Event Report: World Wrestling Entertainment presents WWE Live (12-5-2014)

My wife and I were able to have a night out on the town this past Friday night, which is something that's a very valuable commodity now that the focus of most of our free time is taking care of the Duke. He's a bit needy since he is a newborn and all, but we're not holding that against him - it's not his fault he can't prepare his own supper or wipe his rear end yet, obviously.

This particular night was a special occasion seeing as how World Wrestling Entertainment was in Columbia, South Carolina for a live event at the Colonial Life Arena. If you didn't know, live events are also referred to as house shows because they are non-televised. Companies like WWE use them for a number of purposes. For one, they're quick cash generators as they typically take advantage of whatever the going storylines are on TV to pique the interest of fans in a local market. In addition, they're an opportunity for a promotion to test the waters in terms of how an audience reacts to a match, a new gimmick for a performer, or any number of things which may or may not wind up appearing in programming later on.

In this instance it looked as though a majority of what was going on had to do with the upcoming Tables, Ladders and Chairs pay-per-view that is set to take place later this month. That event will be headlined by a tables match featuring John Cena and Seth Rollins - who would also be headlining the event we saw in Columbia.

Getting in and around the parking lots at CLA has always been somewhat tricky seeing as how the building is in the middle of downtown Columbia, is adjacent to several major streets, sits on the doorstep of the University of South Carolina's Greek village, and there's usually no assistance from local law enforcement in terms of directing traffic. That last bit is an issue thanks to the fact that there are no traffic lights to control the flow of cars, rather a couple 4-way stops that leave it to motorists to negotiate matters amongst themselves.

We got to the arena around 6:30 PM by which time a majority of the front-most parking lot was filled. Cost for parking that night was $5 - that's not too bad seeing as how game day parking for events at Williams Brice Stadium will set you back $20 or more, depending on how close you want to be to the venue.

Our tickets were being held at will call even though I had purchased them as part of a pre-sale promotion. Why? Allow me to elaborate.

Face value of the tickets I chose was $25. Those seats were a good middle ground option since they were not as expensive as the $90 floor seats but with a better view than the $15 seats. (WWE offers what is called the WWE VIP Experience for certain of their events; this is a package that includes front row seating where you are given the chair you sat in that evening, a backstage meet and greet with some of the Superstars, and a few other perks. These packages start around $300 and go up from there. Yes, there were a handful of VIP seats sold at this event!) There was a section of limited view seats available for this event, which struck me as odd seeing as how there were no limitations on the view; "limited view" usually refers to seating situated in such a way that it can be blocked by staging used during TV tapings. As I mentioned earlier, this was a non-televised event.

After you add in CLA's fees ($9 per ticket for this show; I've referred to convenience/facility fees previously as the "take a dump" fee because I can only assume they want you to pay for the fact that you had to go to the bathroom while you were there), our total was $68. Wait, we're not done yet because that amount doesn't count the fee you incur depending on the ticketing delivery option you select: Mail delivery, print at home, or will call. I don't remember how much the other two were but at $3.50 will call was the cheapest of the three. (What that $3.50 covers I can only imagine. I gather these tickets are printed on parchment salvaged from an ancient Egyptian tomb and printed using the blood of pandas.) If you add in the cost of parking and ticketing delivery split between our two tickets, a $25 ticket in reality costs $38.25.

And folks in the pro wrestling business wonder why live event attendance is down!

I have to commend the people who work behind the scenes to operate and maintain CLA. It is a beautiful arena that is always pristine in appearance and the staff working there are generally quite cordial. I can't say as I've ever had a bad experience there.

Our seats were in one of the lower levels several rows off the floor. When it comes to events like this I've learned that the only good floor seats are in the front row. If you're sitting further back from that you're going to spend the majority of the time dodging the backs of other people's heads instead of watching the show. Given how much those seats cost, it's simply not worth it. For this reason unless I can get front row I'm perfectly fine taking a seat in the bleachers. Quite frankly I don't know that I would buy front row these days even if the opportunity presented itself seeing as how in my opinion the product doesn't warrant the cost.

