The Three Fires

The Three Fires

I was twenty-two or so when I had my first fire incident.  I lived in West Palm Beach in Fruity Acres.  By the end of my story, you will think I lived in the right place ;)   Robert and I were renting a home from a former Glades Central High school teacher named Robert Bennett.  He was one of the nicest people I have ever met, and was very understanding…I know from experience!

One night I decided to fry chicken for dinner, which was back in the day when I used Crisco in the can...and fried chicken with skin!  Well the can of grease was almost gone, so I turned on the stove and sat the Crisco can on it so it would melt and I could pour it in the skillet.  About that time Mr. Bennett knocked on the door.  I answered it and we stood there talking for a few minutes when James, who was about six years old, turned around and announced quite calmly that the kitchen was on fire.

He had been sitting in the living room floor watching cartoons, and we had a big aquarium sitting where James could see the reflection of the kitchen in the glass.  Note that when he made this announcement, he did not get up or stop watching his cartoon.  Mr. Bennett & I ran to the kitchen, and sure enough, the Crisco can was engulfed in flames.  Mr. Bennett grabbed a rug off of the kitchen floor and attempted to grab the can with the obvious intention of running back outside with it.

Good plan….poor implementation.  After he picked up the burning can, he lost his grip on it and it fell in the kitchen floor.  The flaming grease splashed out of the can and onto his cowboy boot.  The can went out pretty quickly after being removed from the heat and falling onto a flame retardant rug, but Mr. Bennett’s boot was burning quite nicely. 

He began to stomp around the kitchen in an attempt to put the fire out, which I must say to this day is one of the funniest things I have ever witnessed.  I thought about Dick Vandyke…you know….Stop, Drop & Roll.  Anyway after a lot of stomping and slapping at the boot, he finally extinguished it.  Needless to say, the boot was ruined.  He said he was glad that he was there and the only thing damaged was his boot…and the rug.  I apologized as straight faced as possible and offered to pay for the boots.  He took his rent money, but refused to let me pay for his boots.  I never melted grease like that again, but have laughed about this story for years  ;)

The second fire happened right after I had Bobby.  I was about 24….living in the same house with the same landlord.  I had bought a high chair from a consignment shop that was real wood.  I was stripping the old stain off of it so I could refinish it for Bobby.  The project was working out nicely and it was beautiful wood.  I had just finished putting polyurethane on it…..and I DID NOT know that Mineral Spirits could eat through plastic.  Therefore, after I had stained the highchair and put my first coat of polyurethane on it, I poured Mineral Spirits into a plastic glass and put my paint brushes in it to clean them.  I then placed the plastic glass on the range top until I needed it again.  I wanted to make sure it was up high so kids couldn’t get into it. 

The next morning I got up and fed the kids, cleaned the kitchen and started to sterilize Bobby’s bottles on the stove.  I turned the burner on high and was fiddling around making his formula when the entire stove whooshed into flames!  Flames were shooting up into the range top, which was also on fire since it was coated with flammable Mineral Spirits.

I freaked out and called 911 telling them my kitchen was on fire.  They asked who was in the house, and I told them myself and my two sons.  I was told to get both children and get out of the house; they were sending the fire department.  I hung up…then thought; if I leave that fire burning it is going to catch the kitchen cabinets on fire and burn up all of our stuff. 

So instead of listening to the dispatcher, and evacuating with the children, I grabbed a pitcher and filled it with water.  I proceeded to whoosh the stove with the water and the fire immediately went out.  I was shaking I was so scared, but I knew the danger was over.   I decided to call 911 back to cancel my order for a fire truck.  Apparently you can’t retract a request once it’s given to 911…help will show up in full force!

I heard the fire trucks long before they arrived; they were using sirens and blowing their air horns.  I was quite embarrassed knowing they were going to show up and NOT have a fire to fight….although there were plenty of signs left proving I DID have one.  The soot was all over the stove, range top & cabinets.  Water was everywhere too….which the Fire Chief got very upset about.  Apparently you are NOT supposed to throw water on an electrical fire.  I assumed you threw water on fire regardless of the cause.   The Chief ranted about how you could get electrocuted yada yada yada.

He then proceeded to find the source of the fire.  He found my plastic glass full of brushes sitting on the soot covered range top.  The mineral spirits had eaten the bottom out of the glass…I was amazed because I didn’t have a clue that it could eat plastic!    I blamed it on Robert since he wasn’t there to deny it, and you could tell this guy had still not gotten over me putting the fire out before his arrival!  I think he would have been pissed even if I beat it out with that flame retardant rug from the first fire. 

