Day 113: Safety First

A fire hydrant.

I was running an errand for the office today and I was struck by just how many things around me that were red.  It was crazy!  Everywhere I looked I found a bright red object, but nothing as fun as this fire hydrant.

I don't know what made this fire hydrant so fun.  Maybe because it was at a good angle, maybe because it started sprinkling on me as I took the photo, or maybe because the words, "fire hydrant" always remind me of the time my brother Dave almost burned the house down.  I know what you're thinking, "how is that fun?"  But it is, and I'll tell you why.

When Dave was in high school and working on his Eagle Scout project with my dad in the dining room, he got hungry and decided to make a deep-fried burrito (a favorite of his at the time).  So he set a pot of oil to heat on the stove and went back to his project with my dad.  Inevitably, they both forgot about the pot of boiling oil until it heated up so much that it burst into flames.  While Dave and Dad addressed the huge flames consuming our kitchen, the fire department was called and our sick mom was rushed outside in her nightgown to wait on the front lawn with me and my brother James.

As dad hastened to try and put out the uncontrollable fire, he sent Dave to find a fire extinguisher from one of our neighbors (we didn't have one at the time).  So dad, being the action-oriented man that he is, quickly assessed the situation and began to dump copious amounts of water onto the now-raging, ceiling-high oil fire.  Not the recommended action for an oil fire, I know.  But he had no other tools to work with.

And while Dad was feverishly attempting to put out the blaze, Dave ran through the middle of our street yelling, "FIRE HYDRANT!  FIRE HYDRANT! DOES ANYONE HAVE A FIRE HYDRANT!?"  Most of our perplexed neighbors ignored him, since it didn't make any sense to them why he would be asking them if they had a fire hydrant, when we lived across the street from one.  Obviously, what he really meant to say was, fire extinguisher, but how often do we communicate at peak efficiency when we are panicked? Anyway, after what I'm certain was a very confusing conversation, full of hysterical yelling and finger pointing, Dave managed to bum a fire extinguisher from one of our neighbors and rush back to the house.

I can't remember if he got there before the fire fighters did, because when we retell the story, we always end it with Dave yelling, "FIRE HYDRANT!" through the streets of our neighborhood.  Ah...such a laugh!  At any rate, Dad miraculously managed to extinguish the oily flames using his dousing technique, and when the fire fighters arrived, all they really did was hack up our kitchen to make sure no flames were hiding in the attic...weird.

Another upside to this story: We got to eat out every night for a month while the kitchen was repaired.  Compliments of our insurance company! I was really young, 7 or 8, so that was the highlight of my summer!