A number of vignettes and advertisements were shown on the jumbo-trons around the arena before bell time, and these included a message from Dolph Ziggler who spoke about his Intercontinental championship match against Luke Harper that would be coming up later on in the evening. I can only guess as to what attendance might have been but I will note that there were plenty of good seats available. (The house looked about the same as what we've seen the last few times we've been to WWE live events in Columbia.) The show began promptly at 7:30 PM and our ring announcer for the evening was none other than Brandi Rhodes who is the wife of Cody Rhodes.

Here's a rundown of the card along with my thoughts on each match.

#1) Ryback defeated Curtis Axel

Ryback has had his name in the press a lot here lately thanks to having been the subject of some of CM Punk's comments made during an interview on Colt Cabana's Art of Wrestling podcast wherein Punk stated that Ryback was responsible for injuring him on a number of occasions. If Punk's statements are true, it would appear as though Ryback's previous gimmick of "The Corn-fed Meathead" Skip Sheffield wasn't that far off from reality.

Speaking of Ryback, he definitely benefited from being the first babyface (hero/good guy) to appear on the card as the crowd reaction he received was quite audible. It appeared to be coming from the same section of the audience that later on in the evening would be chanting "LET'S GO CENA!"

This seemed like an odd bit of booking to me because it was only a short while ago that Curtis Axel and Ryback were working as a tag team called RybAxel (appropriately enough). To my knowledge there was never a storyline presented as to why they'd be broken up, but then again the success of many modern WWE storylines is dependent upon the fact that their writers assume the fans suffer from some form of memory loss. (Hence the reason why Big Show has gone through something along the lines of 20 character turns - as in transitioning from hero to villain - during his run with WWE.) Nevertheless, you can tell who was Marty and who was Shawn out of their pairing based on the fact that Ryback was in the main event of Survivor Series and Axel has been relegated to appearances on Main Event (if you don't get the Marty/Shawn reference, I'm sorry but you've been reading this entry for far too long to be that far out of touch with this kind of material).

#2) Fandango (with Rosa Mendes) defeated Sin Cara

Fandango was announced as being "the new and improved Fandango". I bother with pointing that out because the wrestler now known as Fandango has been involved with WWE since 2006 (not the whole time as Fandango; he's had 3 or 4 other gimmicks) at which point he began working with Deep South Wrestling, an independent promotion that served as a developmental territory for WWE which no longer exists. He has worked there, Florida Championship Wrestling, NXT, and finally as part of the main WWE roster. For someone as talented as he apparently is to have had such a drawn out career with no real highlights to speak of is baffling to me.

Sin Cara came to the ring sporting a Lucha Dragons t-shirt, which is the name of the tag team he's involved with in NXT. As of this writing he and his partner, Kalisto, are the WWE NXT Tag Team Champions.

#3) Emma, Alicia Fox & Charlotte defeated Paige & The Bella Twins

There was a social media push before the show began towards getting the fans in attendance to use a Twitter hashtag to vote on whether they wanted to see a 6-Divas tag team match or if they wanted to see a 1-on-1 Divas match. In terms of offering up options to fans of pro wrestling, that's like asking a 6 year old if they want a chocolate-dipped ice cream cone or some nice blanched asparagus.

The big deal here was that Charlotte was involved. She's the current WWE NXT Women's Champion and, perhaps of more interest to most fans, the daughter of "The Nature Boy" Ric Flair. She was involved for the majority of the match and made a good showing for herself. The Flair references are a little thick with her presentation at the moment seeing as how she had "WOOO!"-ed about a dozen times before the match even started.

After the match was over, Nikki and Brie (the Bella Twins) began to argue with one another. The two of them are supposed to be on the same page according to what's going on within TV storylines, however they appeared to have split on less than amicable terms this night as Brie shoved Nikki and walked off on her own. That could be foreshadowing something to come down the line but it could also be an example of how house shows exist in a vacuum, meaning none of these events matter in the grand scheme of things because they aren't on TV and therefore aren't part of the running narrative.

#4) Intercontinental Championship Match - Dolph Ziggler defeated Luke Harper by disqualification

Going into the show I had this contest in mind as being a contender for match of the night. In reality it felt kind of flat, and that bugs me for a number of reasons. Knowing what these two are capable of and seeing the match they had, it surprised me that it was somewhat dull in its pacing. I knew Ziggler had zero chance of winning the title because titles never change hands at live events (that's not entirely true; they do change hands at live events but only about as frequently as we elect Presidents). The fact that the guts of the match didn't feature the sort of athleticism these two show off during episodes of RAW or Smackdown was disappointing but the decision to have the match end as the result of Harper pushing Ziggler into the referee was somewhat confusing (at first I thought the ref had disqualified Ziggler for making contact with him) and mostly unsatisfying.

