Playing With Fire #socs

Stream of Consciousness Saturday 3 Minutes

I will generally do these stream-of-consciousness entries on Friday afternoon, when Mary and I are out at Starbucks, so long as the prompt gets to me before I leave. So this one caught me by surprise, because Linda’s looking for a book title and there isn’t a book around here to be found. So I went off to Amazon and looked at the books they’re recommending for me (actually for her, because she does most of the reading in our house), and I found one called Playing With Fire.

For some of you who have been reading this blog for some time, you’ve probably heard these stories, and I apologize for that.

When we lived in Indianapolis, my mother generally burned the newspaper that accumulated at the house. This was 1959, when burning things outside was a common practice, and before newspapers were collected for recycling on a regular basis. I, being the oldest and the one least likely to take a nap in the afternoon, would usually accompany her, because she didn’t want to leave me alone in the house, because God only knew what I would do if left unattended. We had a wire basket about the size of a trash can in the alley behind the house, and Mom would crumble the newspaper before tossing in there, and when it was full she would light it with a kitchen match, the old-fashioned Ohio Blue Tip “strike anywhere” variety. Then we would stand there and watch the mini-inferno until it burned everything down to nothing but ash.

Circumstances arose where we had to move back to Chicago late that year, and after spending Christmas with Walkie and Hicks, we moved into an apartment on Magnolia Avenue, where all our belongings had been delivered. Mom and her sister, Fabulous Auntie Jill (my godmother) had unpacked everything, which had been wrapped in newspaper, and left the boxes with the discarded newspaper on the back porch.

Being a month or so shy of four, having observed my mother burning newspaper, being a “monkey see, monkey do” kind of kid (there’s a story where, after watching my grandfather daub himself with iodine when he cut himself, I did the same with brown liquid shoe polish), and wanting to help Mommy, I took it upon myself, with the help of my brothers (Jimmy, 2, and Kippy, 1), to burn the newspaper.

I piled all the paper in the middle of the back porch, struck an Ohio Blue Tip “strike anywhere” match and set fire to the newspaper, expecting the newspaper to burn down to ash and the fire to go out. Boy, was I ever surprised when the fire continued to burn after the paper had reached the ash stage.

Mom was out, so we ran to Fabulous Auntie Jill, who was living with us, and asked for her assistance in putting out the fire.

“What fire, Johnny?”

“The fire on the back porch.”

Jill ran to the kitchen, saw the inferno that was consuming the back porch, and called the fire department. I was brought to a neighbor’s house, where I was soon interrogated by an officer of the Chicago Fire Department, to whom I explained, as best I could, what had transpired.

I wasn’t too severely punished for what I had done, at least not physically. However, I found myself in nursery school the following week, because I couldn’t be trusted and was already deemed a bad influence on Jimmy and Kippy.

My next experiment in arson came when I was in seventh or eighth grade and learned that certain aerosol household products were extremely flammable. Several friends of mine told me that spraying Lysol on a lit match would result in a rather spectacular blast of flame. We didn’t have Lysol in a spray can at home, so I experimented with a number of other household products, including Niagara Spray Starch (put the flame out almost immediately). Lemon Pledge, on the other hand, gave me quite a fireball, and soon I was demonstrating this for my friends.

That ended when one of my brothers squealed on me to get out of some trouble he had gotten into. Mom summoned me to the living room, and I was told to bring the supplies for creating a “torch” so as to demonstrate for her. I was ordered never to do that again.

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Published by John Holton

Internet disc jockey, lover of old TV (especially the commercials), inveterate wise guy.

Published

24 thoughts on “Playing With Fire #socs”

  1. Pingback: My Attempt At Yeggery #socs – The Sound of One Hand Typing

  2. OH MY! What great tales. I just turned to my husband and said, “At least none of our kids were arsonists when they were small.”

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  3. Pingback: The Midpoint Of July Week That Was – The Sound of One Hand Typing

  5. Wow, you were lucky the house didn’t burn down when the porch started on fire! Little Pyro Johnny… 🙂
    Great story.

    Michele at Angels Bark

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    1. From what I understand, after about the tenth time they took me to the emergency room because I had run into a radiator or something and needed stitches, Dad turned to Mom and said “We better hurry up and have another. This one’s not going to last!”

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    1. I never thought of Ban. Hairspray did a great job.

      We had a small termite issue a few years back, where they were swarming inside the house. Mary called the exterminator (who was supposed to prevent termites from getting in), and he said to spry them with hairspray. She didn’t use it, so we had to go to Target. When we were looking at the array of hairsprays, she said “Do you think I should get the regular or extra hold?” We got a kick out of it…

      If you’re in the mood to see something crazy, check “destroy hornet nest” on YouTube. Guess how they do it?

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  8. Wow John, that’s pretty dangerous stuff there! You are lucky you didn’t get hurt. My son liked to burn paper towels on the gas stove but fortunately outgrew that habit. I remember the lemon pledge commercial and use it still, but certainly don’t look that dressed up when I’m cleaning house!

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      1. My mom said she used to wash the kitchen floor in a dress and stockings because my dad (old fashioned Italian) didn’t want her to wear pants. It wasn’t even that he wanted to watch her because she did the floor when he wasn’t home! He said if she was going to wear pants, he would wear a dress. Once, he did! Confused the heck out of someone when he went into a public restroom with a dress on. He was a character that guy!

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  9. “When you’re hot, you’re hot, you really shoot your shot…” -Ohio Players, 🔥

    We had a slope-sided metal incinerator about 5 feet tall at the family’s St Ignatius, Montana ranch in the late 1950s-early 1960s (http://tinyurl.com/y73dmppw). All the flammable waste went in it – newspaper, wood chips, paper feed bags. Nowadays in most even semi-urban areas, burning waste is an air quality issue and usually prohibited.

    My own early experiments in fires were with paper towels. They burned quite well, thank you, but I always managed to put them out before they burned anything else, like my bed. Later as a boy count in most any Midwestern woods, I discovered birch bark burns ferociously, even when wet. I used to always keep a little in my first aid kit as an emergency supply.

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  10. Great STUFF! Love it. I tell stories about my life, and my kids all the time! They are the best stories to share! And now we know who inspired the song “Bad reputation”

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  11. Wow! I’m glad you lived to tell about it. What a little adventure-er! 🙂 My son always liked to play with fire, too.

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