I was laughing the whole time.

The scrape of gravels sliding across the concrete sidewalk with each step taken drove us closer to our goal, but it was giving us away.

I had to stay quiet, but the excitement was overwhelming. This was a new experience for me, and the moment was almost too much to bear. A snicker with each thick step on the old, wooden boards that made up the patio was met with a quick reprimand to keep it down already.

It was late. The neighbors were asleep. More importantly, Mom was.

But me and Dad though, we were wide awake. And we had a problem to solve. Well, he had a problem to solve – I was just there to lend a hand: keep the light steady and, I guess, run for help if that need arose.

If there was a problem and it could be solved, Dad could fix it. Perhaps that’s true of any dad. They’re practical go-getters cut from the cloth of “I’ve got to do this for my family” and so, things get done.

We walked in darkness out behind the house, our only light being the place next door and its dusk-to-dawn light shining in the distance. It gave us no real light to guide us on the way we’d tread for years already, but even walking the most familiar paths in complete darkness can be harrowing. There weren’t any stars in the sky and the moon was absent.

It was just us out here.

And those “waspers,” as he called them.

A few days earlier, Dad happened upon a wasp nest underneath the above-ground swimming pool we had in the backyard. From above, if you could see it from there, I guess the pool kind of looked like a flower – yellow metal sides, about 13 or 14 or so, ringed its exterior to keep people from toppling over the edge, circling a deep blue interior that was great for making whirlpools in. About four-and-a-half feet deep with a slide he erected himself that fed loads of happy kids, and a happy him, into the water for years.

Before the climb up the slide though, there was a wooden deck he built and attached to the swimming pool, literally carved into the side of the hill that it sat next to. It led to what could only be described as a wooden couch that gave up to six people a place to sit, to either wait their turn or dry off. Or for a single person to lay and bake in the sunshine. It was also an excellent place to keep the radio dry and blasting the best songs from the late ‘90s.

But that was years ago. Now, it saw the occasional grandchild slide into the pool whenever they visited. I hadn’t swam in a while. Neither had Dad. Neither had Mom. But, it was still important to keep it clean and keep it safe. You never knew when you’d want to take a dip or who would show up.

He’d spent all day working on that weird late shift that had him getting home real late into the night or early morning, depending on how your view of time works. I liked staying up late and greeting him when he came home – Mom couldn’t because she had to work – and I didn’t really have any reason to be in bed. Summer wasn’t yet over.

He always announced his arrival when the big blue truck he drove pulled into the driveway, its lights shining through into the living room due to the nature of the right turn required to do that. Well, that and its roar. It always got me moving from wherever I was doing whatever I was doing into the kitchen to unlock the door and welcome him home.

It was always easy to see him as he walked toward the front door. Although it was dark and he wore a navy-blue button-up and pants, the orange stripes placed strategically on that uniform made him a snap to spot.

He asked me, almost instantly upon getting inside the house that night, if I wanted to go deal with them waspers with him. It’s late and wasps aren’t active when it’s dark. It’s a good time to do it. Well, yeah, of course I did. Because I knew he wasn’t gonna just knock it down. That’s boring and that wasn’t how he did things.

From the kitchen, he took off into the attached garage and reappeared almost immediately, returning with his tools of the trade - a cylindrical can that looked like it might have a button to push down with your index finger, a lighter and a flashlight.

This is how he dealt with waspers, apparently.

Out the back door we went, but I was soon told to hush.

-You’re gonna wake your mom up.

I know, I know. I’ll stop. Promise.

But following just a few steps behind him, I started laughing to myself again. This is too much.

He’s got of a can of ether in one hand. And a lighter in the other. I knew he was going to deal with this nest somehow, but I didn’t expect that. He kept telling me to quiet down and even gave me the old “now Chad,” but it was clear he was having trouble stifling his own snickers.

This was new to me. Although I knew how he did things - that is to say, uniquely - I’d never really been an active participant before. But now it was my job, armed with a flashlight, to keep the nest illuminated and make sure he was on target. My other hand held my old cellphone though.

