Questions from my son tend to add a little different perspective to the stories I’ve told him.

If you’ve been reading them long, you know that there’s a certain classification of stories involving “Stupid Things that Papa Did When He Was Little”.

They’re the kinds of stories that I can safely tell in the first person…

Past tense.

(think about that – it’s important)

So when my son asked, “So just how many fires did you actually set in the house when you were growing up?” – and I honestly had to think my way through them and keep track on my fingers, I knew I needed to write the stories down. So, just a recap of the times I almost burned the house down (note: some of these stories have been written, some are in the backlog)…

Let’s see… there’s:

  • the time the bed caught fire, (still need to write this one – it was an aluminum pilot’s bunk from the USS Ticonderoga… No, really.)
  • the time I lit the fire in the wood stove, with gasoline. (I don’t recommend this),
  • the time the candle holder caught fire (design issue anyone?) and set the set of Encyclopedias, the shelves they were on, on fire, and dripped flaming plastic onto the desk underneath them, setting it on fire as well, (Yup, need to write this one, too…)
  • the time I came very close to doing the Olympic Torch run through the house with a highway flare as I was trying to put out another fire.
  • …and of course there was the – well, let’s not give away the punchline, shall we?

I was still living at home with my folks and sisters, and it had been a Saturday of yard work and gardening and just general cleanup. I’d gotten done with my part, and asked what else there was for me to do, and mom said, “Well, you could go in and make dinner. You can make the chicken.”

Dinner.

Chicken.

Gotcha.

So I looked all over for a chicken and the only one I could find was the one frozen solid.

In the freezer.

Understand, this was an industrial level freezer. The chicken was the same consistency as the granite used by the Canadian Olympic Curling team. I imagined sliding the chicken across the floor and frantically sweeping in front of it – but while the image made me smile, I decided against hurling – or curling – the chicken…

Chances were I’d break something with it.

Besides, dinner for a hungry family was more important.

Speaking of dinner, I had to figure out how to rapidly thaw this hunk of frozen fowl. Dad had spent $600.00 on a microwave oven back then (in the ‘70’s) and gotten a good one (a Sharp) that would eventually last over 40 years, looking brand new the whole time. I hefted the chicken, still in the closed plastic bag, onto the rotating glass plate and pushed the buttons for something like 40 minutes, then turned around to peel potatoes in the kitchen sink and get some vegetables ready for the pot.

I’d gotten maybe two potatoes peeled when I sniffed that something was not quite right.

I smelled the potato I was peeling.

It was fine.

The peeler?

It was fine.

My hands?

They smelled like… raw potatoes.

Besides, I’d washed my hands, and the chicken was frozen last time I touched – oh, the chicken – uh…

I looked up from the sink, then looked left and right, trying to remember where I’d put the chicken, and it was only when I turned around that I definitely knew something was wrong.

The chicken that I’d put in the microwave to defrost, you see…

…was on fire.

Wait.

What?

I jumped across the kitchen, hammered down on the lever to shut the microwave off, popped the door open, and grabbed the burning plastic bag the chicken was in and heaved it in the general direction of the sink. The flame made a weird flup flup flup flup flup sound (complete with Doppler effect, mind you) just before the chicken thunk-splushed into the sink, putting the fire out and splashing water and potato peels all over the place.

I turned the water I’d been peeling the potato under off so I could see the bag, and it turned out that the plastic bag had been tied shut with what was standard for the time, which was two little pieces of tape with a wire in the middle.

And the wire had gotten red hot, set the tape on fire, which set the plastic bag on fire, which then set – I can’t believe I’m writing this, but it had set the chicken’s butt on fire (which reminds me of yet another story about my friend Bill – but you can read that one later).

I trimmed the burned parts off, pulled what remained of the chicken out of the bag, and put it in a glass bowl with a lid and actually read the manual for “how to defrost a chicken in the microwave” and put it back in there for awhile longer.

I looked out the window, checked on the rest of the gang, knew I had some time, so peeled some apples and sprinkled them with cinnamon sugar and put them on the chicken once it was defrosted and out of the microwave, then wrapped everything in some bacon I found while I was looking for the chicken in the first place and put that in the regular oven.

While that was baking, I made some salad, boiled the potatoes, and in general, made a pretty decent dinner.

I rang the dinner bell for everyone, and pretty soon they came in.

I remember one of my sisters taking a whiff and wrinkling her nose a bit as everyone came through the door, smelling a little bit of everything that had happened in the last couple of hours.

“What’s that smell?”

And I gave the only answer I could possibly give.

“It’s, it’s the chicken.”

And… it was actually pretty good.