Hotter’n Blazes

OPEN SEASON | by TF&G Humor Editor REAVIS Z. WORTHAM

 

IT WASN’T A big fire, really.

Well, I guess that depends on what you call big.

It started out small, and wasn’t my fault, no matter what one individual might say.

All we wanted to do was fry some catfish we’d caught that afternoon. I’d considered cooking it like we used to do when I was a kid by dumping some lard in an old wash pot propped on three bricks with a real wood fire under it, but that seemed like too much trouble.

Wrong Willie suggested we use a propane fryer, so we dug it out of the shop where it’d been sitting in the box for a year. While he carried the lightweight burner, I toted the five-gallon propane tank to the side porch of the cabin, and we set it up a few feet away from the house.

Good thing, too, but in hindsight, we could have put it a little farther away.

It was a damp, cool night, so we built a cedar fire in the nearby pit and Constable Rick and his distaff arrived to join us. As it usually shakes out, the War Department and the girls were in the kitchen, laughing loud and long each time they looked out the window at us cooking in a light drizzle.

In response, we threw more wood on the fire pit to stay warm.

But that’s not the one that gave us trouble. The fire pit behaved itself, containing the pieces of cedar we dropped onto the coals from time to time.

I lit the burner on the fryer and put on the accompanying pot full of peanut oil that rivaled the cost of my first car. Now I’ve been cooking over outside fires all my life and have a system down that served well. As the oil heated to the right temperature, I dropped in a French fry that sizzled and turned golden brown.

Being a good host, I lifted out the basket and offered it to the other two guys, who were deep in conversation and declined. So I ate it.

Pronouncing it good, I felt the flame under the pot of oil seemed high, so I turned it down and went inside to get the rest of the fries and the catfish filets. When I returned, the flame still looked high, so I turned it down again and dropped in another single piece of potato.

That one cooked way too fast. I squatted down to check the flame and turned down the regulator once again, making sure I was twisting the dial in the correct direction, but now we had an issue, the burner didn’t respond.

I tried to turn it off, but to no avail. Twisting the valve on the tank, I shut the whole thing off. The grease was too hot and when I lifted the basket, the oil sparked and the next thing I knew, it was on fire.

Still kneeling, I frowned in thought at the same time Constable Rick glanced over and saw flames that were higher than what was in the fire pit. Now this boy’s seen a lot through the years, working for various law enforcement agencies, but his eyes widened at the sight of a five gallons of burning oil.

Willie offered an observation at the same time. “Hey, that’s on fire.”

“What was your first clue?”

In response, the three of us gathered around the flames to evaluate the issue. 

Constable Rick offered a suggestion. “Turn off the propane.”

“Did.”

Little Brother scratched his cheek. “We need to put that out.” 

A trained investigator, Constable Rick had questions. “How’d you catch it on fire?”

“Well, it wasn’t on purpose, and I didn’t catch it on fire. The regulator’s bad.”

“Flour.” Willie held up a finger. “I always heard you can use flour to smother a fire.”

“I don’t think that’ll work,” Constable Rick said.

Willie ran inside and came out with the flour cannister and threw a handful on the flames. They leaped higher and some of the oil splashed out on the wet grass.

I backed away, judging the distance from the cabin. The recent rains saved us. “That didn’t work.”

Willie studied the growing crisis. “Baking soda.”

I shook my head as he ran back inside. “If we throw that on the flour, we’ll have a giant biscuit.”

He returned, followed by the girls, and administered baking soda.

“I told you so.” I heard Johnny Cash in my head singing, “…and the flames went higher.”

Glad the conflagration was away from the house, the girls stampeded back inside as we studied on it some more. 

Constable Rick pulled up a chair. “We need to snuff it out.”

“Can’t put a lid on it with that glowing red basket handle sticking out,” I said. “And besides, we don’t have a lid.”

Wrong Willie wouldn’t give up. “How about a piece of sheet iron?”

That seemed like a fairly good idea, but it wasn’t, because the corrugated metal allowed too much oxygen to reach the oil. Now we had the additional excitement of a large square of extremely hot tin and the odor of burned biscuits and superheated galvanized metal as flames shot out of both ends of the makeshift lid.

I recalled an incident from forty years earlier. “I was in a canoe with my old college buddy, Landon, when our Coleman lantern caught fire.”

“Why’d you have a lantern in a canoe?”

I ignored Willie’s question. “So I used an oar to hook the bail on the gas lantern and lowered it into the water. Went right out.”

“There’s no bail.” Constable Rick sighed. “And the handle’s too hot and too close to the fire.”

“It’s a good story, though,” I said, and we retreated to let the fire burn itself out. 

All was not lost, though.

I had a second burner in the shop, and we fried the fish in a deep cast iron Dutch oven. This time the regulator worked, there was a lid to snuff it out if anything got out of hand a second time, and the filets and the perquisite hush puppies and fresh cut fries came out a golden brown.

The grease fire finally burned out four hours later, and we trashed the whole thing.

Thinking back, it would probably have been better to fry it all the old school way, by dumping some lard in an old wash pot propped on three bricks with a real wood fire under it.

 

Email Reavis Wortham at ContactUs@fishgame.com