Where did the kerosine come from

Where did the kerosine come from? Every time he worked on one of the cars, he washed the parts in kerosine. I learned this from him: clean what you are going to fix before you fix it. Then clean your tools to complete the job. Cars in those days took a lot of maintenance: oil changes, brake jobs, points and condensers, spark plugs, chassis lubrication and the list goes on.

Every job produced some dirty kerosine in a rectangular pan about one foot square and six inches deep.

One afternoon following a brake job, I was told to take the kerosine to the back yard and to pour it into the holes in one of the stumps. The pan was relatively heavy and the kerosine sloshy as I walked through the back yard. The target stump was half way back in the yard, but there was one closer, and, yes, I am lazy. The problem was that the closer stump was smoldering – it had been the day’s burnout location. I headed for the smoldering stump.