Then he said they had to do a report, which I was cool with until they wanted the owner of the home’s name.  They had to copy Mr. Bennett on the report!    I wasn’t sure how he would take it after the boot and all….but he still didn’t evict me.  He actually laughed about it.  I cleaned up the mess and painted the kitchen.  Mr. Bennett begged us to buy that house with owner financing when we decided to move to North Carolina.  Which leads into the third fire incident…they say things happen in threes.

After we moved to North Carolina I had promised James that I would get him another dog, because he was very mad at me for getting rid of his dog from Florida named Cody.  In my defense, the dog ATE cats…we were moving next door to a cow pasture.   I didn’t know what a cow would cost if Cody ate it, but I was not willing to find out. 

Anyway Donna and I took the kids to the Macon County Animal Shelter and adopted two puppies that ended up having Parvo and died within a couple of days.  Well, since we had paid for shots and spaying when we adopted the puppies the shelter let us pick out more animals.  So I got Boomer, who James would not accept as a Cody replacement, and Donna got a big gray Persian cat.  I named the dog as soon as I saw him, but Donna had not picked out a name for the cat when the third fire incident occurred.

We had been waiting to get our income tax refunds back because we really wanted to buy a new television.  I had started cooking some hotdogs for lunch, when someone brought the mail in and our refund checks were there.  In a rush we took off to go to town to cash the checks and to buy a TV.  We had just about made it to town when I remembered the hotdogs.  Donna turned around and we hurried back home to see if the house had burned down yet. 

You could hear the smoke detector screaming as soon as we got out of the car.  We ran inside and turned off the stove and ran outside with the hotdog ashes.  We opened up the windows and doors to let the smoke out when the poor cat made an appearance.  He was going HEEE  HEEE  HEEE.  Weirdest noise I ever heard a cat make, but I had never seen one dying from smoke inhalation.  Everyone started freaking out about the cat, but I started laughing.  I don’t mean giggling….I mean laughing with tears running down my face. 

Donna actually started to get mad at me.  But when I told her I could just see us going back to the shelter with this smoking cat to ask them to give us ANOTHER animal, she cracked up too.  She ended up naming the cat Smoky.  It was so appropriate; I mean besides the smoke he was gray.  Smoky and Boomer both lived very long lives….and that was almost the end of my kitchen adventures.

I did mess up my brand new stove in the house we built in Otto when I cooked tea bags until they ignited.  We won’t go there after the three adventures mentioned above, but I have used a real Tea Maker ever since. 

Karen White Williams

The Discovery of Eyebrows

The Discovery of Eyebrows

I have to start from the beginning for you to get the full effect of this story.  The Williams men have never had an abundance of facial hair, but when Robert and I were young, he kind of lost more than the average Williams.  He had this old Dodge Charger that was kind of rust colored.  Almost looked like “The General Lee” from the Dukes of Hazard, but without the stickers and the horn.  Anyway, he was constantly adjusting on the carburetor thinking he could make the car run better and faster, you know the typical young male “fast car obsession”  

Well, he made me sit in the driver’s seat and was working on it, and yelled for me to “crank” the car.  When I turned the key, the carburetor back fired, and a ball of fire whooshed past his head. 

It singed his hair, which was kind of long at the time, but burned his eyebrows completely off!  The mustache was a site too.  I know what you’re thinking….Karen and Fire!  But this was totally NOT my fault.  I turned the key just like I was asked!  I naturally laughed my butt off when he came out from under the hood looking like the coyote after he had blown himself up with an ACME product. Let’s leave it with the fact that his hair was fixable, but the eyebrows never grew back!  He still blames me??

Now I can begin the story of the discovery of eyebrows!  When Bobby was between two and three years old; he spent a great deal of time with Donna and I….and Dad’s pigs.  You see we would have to go sit behind Winn Dixie in the evening to get produce and the leftover stuff from the deli.  Dad had worked it out to get all of this pig food by giving the managers a hog each when they were big enough.  He had a LOT of pigs!

One evening we were sitting in the truck behind the store listening to the radio…waiting on the slop and playing with Bobby.  He would go between my lap and Donna’s lap asking every question that he could think to ask….then want to know WHY for whatever answer he was given.  He was an inquisitive child, but was also apparently very observant as well.  He must have noticed that his Dad did not have eyebrows.  He realized that evening that Donna did.

He was standing in the front seat and was facing Donna talking to her, when he gasped and traced her eyebrows with his finger.  He said “Poor Donna”….she was like what?  He just kept checking out her eyebrows and repeating poor Donna when she realized he had never noticed eyebrows.  She laughed at him and told him; look your Mom has them too. 