- Intermission -

#5) R-Truth defeated Cesaro

As I mentioned on my Twitter feed, this is why CM Punk quit.

Here's another crazy booking decision which doesn't make any sense to me. Why would a guy like R-Truth, who hasn't been on any of the main WWE programming for a while now, get a win over Cesaro? I can only assume Cesaro is in someone's doghouse. If this is all the Swiss Superman will ever get to be on the main roster, then by all means send him back to NXT where he can be appreciated for having phenomenal matches with talent like Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens, Finn Balor, and Hideo Itami.

#6) A New Day (Kofi Kingston & Big E Langston with Xavier Woods) defeated WWE Tag Team Champions The Miz & Damien Mizdow in a non-title bout

This was my favorite match of the night because out of the 7 contests on the card it was the one that had the most energy and life to it. The Miz can get heat just by picking up a microphone, Damien Mizdow is one of the best characters in WWE right now, and I sincerely hope that A New Day goes far because those guys are working their tails off in that gimmick.

#7) John Cena defeated Seth Rollins in a street fight

The last event my wife and I attended together before this one was a WWE Live show in November of 2013 which was also held at CLA. The main event that night was a street fight between the Wyatt Family (Bray Wyatt, Luke Harper & Eric Rowan) and the team of CM Punk & Daniel Bryan. Fast forward to the present where the Wyatt Family doesn't exist, Daniel Bryan may or may not ever wrestle again, and CM Punk is gone from WWE completely. My how things change over the course of a year!

I have to give a hand to Cena and Rollins because this match was definitely more in line with what one would expect when you hear of a match being held under street fight rules than others I've seen. (Of course you could just as well interchange street fight, extreme rules, no disqualifications, and a few other labels that get added to matches where anything goes. Why WWE uses one instead of another is anyone's guess. Perhaps WWE conducted a study and determined that "street fight" was more effective in terms of marketing.) They brawled up and down the aisle, made use of a number of weapons, and Rollins had so much heat on him that he even managed to make a young female fan at ringside burst into tears. That's the kind of reaction you rarely see anymore in pro wrestling and it goes to show that no matter how many times John Cena may face insurmountable odds (and triumphantly overcome them) his loyal fans are there with him 100% of the time.

Rollins went through two tables during the match, once on a reversal out of an Irish whip into one of the corners and a second time via an Attitude Adjuster from Cena off the top rope. I believe Cena and Rollins had this same match at least once more during the loop of live events this past weekend, so that means Rollins likely went through 4 or more tables in less than 3 days time. All I can say to that is hopefully he has a good chiropractor.

All things considered this was a fun night out but the matches overall left both of us feeling like there was something missing. I don't know if that something is star power, emotional involvement, or what but this was a fairly vanilla piece of work. Looking back, I think it's interesting that out of 7 matches the heel (villain) only won once, that being Fandango.

Of course we couldn't go to something like this without shooting an episode of Rasslin' with Redbeard! I have to give my wife major kudos seeing as how she served as camera operator for more than a few shots that became a part of this episode. She humors me and my silly endeavors, which is just one reason why I love her.

Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Arson (?)

We're getting to the time of year where my wife & I get extremely busy in terms of our schedules being overrun with matters of the season. For several years now it's been that we're almost always on the move usually from the second week of November right on up through the new year. If it's not a family event it's some other type of festive gathering that has us tied up, but for good reason obviously.

2014 is the first year since we've been married that we did not take a vacation the week of Veterans Day. That had become our week to take a trip seeing as how we both have the Veterans Day holiday off; the free day makes it particularly ideal for going out of town seeing as how that means we didn't have to take as much leave as we would otherwise. We took a cruise to the western Caribbean in 2011 then we went to Walt Disney World in 2012 and 2013. Not this year, though, now that The Duke is in our lives. (I don't want it to sound like I'm blaming him for us not being able to go somewhere because I know that's exactly how that last sentence would make it seem. If I had to choose between a vacation and him, I think you already know what I'd choose!) He'll be able to get out and about soon enough as he'll be getting his immunizations in the next few weeks and at that point we won't have to keep him cooped up any longer.

