@MentORPHEUS if it weren't for the pets, I'd have guessed insurance fraud

Killing someone's pets, especially like that, is all kinds of fucked up

I broke the window. With fresh oxygen the whole interior was suddenly completely aflame

I hope you learned from that. I realize you had little info and less time to act, but if you're ever in a similar scenario again, be careful if shit like that. Opening doors to rooms, etc can kill your ass with the sudden increase in flames. I forgot what the firefighting term was for this; was only a volunteer and only less than a year.

Flames were now pouring out of the window above my head, and the intense radiant heat felt like it was going to spontaneously combust my hair.

A) that would not have been spontaneous combustion

B) get a haircut, ya hippy!

Kidding around aside, I'm glad you were able to save at least the two of them.

Last night there was a homestead nearby that went up in flames around 11pm. I rushed over with a shovel to see if I could help. Found nobody present, but EVERYTHING there was ablaze in what was clearly arson; fire would not have started naturally and spread like this.

I heard dogs yelping so I approached a car with flames all along the driver's side exterior with what looked like cages. Way too much radiant heat to approach so I went around to the passenger side, and looked around the front to find the cages were burned out. I could still hear dogs crying sounded like from inside; passenger door was locked so I broke the window. With fresh oxygen the whole interior was suddenly completely aflame. Dogs still yelping so I dropped to my knees to see three puppies underneath. The cubes of glass I had just broken were burning me as I knelt and I struggled to reach and pull out the puppies. Got two dragged out with difficulty, there was a third who was stuck like the deflating tires brought the car down on him. Flames were now pouring out of the window above my head, and the intense radiant heat felt like it was going to spontaneously combust my hair.
I gathered up the two puppies and my shovel awkwardly and made my way back to my car through desert scrub. I could hear more than one dog making crying noises I never want to hear again. Fire engines were finally approaching with difficulty over the small unmarked dirt roads.

Long story short, now I'm fostering two very sweet puppies who are in remarkable condition for what they went through. I have small burns and wounds on all 4 extremities but it was worth it to save them. They had eaten a full meal just hours before; I know this because they puked copious amounts of colorful kibble in my back seat on the way home.

This must have been some kind of revenge or nasty breakup scenario; I don't know who would torch someone's entire homestead, pets and all like that for petty reasons.

@Typo-MAGAshiv

That's odd. Are you sure they weren't Ukranian?

Forgot to answer this part. This happened in the mid to late '80s, though part of the short lived Reddit responses attempted to project current events and geopolitics onto the tale.

At the time, they mentioned Ukraine in passing maybe once or twice, but never specified identifying as "Ukrainian" much less ever corrected anyone on this point. They called themselves "Russian," and the Student Body referred to them as "The Russians." The American political zeitgeist from Reagan on down through the strongly anti-Russian Republican side of the aisle made no mention of Ukraine as any way separate or distinct from Russia, or its citizens from "The Russians."

The title made a snappy anchor as I thought back on this event and worked on the post in my mind, but the reactions to it make a pointed reminder that a couple of generations have come of age since then, each with a much different POV toward Russia as my son-of-boomers mindset

@MentORPHEUS

The American South had to get dragged kicking and screaming at the point of cannons to end formal slavery within the USA,

So what? The fact remains that white people have ended that vile practice everywhere we could.

Hell, if anything, the fact that we were willing to fight our own kind over it^1 is another feather in our cap. You don't see the black natives in South Africa fighting each other over the Boers' right to live; nope, they are united in their desire to "Kill the farmer! Kill the Boer!"

1 - note acknowledging to fellow history nerds that slavery was a tiny issue in the War of Northern Aggression, and to the Confederacy the issue of States' Rights (each state being sovereign within its borders and the federal government only controlling interstate commerce and common defense) and the issue of Southern States consistently getting overruled in Congress due to the population difference were both far more important.

and the attitude of presumptive superiority and dominion over black people still lives on today in huge numbers of the people there. I know this because they frequently blurt it out publicly from their own mouths.

Bullshit.

I have lived in the South my entire life, minus a brief stint at Fort Lewis.

The stereotype of nothing but racist rednecks is bullshit.

One of my best friends in college was a Canadian citizen of Indian descent, and when his family was supposed to move from Toronto to Atlanta, he was scared shitless because of that stereotype. He figured all the anti-Indian racism he had experienced in Toronto would be just a warmup.

Imagine his surprise that after his first 6 years in the Atlanta area, the only racism he experienced there was at the hands of a Cuban immigrant!

Have you ever been to the South? Or do you get all your info from schlock like "The Beverly Hillbillies" and "The Dukes of Hazzard"?