He flew from her side of the truck to mine so he could inspect my face.  He did the same thing to me.  “Poor Mama”  I laughed at him too, but told him he had eyebrows.  He shook his head and disagreed with me.  He then went straight to the review mirror so he could check out his.  Unfortunately, Bobby’s eyebrows were so blond you couldn’t see them.  That is when it really got funny.  He argued with us that he did NOT have eyebrows.  It was us who were “Poor”. 

Needless to say when he got home he wanted to check out everyone’s eyebrows.  He honestly thought he and his father were the normal ones and everyone else had a deformity.  He was a hoot to raise…he is still a hoot…just a really big one.   When he was around that age and didn’t get his way, he would tell me “wait until I get big and you get little” and he would do whatever.  I told him it didn’t work that way…turns out he is big and next to him I am little. 

Karen White Williams

On The Foot

‘On The Foot’

During our ‘wonder years’ we lived on 3^rd Avenue in South Bay, Florida and our world was filled with family and friends and some of the best times of my life.  One of mama’s oldest and best friends, Willie Sue Manning, lived at the far end of 3^rd Avenue and right next to her house was an old, broken down, abandoned house.  Willie Sue lived right across the street from one of the neighborhood's most interesting people, a little person named Vernelle Simpson, who has absolutely nothing to do with this story, but I always found her so interesting so she is worthy of an honorable mention here. 

My two best friends at that time were Cathy Mayo and Doris Ann Peters.  I hung out with Karen a lot too and on this day, all four of us were looking for mischief.  It was summertime, it was hot and we were bored.  I was about 12 or 13 years old, I believe, and for some reason, we all decided to go explore the old, abandoned house next door to Willie Sue.  We walked all over the neighborhood all the time so we may have just walked by it on the way to our favorite shortcut to and from Cathy Mayo’s house and decided to go check it out.  We knew we weren’t supposed to be there but it was far too interesting a place to ignore so we sneaked our way into the old broken down house.  At some point, a window had been broken, probably by some kid that was as bored as we were, and most of us ran around in flip flops or barefoot all the time.  Doris stepped on a piece of broken glass and cut her foot, and much to our dismay, she was a huge cry baby about it!

She screamed and cried as if she were dying and of course, we all ran out of the house because we could hear Willie Sue coming, yelling and cussing at the top of her lungs.  That woman could cuss a blue streak and she never held back!  Doris was bleeding and when Willie Sue reached us she started yelling at us for being around that broken down old shack to begin with, insisting that we all knew better.  Then she asked the fateful question:  Where did she get cut?

Karen and I both insisted that Doris had gotten cut on the foot, I mean, it was obvious, wasn’t it since that was where the blood appeared to be coming from, but every time we gave that answer, and we gave it several times, Willie Sue would get madder and louder.  She asked the question over and over: Where did she get cut?  On the foot!  Oh, we knew that what she really meant was ‘where was she when she got cut,’ but we weren’t stupid!  We knew we’d be in trouble for being there to begin with, so we weren’t about to fess up to being somewhere we knew we weren’t supposed to be.  Our answer remained firm: On the foot!  The louder Doris Ann wailed, the madder Willie Sue got and the louder she yelled and cussed!

Willie Sue wrapped Doris’ foot up then marched me and Karen home.  I think Mom was at work, but Daddy was home so Willie Sue proceeded to tell him that we had been disrespectful and smart allecky to her and we needed to have the…well, you can imagine what she said after that. 

Daddy sent us to our room to await punishment.  He made us stay there for the longest time and we were having sloppy joes for dinner.  We really wanted a sloppy joe!  We had been out playing and exploring all day, after all, and probably didn’t think to stop and eat unless it was a hot pickled sausage from the old convenience store on the corner that we gobbled down on a regular basis.  

One at a time, Daddy made us come out of the room, go outside and cut a piss ellen club that grew next to the big trees in the front yard.  Then it was back to our room to wait for him to come spank us.  Daddy rarely spanked any of us…mom was the disciplinarian and the one to beware of, but that evening, Daddy spanked us with our own little switches which he made a big production of skinning in front of us.  He didn’t really spank us all that hard, though piss ellen clubs always hurt.  He lectured us about respecting our elders.  To top all of that off, mom got in on the lecture too and that was never a pleasant experience.  I was mad at Willie Sue Manning for years after that but now I know how silly that was.  What she did helped to shape me and provided me with a lesson and a memory that will never be forgotten.  I would much rather have gotten in trouble for being where I knew I wasn’t supposed to be than for being disrespectful to Willie Sue so honesty really is the best policy. 

Donna White Johnson