Did I ever tell you about the time I was working at a farm? It was Fred Briehl’s up in Wallkill. No? I never mentioned it? Here are a few really weird things that happened to me during that summer in 1961 when I was 19 years old.

The day dawned hot. The sky so blue and clear, the nearby Shawangunk mountains appeared so close I could almost see each individual tree on their eastern flank. I walked toward the lake, intending to take a cool dip before starting my day’s work.

I approached a short, white utility house—just a small shack with some tools in it. As I walked past, an unpleasant scent coming from within its walls caught me up short. I pushed the door open to see what was there and a strong whiff of smell escaped and I inhaled it. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was a gas escaping from a tank. On its entering my lungs, I was suddenly overcome with extreme nausea. I stumbled away from the door, coughing, and yelling for someone to come. I sat down not far from the small hut as some guests and Fred himself ran over.

They saw how sick I looked. Fred called to his wife Edna to come with some oranges. He gave them to me to suck on. Gradually, the feeling of nausea lifted. We all moved away from the utility house except for Fred who quickly entered it and turned the valve shutting off the flow of escaping gas. After a while, I got up and returned to the main house to sit and rest. But, true to his rough character, Fred said, “OK, kid. You’re all better now. Now get up and get to work. If you ain’t got nothin’ to do, don’t do it here.”

I smiled at his folksy way of talking. Feeling better, I left to get on with my day. I had to hurry and set the table in the main dining room. 

Briehl’s farm wasn’t just a working farm. It was also a guest house. Each week, about a dozen guests would descend on the dining room three times a day. Each time, they found the table set for them perfectly. Who set the table? That would be me. Who waited tables? That would be Fred’s wife Edna and me. Who took orders for the morning hard boiled eggs? Me. As the smells of fresh bacon wafted through the dining room, who caught the criticisms like, “Hey, these eggs are too soft; I asked for 6-minute eggs; these are undercooked. Bring me another plate and do it right this time.” Who cleaned up the dining room after the guests had finished and left? You guessed it: me. Who washed the dishes by hand? Me again. Who mopped the dining room floor after the dishes were washed, dried and put away? You guessed it. Who brought the wet garbage out to the garbage dump, poured a mixture of gasoline and kerosene on it, and set it afire? And who then went out to the large vegetable garden to water and weed the long rows of carrots, swiss chard, broccoli, spinach, onions, radishes, and lettuce? That was this newly minted jack of all trades, yours truly.

One beautiful sunny Saturday, Fred and Edna Briehl were away doing errands, and the guests were nowhere to be seen. I remembered that they were planning to go horseback riding at a nearby dude ranch. I was alone. I still had to take the wet garbage out to burn.

One fact about me: I was curious, inquisitive, and always looking for answers to the many “why” questions I conjured up. I loved playing with chemicals back home, and my urge to experiment was not suspended upon coming to Briehl’s farm. I knew that the formula for the fuel that burned the garbage was 90 percent kerosene and 10 percent gasoline. So, I wondered to myself, if I reversed those two ratios, and put in lots more gasoline than kerosene, what would happen?

I walked over to the three spigots: one for gasoline, another for kerosene and the third just for plain old water.

I filled a pail about three-quarters full with gasoline and then topped it off with a much smaller amount of kerosene.

The odor of the gas was really pungent. I spilled the mixture on and all around the garbage pit. It stank. Eggs rot fairly quickly, and so do vegetables. Between the stench from the garbage and the smell of gasoline, my nostrils felt under attack.

I walked to the top of the garbage pit and looked toward the mass about to be set afire. That’s when I noticed the air above the garbage rippling. The rapidly evaporating gasoline caused the air to shimmer with the ascending vapors. From a distance of about 15 feet or so, I struck a red and white tipped strike-anywhere match against a stone. It lit and I threw it toward the pit. 

The air exploded in flame. The flame began in the air and with a loud “WOOMMP” instantly dropped down to the garbage pit, igniting everything in a broiling heat of flame that I’d never experienced before. Worse yet, the grass and foliage around the pit had also caught fire and was widening the circle around the burning trash. That’s when I felt the sudden, sickening pang of utter panic. I grabbed the pail and ran to the water spigot, pumping water from it for all I was worth, then ran back and tossed the water onto the grass, then ran back, refilled the bucket, returned, and all the while I was thinking of the utter irony—Fred Briehl was one of the many volunteer firefighters in the town of Wallkill, and here I was, trying to prevent his 125-acre farm from burning down. I made many back and forth runs to the spigot, and finally succeeded in putting out the vegetation fire surrounding the pit. I allowed the rest of the garbage to burn. The smell of acrid smoke slowly dissipated. Finally, I was able to take a deep breath and relax. I had avoided a total catastrophe and there were no witnesses.

Did I ever tell the Briehls what I had done? Would you? Well, I don’t know what you would have done, but I never mentioned it to anyone and they never asked. All I got from Fred that day was, “Hey, kid, the broccoli has gone to flower. Don’t you know you should have picked it yesterday?” To which I responded, “Sorry, Fred. I had no idea that broccoli goes to flower. Never heard of that.” To which he sneered: “Dumb city slicker.”

I remember my first day at the farm as a worker. In years before, my parents, my kid brother John and I had come each year as guests. I’d never known about the underside of farming until Fred offered me a job. As far as I knew, I was getting an all-expense paid vacation. Ha! Little did I know.

My first delusion was burst when I asked him where my room was, fully expecting it to be in the guest house. WRONG! “You’re in the barn, kid.”

“You mean where the stalls are?” Fred used to own horses and that’s where they’d stayed—but that was a few years before. I don’t recall when he sold them, but the barn wasn’t used for much any longer.

“No, you’re sleeping in the hayloft. There’s a ladder for you to climb up to it.”

I walked over to the barn, climbed up, and found the entire hayloft to be empty of everything but years and years accumulation of bird excrement—all hardened and calcified, stinking a stench I’d never experienced before. When I asked him if that was the only place he could offer, he said: “Get a pail of hot water and soap and start cleaning and scraping it off the floor. You’ll get used to it once it’s cleaned up.”

Buckets of hot soapy water and lots of scraping with tools later, by 6:00 that night, I had cleaned enough of it to live with. One by one, I brought my duffel bag, my guitar and my books up to my new lodgings where I would stay from the end of June until the beginning of September. And I did get used to the smell, or what there was left of it.

That was the only year I ever worked there. The following year, Fred retired and sold the farm to a summer camp, and I was off on a new adventure as a helmsman aboard a tramp steamer whose holds would smell of salt spray tinged with pelican excrement.