That said, the past few weeks have been very eventful for us. I hate to say it but we've had a bit of a string of bad luck when it comes to our vehicles. Both my truck and Jill's car have had to have work done here lately - the thermostat in her car went bad and the starter in my truck finally decided to die after having been on its last legs for about a month. My wife's father was able to get her car back in working order (he's that kind of awesome) but the truck wound up costing me in the area of $350 for parts and labor. Car repair never seems to be something people plan for, or at least I don't. I've made the statement to several people in the past that just once in my life I'd like to actually budget for tires as opposed to having to buy them on the spot as a result of absolutely having to have them when an issue arises. That's a goal to work towards, I guess.

At any rate, here's a recap of what's been going on with us here lately.

Thanksgiving

I think I look forward to Thanksgiving more so than I do just about any other holiday, including Christmas. Why? Well, I guess in my mind Thanksgiving doesn't seem like work or that a lot of showmanship is involved when you compare it to the goings on of December. With Thanksgiving you know what you're in for - time with family, lots of yummy food, and nothing else to do but sit around and watch football on TV while enjoying a plate of leftovers. Christmas, on the other hand, seems like it's so much more of a production to me. Not that I dislike Christmas, I simply prefer Thanksgiving.

For the past two years we've hosted family at our home for Thanksgiving and it has been a real treat to be able to do that. There was a point in my life where I wouldn't have believed you if you told me I'd have my own house much less that I'd have the opportunity to do something like we have with these occasions.

It's become something of a tradition that my Father in-law brings his infrared fryer and cooks the turkey for us, and that's exactly what he did this year. I'm not sure how that device works but it somehow uses propane to generate the infrared heat waves to cook whatever is inside it. (Note how I referred to it as an infrared fryer and not just an infrared turkey fryer; you can cook all sorts of things with it, not just turkeys.) Some guy who's way smarter than I'll ever be figured that out and now we have tasty Thanksgiving turkeys for which we should thank him.

My Father in-law isn't the only one who contributes to the meal, of course, as most everyone pitches in with some aspect of the menu. Case in point, my Aunt brings her potato salad which - and I'm not exaggerating here - is literally the best potato salad you'll ever have. She uses a specific type of potato, Duke's mayonnaise (which is the only mayonnaise you should ever consider using for things like potato salad), and adds in diced bell pepper which gives it a great flavor as well as giving it an interesting textural contrast to the soft (not mushy) potatoes. Other selections on this year's menu included ham, dressing, green bean casserole, deviled eggs, cranberry sauce, as well as an assortment of pies - pecan, sweet potato, coconut cream, and coconut custard.

After the meal while we were all sitting around enjoying each other's company, Jill was looking through print advertisements for sales that would be happening throughout the upcoming weekend. She brought up to me that Walmart had what sounded to be a great deal on an Xbox One bundle that included a copy of a game I've been looking forward to called HALO: The Master Chief Collection. (Long story short, I'm a HALO nut and have been since I played the first game.) The Xbox One up until a few weeks ago had been retailing for $400 but it's recently been lowered to $350 - this deal at Walmart had the console, the game, and a controller for $330. The only trick to it was the fact that it was a Thanksgiving day sale, as in one that would be kicking off at 6 PM. By the point in time my wife had discovered the sale it was creeping up on 4 PM.

In my head I was going over the logistics of the proposal. Yes, I wanted an Xbox One but did I want it at the expense of having to brave the lunacy that would certainly be the Walmart in Orangeburg, South Carolina on an occasion such as this? (As proof of that statement, I offer the story about the time I almost got run over while walking in the parking lot.) With it being so late in the day, relatively speaking, I wondered if there was already a line for the consoles and if the allotment at that location had been claimed by eager shoppers. Jill's Mom was staying with us over the weekend, and she had no issues at all with taking care of the Duke if we wanted to give it a shot, so I knew we wouldn't have to worry about his well being. All things considered we decided to go ahead and risk it - yes, we were going to Walmart on Thanksgiving, and not because we forgot the cranberry sauce.

