When I Needed More Than A Spark
When things go wonky in our lives, we like to blame our shortcomings on our parents. My parents were pretty normal, but I’ve realized that I can blame my explosions on my dad. It’s a generation thing.
Being the daughter of a farmer means that I have a plethora of different skills from chick dipping to hay bucking.
When I was a child, we lived several miles from the nearest town. There was no trash pickup so we had a 55-gallon barrel where we burnt trash. When I was 10, Dad showed me how to dump trash in the barrel and start the fire.
He struck a match and held it over some old newspaper. The flame grabbed the paper and began to spread to the rest of the rubbish.
“If you have a lot of trouble getting the match to catch,” he said, “you can sprinkle a little gas on the trash, and it’ll get things going.”
Oddly enough, the match always has trouble catching. At first, I sprinkled a little gas just like he showed me. But sometimes your wrist slips and a little more gets sprinkled. That worked better with a satisfying whoosh.
My brother was in on this too, and soon we were diligent in soaking the trash before tossing in the match. We never had a failure. The time that the boom was so big it blew out the flames scared us a little.
Not enough, apparently.
Shortly after college, I moved into a house that has a natural gas grill in the back yard. I was a total rookie with such a convenience item.
I had heard from someone that there was a hole in the back of the pipe supporting the grill. You stuck a lit match in the hole to start the grill.
I made sure the lid to the grill was closed so the flame wouldn’t go out once I got it going. Then I turned the gas knob on, crawled around to the back of the pipe and stuck the lit match into the tube.
A massive fireball shot out in all directions over my head. The lid swung up and crashed down. Yep, the flame went out.
I kept that story to myself for a long time.
Several years later, the kids and I were working on a house rehabilitation. The day was cold, and the furnace was off. So I trekked down to the basement and pulled the cover off the furnace. I searched the innards of the furnace because I wasn’t sure where to light it.
No problem. Inventive was my middle name. I turned on the gas, stood beside the furnace (not in front. I’m not a fool.) and tossed in a match. Whoosh. Flames leaped out and then settled into a nice little fire in the furnace. Just like I expected.
The bang brought the kids racing down the stairs.
They thought I might be dead. No worries. Just a few singed eyebrows and some frizzy hair. And the furnace was roaring. We had heat.
Alas, they took away my lighting privileges that day.
I hadn’t lit a grill in years, but recently we were having guests for dinner, and nobody was around. I needed the grill hot for steaks. And I knew how to do this.
I turned on the propane tank under our grill and twisted the knobs to start. This grill has an ignite button so I should be good. It clicked, but no flame blossomed.
Obviously, it was time to go looking for a match. But where on earth did I manually light this thing? Farm kids have a good eye, and I figured out how to remove a plate under the grill. I tossed in the match. Boom!
Just for the record, the steaks were delicious. But my daughter eyed me that evening. “What happened to your hair?” It did grow out quickly, so no real harm there.
But I was banished again.
I recently ran across an idea for a burner that obliterates weeds. All you have to do is point at the weed and press a button. Poof. A little flame shot out to burn the weed.
I thought that was kinda slow. One weed at a time?
However, the dial went to 11, which theoretically could leave a 10-foot crater in the back yard. That ought to take care of all the weeds. I was ready to order one.
My kids have ordered a straitjacket instead.
