The snow brushed off, but the sleet stuck. Our house has cast-concrete steps. They get colder than a penguin's bunsions and are always 10 degrees colder than absolute zero. Ice caked on them like sea spray on a Russian ice-breaker. You couldn't get a slicker coating on them if you used a Zamboni.

I , however, was prepared. I'd ordered the kinda blowtorch-on-a-stick from my favorite mail-order tool catalog. For $29.95 I got the torch and a set of instructions in Italian. The torch hooked to a propane tank - the type used for gas grills.

A phone book ad for a truck rental outlet two blocks from my house said they had tanks and filled them. A brawny young lad late of the Middle East told me all they had were 10-gallon tanks. I'd need a forklift to tote one around.

I headed to the local big-box home center store. There I got a full tank. About 30 pounds. No, not £s, weight. I took the tank home with it crashing around the truck like a shipment of loose bowling balls.

About halfway home, I remembered I should have bought a striker – one of those things that looks like a big safety pin with a tin cup at one end. It produces sparks to light things like torches.

What the heck; I'd use matches.

The torch fit the propane tank just fine. But, the only fire-producing devices I could find were some give-away strike-on-the-box matches from a tobacco shop. I should not have stopped smoking, at least I'd have my old Zippo. A dozen matches later, I realize that I'm not going to be able to light this thing in the open. I repaired to the mud porch and fire the torch. Hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Maybe I was having a brain cramp when I thought of that.

Yikes! The torch ignited like Big Daddy Don Garlit's dragster burning up the quarter-mile followed by a sheet of flame. It sounded like a jet engine and spit an 18-inch flame like a dragon upset with the nagging and itching of hemorrhoids. All of this while I'm in an enclosed back porch four-fee wide and eight-feet long. So, while trying not to set the house ablaze, I juggled an active flame-thrower and a 30-pound liquid propane tank, using my third hand to open the back door.

I got outside with this pocket bonfire blazing away and try to negotiate the icy steps. You'll never guess what happened . . .

With any real memory of the course of events, I found myself bounding down the concrete steps on my butt, liquid propane tank clanging down along side me, ringing like the bells of Notre Dame each time it bounced while I tried not to barbecue myself with the flame-thrower. The tank went one way, my glasses another. I hoped none of my neighbors were watching.

Luckily, nothing was injured by what tiny bit of dignity I had.

I scampered to my feet and prayed I won't be engulfed in a volatile cryogenic petrochemicals from a ruptured tank.

To the task at hand.

Since I'd read the instructions a month ago . . . "reaches temperatures up to 3500º F! . . ." I felt no need for a refresher. I mentioned it was made in Italy? I've dubbed it Mussolini's Revenge.

I depressed the trigger and a lake of flame appeared at my feet. Yikes^2! I played the flame across the ground, trying to keep my car from being engulfed; it was only thirty feet away. Liquid propane dripped from the handle onto my hand and occasionally ignited. I felt like one of those stooges on America's Most Tragic Home Videos. I blew out my flaming hand several times before I realized that if I hold the trigger handle down all the way, the flame changed from a Nagasaki-sized fireball to something more like a blowtorch. I did this and my hand ceased to flame. Huzzah! We're not hitchhiking anymore, we're RIDIN'!

The torch cut through the ice like . . . like . . . like a flame through ice. All I had to do is be sure not get near – that means within sight of – anything combustible such as door mats, air-conditioning units, the house, my feet, etc.

This baby is the equivalent of a Bernz-a-Match torch with a three-inch wide nozzle and a foot-long flame. I'm looking forward to attacking the weeds in the driveway cracks this spring, that's if you don't see me and my wife sitting on our curb wearing Red Cross blankets while the fire department hoses down the smoldering rubble behind us.

Maybe I'll use it on the driveway. Does asphalt burn?

© 2003, Pete Nofel