Wherein I nearly burn down a house. Again.

YOU PROBABLY know that about half of house fires start in the kitchen. Well, I recently held up my end by setting ablaze the countertop of my kitchen island.

​How, you ask, how? I’ll tell you. Sheer stupidity.

I wish to take this opportunity to disabuse you of mistaking me for someone smart enough to have kept an extinguisher on hand. This, despite having made a mental note to obtain one after listening to Episode 228 of the delightful Built to Go podcast, wherein host Jeff Wagg addresses the topic.

Before continuing with my present-day kitchen saga, permit me to back up a little over 60 years to a time when I, a friend, and my older brother Pete were walking through the pine forests of Lake Luzerne, a quaint, upstate New York resort town where my grandparents had a summer cabin. My friend and I were eight-ish years old, so Pete would have been 11-ish. Finding ajar the front door of a nearby, long unoccupied summer home, we decided to enter and explore. The home had no power, so Pete rummaged about the kitchen, where he found a candle and matches, and, unfortunately, a small can of lighter fluid. Having difficulty lighting the candle, he deployed the lighter fluid upon it and, in the process, upon the kitchen counter. Then he struck a match, and the counter went up in flames.

My friend and I grabbed brooms and hurried outside. Pete hurled burning objects out to us, which we beat with the brooms. This tactic was not the smartest. It was, after all, a pine forest. Its floor was a carpet of dry pine needles. As we toiled away, visions of racing for our lives through a forest engulfed in flames—and knowing we were the cause of it—terrorized me.

Then inspiration struck. Pete grabbed a mat from the kitchen floor and used it to smother the flames. Disaster had been averted. Eight-year-old I stood—and present-day I remain—amazed at the young lad’s resourcefulness. 

(I wish I could tell you we tucked our tails between our legs and left. Nope. Pete relit the candle and we explored the house. I never said we were smart kids.)

Now, back to the present day and my kitchen.

“Thanks” to that childhood experience, I had an idea. I happened to be wearing a bathrobe over sweats. I whipped off the robe and used it to smother the flames. 

The realization that some six decades ago we could have been responsible for burning down that vast, lovely forest haunts me to this day. Now I add to that the harrowing realization that, had I not happened to have been wearing a bathrobe and happened to have had that childhood experience, I could have burned down my home, quite possibly my neighbors’ homes, and a good many magnificent Oregon trees.

Later that day, I bought fire extinguishers.