Who Set Fire to the Dumps

[georg ruf jr.]

I remember one fine morning, blue skies, no wind and school holidays. We wanted to go to the desert, or should I say dumps. Great playground at that age.
Passing through the trees we saw black hose standing upright in front of us. At a height of maybe 50 or 100 meters it had a bend to the right in a vertical way. Getting closer we realised somebody had set a big pile of tires on fire. This was surely alike the experiences in the movie called "Quiet Earth".
I don't think any fire-engine came around. I don't remember ever seeing a fire-engine in om

[Herman Steyn]

Myself (Herman Steyn Jnr).,Pieter Wolfaardt and "Bossie" Bosman set the dumps on the southern side of town beyond the trees alight somewhere in Std 3 or 4 circa 1966 / 67.
There was an old Rumbles truck complete with half a tank to diesel that was emptied by puncturing the tank with steel rods that were lying around and draining it into some discarded empty paint and other available containers.
The barrel shaped fuel tanks on those "Scamel "type trucks with the small rakish front windows were all positioned on the outside behind the drivers door.
We duly lit a fire with heaps of old wood that littered the place underneath a steel structure that was shaped in the form of an angular funnell - with a broad base and narrow top rather tall with a very handy form of a ladder enabling you to climb to the top and empty your bucket of diesel on the now raging fire beneath resulting in a spectacular fire flare each time the fire was doused with diesel..After some time it became too bloody hot to get to the top so we resorted to feeding the fire from the bottom with very much the same effect.By this time we were expecting the fire brigade to come racing through the desert - but were fortunately "dissappointed"-  as was often the case everyone in town thought that someone else was engaged in some authorised legal activity - in this case they thought none of it and were strengthened in their belief that it was legit purely due to the volume of  black smoke belching form the dumps driven towards town by the raging southerly wind.Fridges stoves bicycles beds - you name it- was strewn all over the place who could resist ! - we had the pick of the bunch .Yea we were a brazen bunch of hooligans - but what fun !!