COLUMN: Carrying a burning passion for news too far?

Usually when I “make the front page,” it means I am designing tomorrow’s paper and building the page for our Daily Inter Lake readers, but two weeks ago, I actually made the front page the hard way — I was in the news.

It didn’t make the front page here in Kalispell, but it did in Missoula, when six vehicles burned up in the parking lot of the Hilton Garden Inn in the Garden City. You can imagine my surprise when mine was one of them. I think no one is more shocked than a newsman when he finds himself on the receiving end of the news instead of the reporting end.

Our three-day vacation in Missoula had started well enough, with a first-time visit to the Garnet ghost town on a mountaintop about 30 miles east of and 2,600 feet above Missoula. It was my 6-year-old’s first visit to a ghost town, so I had to assure him there were no real spirits on the loose, although after what happened later I started to have my doubts.

After spending a couple of hours wandering with my wife, daughter and son through century-old buildings and reading about the rough-and-tumble life of a Montana mining town on a hot summer day, we were ready to drive back to Missoula to meet up with our oldest son, who is a junior at the University of Montana. On the agenda: Street food at an open-air concert at Caras Park and then a refreshing swim in the hotel’s pool. Then, after driving Carmen back to UM shortly after 10 p.m., getting to bed to prepare for two more relaxing days in a town I fell in love with when I was a know-it-all graduate student back in 1977.

Last thing I expected was to get a wake-up call at 12:30 in the morning, but that’s what happened.

“Sir, there’s a major emergency in the hotel,” I heard the front desk clerk calmly tell me on the phone.

“Uh oh,” I thought groggily. “There must be a fire alarm, and we’re going to have to evacuate,” but nothing prepared me for the next words.

“Several cars are on fire in the parking lot, and yours is one of them.”

“What?” I repeated his words back to him in question form, as if to prompt him to reassure me I was not dreaming. That was when my wife let out a loud gasp and repeated the words back yet again. We just couldn’t believe it.

We quickly dressed and rode down the elevator to the front desk. We tried to make sense of the situation, but we didn’t have any information yet. Was it our van that had started the fire? Do cars spontaneously combust? Just how bad was it? And what the heck were we going to do for the next two days of our vacation?

When we got outside, the answer to the last question at least was obvious — we were going to spend the next two days buying a new car.

Our old reliable 1999 Ford Windstar van, purchased in 2008, fitted with a new engine in 2013, was toast. The windshield was partly melted, along with the front driver’s-side tire, and the two front side windows just behind it. The steering column and driver’s seat had turned to ash. I felt like an archeologist unearthing a chariot in the lava fields at Pompeii.

My wife and I were shellshocked. Firefighters pushed us back from the vehicle. Red lights flashed from both fire trucks and police cars. People whose lives were not turned upside down pointed and stared at the wreckage with relief that it wasn’t theirs.

From what we ascertained that night, and the following morning, the SUV parked immediately to our left had been the victim of an arson attack and was completely gutted. It turned out it was owned by a Little League coach in town for the state championship. Although no one had a suspect in mind, it raised the specter of some insane sports rivalry that had flared into Hollywood-esque violence. The rest of us were just collateral damage.

All told, I think six cars burned that night, at least three of them totaled, including ours. Most of them were newer vehicles that probably carried comprehensive insurance, but our 1999 van wasn’t worth enough to justify coverage, so we quickly adjusted to the fact that we were starting over from scratch.

The next day proved to be a whirlwind that capped our unforgettable three-day vacation. First up, break the news to the kids. Meredith, our high-school-aged daughter, handled the news with the typical aplomb of a teen-ager. Stuff happens.

Six-year-old Huzhao, on the other hand, did not see any reason why he should just “grin and bear it.” This was his van, after all — the car he had driven in since the day after he was born. And by the way, “What happened to my car seat?” We later discovered it was one more casualty, and one more justifiable reason why Huzhao’s emotions were on edge that day.

Nonetheless, with a philosophy I had picked up from 32 years in recovery from alcohol abuse, I encouraged everyone to accept the things we could not change and move on to changing the things we could.

First things first. A delicious breakfast at the Hilton Garden Inn, a quick conversation with the gracious hotel manager, and then a shuttle ride to the airport to rent a vehicle big enough to haul the four of us, plus Carmen and his belongings, back to Kalispell. Turns out we needed a little divine intervention (and Enterprise Rent-a-Car) to pull that off. We visited five car rental counters and were told repeatedly that it was impossible to rent a van in Missoula in July without a reservation. We called another rental outfit and were told they could find a van for us all right — in 10 days!

Then, our last hope — Enterprise ... at the very end of the row of rental agencies — came through. Yes, they had a large SUV with seating for seven, which had just been turned in — would we like it? Ummm, yessss! And then, while we waited for that vehicle to be cleaned, our friendly Enterprise agent informed us that a Dodge Caravan had also just been returned and was actually ready to go immediately. Thank you, God. Thank you, Enterprise.

While we were at the airport, I called the police, the fire inspector, a tow truck and a salvage yard to make arrangements to have our oversized paperweight towed to its final resting place in Bonner. By that time, all we wanted to do was get rid of it. The hundred dollars we got for our lump of coal was just gravy.

The rest of the story is more mundane, but rather hurried. We got back into town by 1:30, grabbed a quick lunch, and were on our way to our first car lot by 2. We figured we had three hours left that afternoon to try to find an inexpensive van that was in our budget, looked halfway decent, and could get us safely back to Kalispell. Five vans, three car lots and two test drives later, and we had our car — a remarkable Oldsmobile Silhouette with 227,000 miles and one very dependable previous owner who had religiously changed the oil every 3,000 miles (Thanks, CarFax!) for the past 12 years.

Things were starting to look up.

Next stop? A large discount store where we found a great deal on a booster seat for Huzhao. The last piece of the puzzle. We were made whole again. The family got a new car, and I got a new story. A journalist can’t ask for more than that, can he?