Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Burning your bra

A really hot chicken, my mother at 85 burned her bra - two generations after it was the "in" thing to do. On NBC this morning they showed a segment on kitchen fires and how to handle them. My mother and sister's oven fire caper came to mind.

Eilleen was visiting mother's house in Winnipeg and decided to roast a chicken for dinner. She turned my mom's oven on and stuck the chicken in to roast. They were doing the usual pre-dinner routine, chatting away, probably having a cocktail, when they realized the house was filling with smoke. Eilleen ran to the kitchen to see flames coming out of the oven. She called 911 and she and mom ran outside. Several minutes later, sirens screaming, the fire department arrived, crashed into the house and extinguished the fire.

The fireman came out a little later holding the unfashionably blackened chicken and the remains of a bra by a shred and said, "Ladies  - you'll be eating somewhere else for dinner tonight!".


Mother, it turned out, had been keeping her underwear in the oven and forgot to inform Eilleen about her unconventional storage arrangement. As she didn't use the oven at that point, it seemed logical to her to use the space for something else. Why not groceries or plates or cooking equipment? I'll never know.




Oven Fire Safety Tip Number 1. Keep your Maidenform out of your General Electric!





2 comments:

  1. That's hilarious. They must have been soooo embarrassed. Sounds like something I would do...if my kitchen were closer to my bedroom.
    An ex-boyfriend of mind once caused the fire dept. to come when he put something on the stove to cook and then forgot about it and left. I wasn't home at the time. The neighbors told me about it later. He knew about it but wasn't going to tell me.

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  2. Anonymous11:00 AM

    Is that the actual photo of your mother's pink bra? Did your sister have the presence of mind to take a photo in the midst of the disaster?
    That story was just too funny. It did remind me that my mother-in-law kept her stash of money in her freezer. Would that give her money freezer burn?
    Nancy

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