East Texas, I Love Yew.
The police are not releasing her name yet so we’ll just call her Thelma.
Thelma had a spat with the soon-to-be-former-Mr.-Wonderful, so she did what any self-respecting woman would do and took all his clothes outside and set them on fire.
I suspect the Ex Mr. Wonderful didn’t have a bass boat because if he did, she would have burned his clothes in his bass boat and tossed his bowling ball in for good measure.
The highlight of this event was spectacular. Let me quote from the local newspaper because Lord knows they are accustomed to writing this kind of story.
Jasper Fire Marshal Mike Collier says his investigation into a Wednesday afternoon fire which destroyed one house, and heavily damaged another, has revealed that the blaze was accidentally caused by a woman who threw her husband’s clothes outside next to the wooden porch, and then lit them on fire.
The incident happened shortly after 3:00 in the 200 block of Edgewood Street, on the east side of Jasper. Both the Jasper and East End Fire Departments arrived to find a singlewide mobile home almost completely engulfed. A short time later, the intense heat ignited one side of another mobile home next door, and burned one bedroom of that structure.
Luckily no one was injured.
Actual fire in actual East Teas caused by smoldering polyester.
Police are looking for (not her real name) Thelma but she is nowhere to be found.
I suspect she has joined the Louie Gohmert Traveling Circus where she will quickly make friends with like-minded people.
Too funny!
1Another tragedy that may have been avoided with a simple PSA:
2https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nh9J-VLonPw
OK what really made me laugh was the specifics on the mobile home:
“Both the Jasper and East End Fire Departments arrived to find a singlewide mobile home almost completely engulfed. ”
As you know, white trash inhabit single-wides; double-wide folks are too genteel to light their hubby’s unmentionables in the the yard.
3Well somedays you just don’t feel like doing laundry, y’know?
4I hate “mobile homes”, “house trailers” whatever you call them for this very reason. Landowners jam ’em together and when one inevitably catches ablaze not only is that one an inferno, but the intense compressed heat very soon ignites all those around it. Years ago a friend lived in a trailer in a trailer park. His neighbor’s trailer caught fire. By the time I got there, along with several other guys he called, the first trailer looked like the photograph above and our FD guys were soaking all the trailers around trying to keep them cool enough not to ignite. The heat was so intense that the skin on the outside buckled in places and the paint was blistered. There is another word for the trailer sitting next to a burning trailer: kindling.
5hope she doesn’t come to West, Texas, we already have our share of crazy here.
6Micr, catch this logic. When I lived in FL, a small section of the next town was a trailer park. Always evacuated in a hurricane or severe storm threat. So I wondered why people couldn’t have the same arrangement but with cinder block homes — same size as a single-wide. Oh no I was told. Trailer parks are “temporary”. They’re “mobile” homes, y’see. The park is over 40 years old as are most of the homes. Go figure.
7@JAKvirginia
8Unfortunately I get it. Apartments in places I have lived are labeled “temporary” also. That is the residents are temporary. The apartments are permanent brick and mortar. Mobile homes are not that mobile. From what I’ve seen the owner buys one, drags it to a piece of land they own or a trailer park and plants ’em. I’ve even seen ’em with the wheels taken off so the skirting fits better.
Right out of Pink Flamingos, as are many of the inhabitants of Jasper. I had the privilege of spending the 4th of July 2000 in Jasper while driving cross country- a good thing as had I not experienced the crazy yahoos I would have never understood the appeal of Steve Stockman and Louie Gohmert.
9Now to me, a simple Oregon resident, THIS story IS Texas. Firey, action packed women, towns named Jasper, heroic firemen, burning underpants . . . . . You folks are so lucky.
10Perhaps this is a form of divorce, East Texas style. I mean, he wasn’t physically present, so she couldn’t just shoot him the way a normal person would.
11Well… once when my husband was out of town on business, in *southern California* in *February*, he called (not having seen the news) and said brightly, “So how’s it going?” I told him we had 18″ of snow and still falling and I was going to sell his clothes and computer on eBay. When he pointed out that I would have trouble getting to the post office, I replied that I would just burn them. So, except for the mobile home aspect, I could have been Thelma….
12@LynnN
13You’re right a tornado or a deep East Texas divorce means somebody’s losing the trailer.
Juanita, you’ve outdone yourself on this story…
And Mark Schlemmer, you cracked me up.
I myself once put a soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend’s clothes out on the porch while he was showering, but I’m way to genteel to have set them on fire. He was upset enough that he had to go outside to get dressed. When I told his brother what I’d done, the brother cracked up laughing, saying his womanizing brother no doubt deserved.
If only I’d read about this first….
14More great material for a movie or novel.
15I used to live 30 miles from Jasper and undoubtedly there was a confederate flag involved and they were at least first cousins and one of the trailers was probably a meth lab.
16Well at least they won’t have to fight over who gets the, er, house…trailer.
17ok, so i knew a gal who scrubbed her lying cheating soon to be ex’s garments with Spam, then dumped used kitty litter in the mess. then bagged them and boxed them up for the lying cheating goober to haul off to miss soon-to-be mrs lying cheating goober’s house.
revolting, but won’t set the house afire. i’ve lived in trailer parks, my neighbor’s house *did* catch fire. (the verdict was overheating wires due to the number of computers on one circuit…) fortunately, we lived 4 blocks from the fire department and nothing of ours was damaged.
18Hrm. Back in the ’80s, I went to school for a few years in a pair of “temporary” buildings that saw service on Okinawa during WWII, and were relocated shortly after the war.
They were finally bulldozered out of existence in 1986 or 1987.
19Marge Wood, it’s been done. One of the women in “Waiting to Exhale” gets all ready to go with her husband to a banquet, and is told by him at the last minute that he’s not taking her, he’s taking the white woman he’s leaving her for. Next day she stuffs all his clothes in his fancy car and sets the whole thing on fire. (He’s not in it, though I’m sure she wishes he were.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGwV4mrOCJo
20Oh, this was just too funny to believe! You guys crack me up!
As Jimmy Buffet says, “they looked a lot better as beer cans.”
I’ve had a trying couple of weeks, and I always feel sooooo much better after a visit to the Salon. Thanks, everybody!
21I haven’t looked at the K.J.A.S. site in a a while but one small correction, it is the local radio station. I really like Mark’s 9:36 comment about, “The fire action,” and many others. I’ve come to believe “The burning of the clothes,” must be a ritual of separation around here. What baffles me is it was her trailer. It seems like a plastic bag and a dumpster would have been safer. Despite record rains, it’s been dry and windy here. A sign just South of here reads, Jasper 22 miles.
22“Both the Jasper and East End Fire Departments arrived…”
Two fire departments? And they make house calls? To just anybody?
Damn soshilusts!
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