We arrived just after 4:30 PM and I was more than a little shocked by the fact that the parking lot wasn't overflowing with cars by the time we got there. I fully expected there to be cars jammed into every conceivable spot around the property, but it was only at about half capacity which is about what it is at any given time of day (it seemed very comparable to how it is when we're typically there, to be honest). As we entered the store we were given a map detailing where specific sale items were set up. Fittingly enough, the Xbox Ones were in place behind the counter in sporting goods.

Making our way to the very back corner of the store (I've always wondered why sporting goods get stuck in one of the most remote sections of these stores) we noticed that the central portion of the space had been taped off so as to limit customer access. We could see product stacked up on pallets and wrapped in plastic - to me, they looked kind of like they were innocents being held captive and in restraints prior to being sacrificed to the oncoming horde. There were balloons labeled with the name of an item floating above the locations of each, a tactic I thought was quite clever. Also, I pointed out to my wife that many of the store associates were wearing bright yellow ponchos; we both agreed that this was most likely so that they could easily identify one another amongst the crowd.

When we got to sporting goods and I spotted the Xbox One balloon I prepared myself for the line - which I could not see from the angle of our approach because of the fact it was running down an aisle. I anticipated it being at least 30 people long and that all the consoles in stock had already been spoken for. To my amazement, there were only 9 people in line and I could see at least twice as many consoles stacked up behind the counter.

 My anxiety subsided as all we had to do now was stand around and wait for 6 PM. The goings on of the people around us provided plenty of entertainment to make the time roll by. We chatted with the people around us and we all got a real hoot out of the fact that it seemed as though the section of the store we were in was the most organized of any. As 6 PM approached we noticed that the crowd noise inside the store was incredibly loud and that there was no longer a whole lot of room to move around. About 10 minutes before 6 we heard the sound of plastic ripping followed by the shouts of a store associate who was trying to maintain order around their quadrant. I think by that point an effort geared towards maintaining order was like trying to use a fish net to catch smoke. Suddenly the notion of putting us at the back in sporting goods didn't seem like such a peculiar idea.

When 6 PM finally rolled around it quickly became evident that things weren't going well. For this sale, Walmart was offering two different Xbox One bundles at the same price point of $330, one that came with Assassin's Creed Unity and another with the Master Chief Collection as well as a free $30 Walmart gift card. We were in line in sporting goods around the gun case as they had the systems set up behind the counter there. As the sale starts those of us further back in line begin hearing rumblings from the front that the bundles aren't ringing up at the right price.

Turns out they had a different Assassin's Creed bundle that came with Kinect incorrectly mixed in with their inventory. They were ringing up at the correct price as they weren't supposed to be included in the inventory for this sale. I pointed this out to one of the clerks myself - the boxes were visibly different and no one else seemed to notice.

In advance of the sale an associate had gone through the line, counting out how many people were there to buy one of the Xbox bundles (separating the buyers from the hangers on, as it were). I believe she had our number to be somewhere in the low twenties, and she made a point to announce to everyone that they had 36 of the bundles on hand. Unfortunately that 36 included a number of the Kinect bundles - I'm sure there was at least someone in that line who didn't get a system that day.

To make matters worse a customer that was 2 spots ahead of me in line purchased then returned and re-purchased a bundle. She bought the Assassin's Creed bundle then asked for her $30 gift card. Thing was, the AC bundle didn't come with the gift card, only the Halo bundle got those. So she decides she wants to return that bundle and buy the Halo bundle instead. My point in detailing this is to say that this experience was made worse by the fact that either that customer was a crook or that the associates didn't seem to know what they were selling.

The biggest challenge we faced that evening came after I had my Xbox One in hand - that being the process of getting out of the store as well as out of the parking lot. I would love to know how many people were in the store as we left as I would assume it had to be at least 1,000 souls. We ducked, bobbed, and weaved out way down the aisles until we were out the door and into the sea of cars that was now the parking lot. When I say the lot was full it literally was full as there were people parking at businesses across the street and walking over.

I saw that there were several Orangeburg county sheriff's deputies vehicles up on the curb in front of the store as we entered; apparently they were there for crowd control and not traffic control as it took us nearly an hour to get out of the lot. I have no idea what the delay was from, other than there just being so many cars coming into the lot with nowhere for them to go. We wound up making our escape through a gap created by a pair of empty parking spaces and we got home in the area of 8:30 PM. I'm glad that I got what I wanted that evening but I severely doubt my wife and I will be making another outing like this any time soon!

