"Burn Permits" Burn My Butt

More Un-needed Government Intervention...


I've been looking around the property the past month, and since it's winter and the leaves are off the bushes and weeds I can see the structure of the Fawnia and Flora and to be honest...I think that I need to get out the electric chainsaw and the pruning clippers and do a little lawn maintenance.

The temperature is supposed to near 50 tomorrow for the first time in a couple of weeks, and in anticipation of the event I made the phone call this afternoon.

I got the phone number off of the Knox County Website.

Guess what?

They have to FAX me my "Burn Permit" from the "Knox County Air Quality Office."

Further...even though I can find the address and phone number on line, I can't find the "burning rules" on line.

Also, they have a web site and e-mail addresses, but I still for some unknown reason have to tie up my telephone waiting on a fax from a government bureaucrat that will move three inches to open a file drawer or peck on their keyboard because they have to FAX ME THE GOVERNMENT MANDATED "BURN PERMIT."

The good news is that it's good for 90 days for some reason. All I wanted to do is burn some crap that been laying against the fence line since we bought the house last April along with some new stuff I knock down while doddering around the yard brandishing power tools of various descriptions.

Now after going through the trouble to get my 90 day faxed permit I may just cut everything in sight down and burn it in order to avoid any future conflict or worse of all...come up against of all things...

A BURNING BAN.

They have those, you know.

In Atlanta they had one every year from Memorial Day to Labor day, then I think they basically banned anything larger than a match or cigarette lighter outside for the remaining seven months of the year.

Doesn't anyone but me find it strange that today you have to ask the GOVERNMENT for permission to dispose of leaves or limbs or dead bodies of infants in your back yard in a nice bonfire fashion?

I guess it's sort of like the thinking of the gun control zealots...

When fires are outlawed...only outlaws will have fires.

The rest of us will just have to freeze to death while camping or be buried under piles of lawn refuse because the GOVERNMENT IS DOING IT'S BEST TO PROTECT US FROM OURSELVES.

dammit...