Fire Extinguishers: They Work! (And Other Lessons From Memorial Day)

Lesson 1: If you bought that much rhubarb at the West Seattle Farmers Market on Sunday, you're gonna have to fill your pies up pretty high. And if you fill your pies up that high, they're gonna bubble over and drip buttery sugar-goo all over the bottom of the oven.

Lesson 2: If you leave that buttery sugar-goo on the bottom of the oven when the strawberry rhubarb pies are done, then dial the heat back up to 450° so you can bake the apple pie (requested by your rhubarb-averse son), the buttery sugar-goo is gonna catch fire.

Lesson 3: If you leave the oven open while you wait for those little licking flames to die out, the back door breeze will act as a bellows, and soon you will be staring at a leaping, dancing wall of flames: still contained in the oven, thankfully -- but definitely not dying out. (Closing the oven at this point will not reverse the effect, alas.)

Lesson 4: Ellie Weiss's Collegiate Smoke Detector Silencing Method works great when you're frying bacon, but has little effect in the case of an actual fire. (To be fair, this is as it should be; when the oven is on fire, you want the smoke detectors to stick to their guns. And honestly, you only suggested it to Simon in order to give him something to do -- and to get him out of the kitchen -- while you pondered your next steps. (For the record, the technique involves energetically flapping a dishtowel at the ceiling while proclaiming cheerfully, "Don't panic! Calm down! It's going to be okay!"))

Lesson 6: At a certain point your brain will stop registering the continual shrieking of the smoke detectors, and will instead focus on the operation of the fire extinguisher. You won't remember yanking it off the top of the fridge, but you will somehow be holding it in your hands. You will peer at the printed instructions on the side of the canister, pronouncing each step out loud with mechanical deliberation. Your son, eyeing the still-leaping flames from the safety of the doorway, will repeat them back at you with escalating urgency. "Pull the pin! Mom! Pull the pin! Stand back six feet, Mom! That's not six feet!"

Aftermath. 

The shrieking of the smoke detectors will continue, however, and will eventually summon the neighbors. (Again, this is as it should be.) The first concerned faces will appear at the back door shortly after you have aimed an impressive burst of monoammonium phosphate at the base of the fire, snuffing it instantly.

Lesson 7: When the cloud has settled, much of the kitchen will be covered in a layer of fine yellow dust. If you are extraordinarily lucky, your cooling strawberry rhubarb pies and the unbaked apple pie will have escaped the plume.

Not dusted with monoammonium phosphate, thank goodness.

Lesson 8: The fire extinguisher's final instructions are as follows: "Discard immediately after any use. Completely discharge before discarding." Now, you might think your ten-year-old son would jump at the chance to squeeze the trigger of a nearly-full fire extinguisher and spray its remaining contents into the street in front of your house. But you will find that an afternoon of leaping flames and shrieking smoke detectors has soured him on the whole explosive-cloud-of-yellow-dust thing.

The new kitchen fire extinguishers
are white -- but they still say Kidde
on 'em, see?

He will, however, take a certain pride in the spectacularly effective performance of this foot-tall, bright red canister, which spent fifteen years gathering dust in our kitchen as it humbly awaited our hour of need. After all, the thing does have his name on it.

"Was it my grandfather or my great-grandfather who invented the fire extinguisher?" he asks, as the two of you are driving to the hardware store to buy a replacement (when I tell you that the other item on our shopping list was a valve for our umpteenth variation on Bill Gurstelle's PVC air cannon, you will understand why ours is not a household that should be without a fire extinguisher, even for an hour). "Oh, he didn't invent the fire extinguisher, but he did start the Kidde Company. He was your great-great-grandfather, I think -- and his name was Walter."

"Well," Simon pronounces, "He sure did a good job on that fire!"