I was gonna document this.

But I’d not been prepared for the sheer size of this wasp nest that he’d stumbled upon. And when he whispered that we oughta be near it and to go on and shine my light and look for it, I initially scanned over it and kept looking. I figured that was a shadow of something or part of the swimming pool itself. I didn’t know what it did, but there was no way that was what I was looking for.

But it was. A wasp nest the size of a globe that you might find in a really fancy library. Dark gray and papery-looking, the misshapen sphere hung innocently enough beneath the walkway of the swimming pool, real close to the bright green hillside that we lived next to in this valley of Appalachian Mountains.

I was quiet now. I never liked wasps. I wasn’t allergic or anything, but I didn’t have to be to hate them. The reality of my situation set in: this isn’t going to work and I’m going to get stung to death.

Dad told me to stand back, but to keep the light shined on the nest and I did as I was told. He stood ahead of me, maybe five or six feet, and dropped to his knees slowly to get level and crawled a bit closer. He raised his right arm and held it out in front of him, making a fist and gripping the lighter while he crooked his left arm and angled the can of ether.

He didn’t say anything when he clicked the lighter down. All I heard was the flint sparking and the sudden floom of the fire revealing itself after the spray hissed out.

As the fire flung itself onto the nest and engulfed the waspers in a cleansing flame that completely blew out the video I was secretly recording making it unwatchable, I laughed the hardest I ever had. The nest had shut me up pretty soundly. I wasn’t prepared for something like that. But seeing it get washed away in blazing flood felt good.

No reprimands that time though. Nothing about keeping it down or how I’ll wake the neighbors. He knew I’d earned it. And he knew he was the reason for it. He was to blame if someone woke up, not me.

In this moment, Dad revealed himself as being more than a heavy-equipment operator for a strip mine who cared for his family. He was a paladin, wielding a lance of pure fire that he plunged deep into the heart of the wasp nest hanging beneath the swimming pool out back. Again and again, he thrust his lance into the nest, at least it seemed that way. Really, he just calmly knelt down and spritzed some either into this lighter for a few seconds, completely torching it.

He groaned deeply as I helped him off his knees and onto his feet once the nest was nothing but ash. He told me, in no uncertain terms as we were walking back into the house, to not tell Mom about this – that he, uh, might get in trouble for taking such a rash action in keeping his family safe.

Couldn’t help it though.

The very next day I told her all about it. I didn’t get punished, I don’t think Dad did either, but he did get an earful about how he could have caught that hillside on fire and what was he thinking, doing that in front of his youngest son. He said I helped him avoid his catching it on fire by keeping his aim true and and so on and so forth. He insisted he was being careful and that there was no danger.

I don’t know how true either of those were, but I trusted him.

He asked me afterwards why I told Mom. I said there was no way I could keep something that awesome just to myself. How had I not already told the whole world? He grinned and agreed with me.

-It was pretty cool, wasn’t it?

Years later, after the pool had been deconstructed, I helped Mom clear out both the garage and this little storage shed next to it that Dad had built. Both were packed to the brim with things we didn’t have a use for anymore.

Getting rid of scrap metal and spare pieces of wood, pipes and fittings and all that. You know, stuff we didn’t really know how to use, much less need to hang on to.

We had no use for a five-gallon bucket covered in duct tape with a rectangular slot chopped out of the upper middle of it with a hard, transparent plastic sealing that opening shut. The top had been cut out and a hardhat had been tightly secured into it, making it easy to wear - to an extent. Beneath that was an old blue shirt that kept the bucket suctioned when the tube that fed into the air-compressor was connected and turned on.

Dad wore that when he painted my first car, an old 1987 Buick Century that I’d named Copernicus. It was this old beat-up blue color and I wanted it black. And Dad took care of that for me, keeping himself safe from the fumes with a with a do-it-yourself breathing apparatus that somehow worked.

We didn’t need that. Me and mom also didn’t need this can of ether on the shelf.

But we also didn’t really need to throw them out right away.