T'was the night of the Alabama/Auburn game.
The family thought a heaping plate of chicken wings was just the
right meal to consume while cheering the Tigers on to victory.
:-)
As I had done before, I put about a gallon
of oil in our deep fryer pot, set it on our gas burner/grill/smoker
on our back patio, and lit the burner to get it warmed up. I
carried on in the house and did other things for a while.
Some time later, I went out to the burner,
stuck a thermometer in the oil, and hey, it's pretty hot, I
better hurry up and put the wings in. I went into the
kitchen, put the wings onto a plate, came back out to the burner,
and the pot of oil was on fire.
Fortunately, the burner is about a foot and
a half from the siding of the house and the flames, standing
about 12 - 14 inches tall, were not threatening the house. No
problem, thought I, we'll just smother the flames and do
something else for dinner. So I turned off the gas and got
a large pot lid to (gingerly) put over the pot of flaming oil.
Unfortunately, sitting in the pot, was the
strainer basket and its handle interfered with the seal of the
lid. Removing the basket was not much of an option. What
was going to do with a basket on fire, dipping flames everywhere
I took it?
Next idea: Use an old towel to smother
the flames. The towel conformed fairly well around the
basket handle, but not completely. It started catching on
fire. Okay then. Remove towel and put it out.
Time to try the fire extinguisher. No
problem. Never actually used one before, but it couldn't be
too tough.
First up: Kitchen extinguisher. El
cheapo Wal-Mart variety, ABC rated. Squirt. FOOOM! Huge
fireball heads for the sky, fire is sprayed toward the house.
I thought for sure that you had seen it in your neighborhood.
Our neighbor, on the other side of the street, on the other side
of the house, did. He came over to see what was going on.
Hmmm. Try that again. FOOOM! Maybe there's something
wrong with that extinguisher, let's go get the good one from the
garage. Squirt. FOOOM! Uh oh. Now what?
Okay. It's time to admit we're licked.
Let's call the fire department. Dial 911. "Look,
nobody's life is in danger, the house is not in danger, we just
need someone to come show us how to put this fire out.....No,
really, it's not a big deal....Just send a fireman over to
extinguish the flames.....Yes, that's right......Okay, thank you."
About five minutes later a hook and ladder
comes ripping through the neighborhood, siren blaring, honking
that damn horn. Pulls up to a screeching
halt in front of
the house, and two men get out with full riot gear: jacket,
pants, boots, gloves, helmet, oxygen system, etc. The
neighbors were quite amused.
The first thing the fireman does is blast it
with his extinguisher. FOOOM! Hmmm. That wasn't
supposed to happen. Squirt. FOOOM! (at least *I*
got this far without all that fireman training)
Head scratching time. Ah ha! So
the fireman steps back and sprays the extinguisher up in the air
and the foam settles down like snow on top of the pot of oil,
extinguishing it. Gotta make a note of that one.
The fireman hung around for a while until
the oil cooled down, we gave them a plate of cookies, and they
left after spending about 10 minutes in our front yard filling
out paperwork.
We gave up on wings and went to Taco Bell to
pick up dinner. On the way down our street, we passed WAAY
31 news driving towards our house. Hopefully, they weren't
expecting an interview.
The next day, a casual acquaintance that lives on the other side of the neighborhood rode by on his bicycle with his family and asked when they next cook out was going to be. I figured everyone knew about this by now. No, I haven't tried smoking anything (other than the house itself) yet.