Black Friday

I said we wouldn't make another outing like the one we had Thanksgiving night and yet we went out on Black Friday - go figure. Truth be told, we're not like your usual Black Friday shoppers in that we don't get up at the crack of dawn to begin the assault on your bank account. Rather we wait until around lunchtime because by then most of the real crazies are already at home or they've found somewhere with sufficient cover to allow them to crash.

I'm not going to go too deep into our experience with Black Friday this year because there's nothing too terribly interesting about the day to share. We shopped, we ate lunch (at Chicken Salad Chick - if you like chicken salad as much as we do, that's a restaurant you need to make a facet of your life), we shopped some more and then we went home. However, notice in the last sentence of the previous paragraph that I said "most" of the real crazies were out of action when we began our day...

We went to the Harbison Boulevard location of Buy Buy Baby in Columbia, SC. As we were getting in the car to head to the next shop I hear what sounded like someone yelling. I didn't pay it a whole lot of attention at first even though it seemed like the sound was somewhat nearby because I wasn't sure what I would wind up being witness to. (If I can at all avoid getting involved in a bad scene I'm going to do so at all costs.) I heard the yelling again and this time it became clear that this wasn't a sound produced by someone in distress but rather someone who was just plain pissed off.

I looked to my right and saw a young woman roughly 50 yards away, probably in her early to mid-twenties, wearing a pink hoodie who was obviously agitated. She yelled something I couldn't quite make out, stomped over to the driver's side of her vehicle, got in and slammed the door in the process. She then proceeded to crank up the car and speed off before pouncing on the brakes, putting the car into a slide with the tires smoking. I hadn't noticed yet but she stopped where she did because there was a man standing on the grass beyond the curb near a tree in the parking lot; I guess he figured he was safer there, although from the look of her she didn't appear to be the sort that would let anything get in the way of her tirade.

The two of them exchanged words. More accurately, she screamed at him about how much she hated him while he stood there trying to talk to someone on his phone. This went on for a few moments then another car pulled up behind where she was - she'd stopped in a lane of traffic, I should have bothered to point out. The driver of the other car honked their horn which didn't help matters at all as the woman got out of her car and shifted her rage to the driver of the other vehicle. Lets just say that this driver saw a couple of wild birds fly by and also got treated to an assortment of colorful metaphors.

I don't know why people get into arguments like that, never having been in one that escalated to that degree myself. Believe it or not the guy she was yelling at got into the car with her. As Tom Arnold's character in True Lies said, "Ballsy...Stupid, but ballsy." Now that I think about it, that quote kind of encompasses the notion of going out on Black Friday as a whole. Something that takes a certain amount of bravery and at least as much ignorance.

Arson (?)

During the afternoon hours of November 29, I was working in our yard assembling our Christmas decorations. We don't do anything too extravagant, just a few rope lights strung along the railings of our front porch and some net lighting in the shrubbery. Later that evening as Jill, my Mother in-law and I were settling in to watch the kickoff of the Iron Bowl our doorbell rang. This was particularly peculiar because of the fact that we don't get many visitors out our way, but especially not of the unannounced variety at night. I got up off the couch while attempting to calm down our dog who is always quick to notify us with a chorus of barks that the doorbell has, in fact, rang.

When I got to the door I saw George, who is the teenaged son of one of our neighbors. I opened the glass door and while pointing to his right he immediately said, "THAT HOUSE IS ON FIRE!"

My brain didn't instantly process what he was saying. I looked in the direction he was pointing and my eyes couldn't believe what they were seeing.

The house two doors down from ours was on fire. (I took a tiny amount of relief in this realization because at first I thought he meant the house directly beside ours. My fear there, of course, was that the fire might spread through the trees that separate the two lots and that it would then jump to our home. That house is new construction and, fortunately, is unoccupied.) "On fire" is too subtle of a description for the flames that were coming out of the house. "Blazing inferno of Hellfire", maybe, but to say it was just "on fire" is a horrible understatement.

