bgadow,
Setting fire to a CRT can be dangerous, if you can get the darn thing to burn in the first place (how does one set fire to glass?). I've seen these tubes implode; when they do go, you had better be far away from them if you don't want to be cut up badly by flying glass, pieces of metal from shattered electron guns, etc. How on earth did you do it? I can see how the bakelite base would melt, but not the rest of the tube (unless it got hotter than a blast furnace, of course).
Where were you living when you set fire to that tube? You told me, in your answer to one of my posts, that Federalsburg is not that big a town. I would guess you were in a much smaller community at the time.
What about the fire laws in the community in which you were living when you set fire to that CRT? Most areas have laws these days, some have had them for years or decades, against open burning of anything.