December 19, 2016 – Is it a bird, a plane – no, it’s a flaming flying saucer?

          You learn from your mistakes – this one proves the point.

          It was a typical Saturday afternoon at our first house in the County.  Our development was middle class with 20 or so houses, lots of kids, and dogs.  Most Saturdays the homeowners circled their yards on their riding lawnmowers.  A continuous drone from morning to early afternoon was the norm.

          It was one of those days when the grass was wet from rain the night before and had to dry out before it could be properly mowed.  It was late afternoon and I had started supper.  My neighbor to the left was mowing his lawn and my husband was mowing our lawn.

          I was making old fashioned fried chicken.  Something I rarely do because of the calories.  But, I had been given a new recipe where you soak the chicken in buttermilk the night before, then dredge it in flour and fry it in Crisco.  Yes, Crisco.

          I was just about done when my Mom telephoned me.  I answered the phone.   Not a modern phone – it was attached to the wall and did not reach to the stove - so I put the phone down a moment and turned off the burner.   

Then I sat at my antique school room desk near the kitchen patio door and proceeded to carry on a length conversation with Mom. Out of the corner of my eye I notice flames leaping up from the fry pan licking the cabinets above. “Call you back.” I hung up abruptly with no explanation.

          This was a new house and I wasn’t going to let it burn down before we were a year into the mortgage.   I opened the sliding kitchen door screen and went to the stove, grabbed the flaming fry pan, and with deft quickness and agility took a few giant steps from the stove to the patio and flung the flaming fry pan off the patio into the back yard.  Luckily, I didn’t burn myself or spill hot grease or flaming oil anywhere in route.

Exactly what you are not supposed to do when you have a grease fire!

My neighbor to the left, a cautious, soft-spoken man, was mowing along our property line and yelled, “What the H_____ is that!”    

I stood on the patio and looked down on our un-mowed grass.  The fried chicken had tumbled out onto the grass as the pan had bounced and landed upside down.  The flames had died out.

My husband, also, mowing in the back yard, saw the “flaming flying saucer” as he later described it and immediately jumped off the mower and ran up to the patio.

We inspected the kitchen.  No serious damage except that I would spend several hours scrubbing the spattered grease off the stove top and surrounding cabinets.

As it was a “new” to me stove, I had incorrectly turned it to HIGH instead of OFF.

I was admonished by my husband who told me I should have used the cover to extinguish the flames. . . . that I could have been badly burnt . . .  that I could have burned the house down . . . . 

That day, he went out and bought a kitchen fire extinguisher.

I phoned Mom back to tell her what I had done.

“We’ve all done it once, my dear, now you know that you turn the burner off AND remove the pan from the burner to verify it is OFF.” Mom said reassuring me.

“Yes Mom, good advice.”