On Monday, July 12, 1999 at 1:00:00 AM UTC-6, tm...@jump.net wrote:   
   > I heard a story last Friday.  I've checked Deja News, snopes.com,   
   > urbanlegends.com, and the automotive section of the big index in _The   
   > Baby Train_, and I noticed nothing like it.  Did I actually get a new   
   > one here?   
   >    
   > I heard this at a gay dinner group in Dallas, Texas.  The man said it   
   > was from his sister in Idaho, so I think it fits the FOAF guideline   
   > for ULs.   
   >    
   > A retired (elderly) couple was driving down the highway in Idaho.  As   
   > some do, they were towing a car behind their RV.  One of the tires on   
   > the car blew, and it started dragging the rim on the pavement.  This   
   > caused sparks to fly off into the vegetation beside the road, and   
   > since it was very dry it caused a long string of forest fires.  (The   
   > teller specified "forest fires", not just small roadside fires.)   
   > Passing cars honked at them, flashed their lights, et cetera, to warn   
   > them, but the couple didn't notice or respond, and kept on driving and   
   > lighting fires.  Eventually they were tracked down and Idaho tried to   
   > bill them for the costs of fighting the fires, but there was such an   
   > outcry they had to waive the bill.   
   >    
   > I love this one.  It has a juicy morsel of subtext, "old people are   
   > stupid and unobservant", with a lovely topping of "rich people suck".   
   > It has a cautionary moral, "pay attention while driving", with the two   
   > flavors "pay attention to your own vehicle" and "pay attention to   
   > other people's signals".  It has a "justice is served" moral, like   
   > many do, but then it has a twist of "but there is no more justice   
   > nowadays".  (I bet that other tellings have the phrase "politically   
   > correct" used near the end.)   
   >    
   > This seems utterly bogus for various reasons:   
   > - The big one for me: if it'd happened, I expect it would have been a   
   >   major story on nationwide news.   
   > - I've never driven an RV or twoed a car, but I would expect the drag   
   >   would be immediately noticable.   
   > - Surely they had to stop for gas, and I expect someone would have   
   >   noticed a problem.   
   > - Local authorities, upon hearing of such a problem, could have called   
   >   ahead to arrange a roadblock.   
   >    
   > So, is it a new story?   
   >    
   > --    
   >                    *** NEW HOME E-MAIL ADDRESS ***   
   > Tim McDaniel (home); Reply-To: tmcd@jump.net;    
   > if that fail, my work addresses are  tmcd@austin.ibm.com and tmcd@us.ibm.com.   
   > tmcd@tmcd.austin.tx.us is a lie; tmcd@crl.com is old and will go away.   
      
   I live in Idaho and that fire story is totally true - the old people were sued   
   by the state to recover the cost of fire-fighting efforts that took months to   
   get put out - thousands of acres of national forest land were destroyed and   
   will not be recovered    
   in our lifetime.  1 small 'town' was destroyed completely and never rebuilt.     
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)