.
The actual ignition of the blaze was rather anti-climactic. We’d been anticipating it for so long at that point (not to mention working ourselves half to death) that we were just plum out of accessible emotions.
We still had a couple days left before we had to retreat to the city and our anthill tendencies, so we tossed a dead raccoon atop the smoldering rubber and burnt some rubber of our own, back to Metropolitan Anyplace, USA (home of the ever-wilting inner-child disposition). We envied that raccoon.
WHARVED 