We're all in our pajamas at this point and I was barefoot. I went back into the house to put on a pair of shoes, and of course the most readily available pair were my trusty Nike sandals. (I believe Jill told me later on that when she first went into the yard she was only wearing socks.) Jill grabbed our house phone, called 9-1-1 and alerted them to what was going on. We saw one of our other neighbors running to the house next door to the one on fire to get the elderly woman that lives there out of harms way. In the mean time, George and I were standing there watching the blaze when I realized that the grass was burning.

The flames were advancing like a tiny wave of destruction, consuming the dry, dead grass and leaves on the ground. I knew that the fire department would be on their way but I had no idea as to how long they it would take them to respond. I did the only thing I could think of doing at that moment - I went after one of our garden hoses and began unreeling it.

My first thought was to take the hose and connect it to a spigot on the house beside ours. I knew there had been water there as the builder had set out sprinklers and taken great care in making sure the fresh sod he put out got plenty of water. Apparently the water had been shut off, more than likely at the tap in the yard, because the spigot was dry. My next best option was to drag the hose back over to our house and hope that it reached far enough to do some good. I believe that hose is 250 feet in length - if it had been any shorter than that it would've been useless.

Luckily by the time I had the hose ready to go the fire department showed up. It felt like it took them 20 minutes to get there but in reality it was less than 5 minutes from when Jill made the call to 9-1-1 to when the first truck was on the scene. I was relieved, certainly, but with the adrenaline that was coursing through my system I'd be lying if I said that I was a tiny bit upset that I didn't get to earn my amateur fire fighter status by participating in the containment of the blaze. My hose may not have had the girth of theirs but I was more than ready to do what I could (no, there was no way I couldn't not make that joke here).

Bear in mind that the temperature that night was around 40°. I was wearing basketball shorts, a t-shirt, and sandals. Between the heat from the flames and the adrenaline in my system I didn't feel the cold at all - not until an hour or so later, that is, when the fire was mostly out.

We've learned since the fire that this house was nearly 100 years old and that it was built out of what's called fat lighter or fat wood. I had never heard those terms before, so if you're like me and are wondering what that means I'll tell you that essentially it means the house was built out of matches. Fat wood is typically used as kindling nowadays but in the period this home was built it wasn't uncommon to see houses made out of it because of how hard the wood is. There was likely very little that could've been done to save the house as the fire spread very quickly across those old timbers.



Once the fire was out, there wasn't much left of the house. It's difficult to see in the picture below but the majority of the structure was gutted and the roof had collapsed.

The photo below is an image of the vinyl siding on the house directly beside ours. I'm guessing here but I believe the two houses are roughly 100-150 feet apart. That's all the evidence you need to be able to understand just how hot the fire was burning. (In contrast, there is another home on the other side of the one that burned. That house is less than 20 yards away yet it suffered virtually no damage at all.)

I believe there were either 3 or 4 fire trucks that responded to the fire. In addition there were a number of volunteer firemen who drove their own vehicles, at least 1 ambulance, several Saint Matthews Police Department patrol cars, and I believe trucks from a few of our utility companies as well. I can't tell you how much we appreciate their responsiveness - it goes without saying that there were plenty of opportunities for an event like this to get out of hand, but thanks to them the damage was limited to only one piece of property.

In the next photo you can see just how much damage was done to the home.

You may be wondering about who was living there at the time. This house was actually a rental property and was vacant before the fire. We had very little interaction with the people who had been living there (they offered us a dog once; we respectfully declined) and, as a matter of fact, it had been several weeks since we had seen any cars parked at the home. Allegedly (I use the word seeing as how what I'm about to add to this story is hearsay) the electricity had been turned off, they had been evicted, and they were supposed to have been fully moved out by the day of the fire.

If that isn't a suspicious scenario I don't know what is. The day after the fire, our local police and agents from the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division poured over the scene. I have no idea where they stand with their investigation but I feel as though there's a high probability that this was a case of arson.

My faith in humanity has wavered because of this incident. It absolutely baffles me why someone would do such a thing in a crowded residential neighborhood. Did they not stop to think about what would have happened if the fire had spread? Forget the houses and the stuff in them - all that can be replaced. What about the potential for loss of life? If you have a grudge with someone, settle it with them - don't set fire to a property that's nestled in between so many other homes filled with families.