Flaming Trash Can

I'm running down 22nd street on the way to my office this morning at dark:30 this morning, when I see something dead ahead in the lights. At first I thought that the lights were reflecting off of the plastic sidewalls of the bus stop, but as I got closer, I realized that some moron had set fire to the trash in the can. When the LW and I first arrived in T-town, we really liked the way that the bus stops had purple saguaros made of steel that held the little roofs onto them. I didn't want to see the fire spread to the bus stop and waste a whole lot of our tax money, so I pulled in, pulled stuff out of the back of the packed car, and grabbed my fire extinguisher. As I was doing this, some clown dressed in black comes up and tells me just to let it burn out.

Now, what's a good citizen doing standing in the vacant and dark parking lot of a check cashing place at this time of the morning telling me to let the fire burn out? This guy wasn't a good citizen after all. "Six years in the navy going to expensive flight deck & shipboard firefighting schools and I get to practice on a trashcan that some moron set on fire......" was all that I could manage to tell myself. I put it out as best as I could then started getting back into the car. I didn't even get the door shut before this kid pulls out an old replica German boot brush and tries to sell it to me. "Yo yo man, check this out, it's from the 1930s man.....", was his pitch line. I told him that it wasn't worth a @#it to anyone unless it's authentic and even then probably only to a skinhead whackjob. I called the FD on the way up the street so that they could come by and splash the can with a bit of water and was on my way. I figure that the kid probably was burning some excess things that he'd stolen from an elderly person who might have had a souvenir collection from the war. Either way, it was just pretty sad. On a brighter note, there were only six gunshots loud enough to wake me up last night.