Of Kerosene & Pear Juice

My father kept a glass jug of kerosene in our garage. He used the stuff to clean his fishing gear and small outboard motor parts. The gallon container was tucked in the far right corner of the garage so that it was out of the way and would not be accidentally bumped by the car or the child as he played hide and seek or fort or whatever behind the closed doors in the front of the garage.

One day, my mother asked me to sweep out the garage. I protested loudly, but she appealed to the guilt that exists within people both large and small and soon I was heading toward the garage with a broom. Mom's instructions were simple. "Put everything in the driveway, sweep out the garage and then put everything back in the garage."

Every child charged with a task he or she does not want to perform will devise an "easier" way to do it. So, instead of removing everything from the garage so that I would have a complete and uncluttered field to clean, I moved everything to the back of the garage. I did this reasoning that, (1) I could hide some of the leaf accumulation behind the stuff in the back and (2), it would be easier to redistribute the stuff forward rather than schlep everything out to the driveway and then back from the driveway.

As I pushed my bike into the back corner, the front wheel nudged the kerosene container ever so slightly. It was just a tap with a rubber wheel, but it was just enough to crack the jug and start the flow of kerosene cascading gently toward the door and the piles of stuff I had moved from the sides to the center preparatory to flinging it all to the rear. To this day I don't believe that Kerosene is very viscous, so therefore it must have been my traumatized brain that saw the stuff spreading in slow motion to all corners of the garage. Watching its lava like flow paralyzed me.

Soon my fascination with the molasses like progress of the kerosene was replaced with an urgent need to do something. So I started slogging through the stuff dragging beach chairs, fishing tackle and ruined cardboard toward the door. In record time I had the garage empty and all the parts of our lives that had been relegated to the garage were strewn across the driveway.

Now, what to do about the kerosene? Not knowing anything about water and oil repelling each other, but with full knowledge that kerosene is flammable, I slipped through a basement window that I knew to be unlocked and hauled out the garden hose. I spent what must have been an hour with the hose and the broom washing the kerosene out of the garage, around and through our possessions and into the gutter. There was no rule of thumb to prepare me for knowing how long it takes to dissipate a gallon of kerosene from a garage with a broom and hose.

I was considering calling the police or the fire department when my mother's uncle Fred pulled into the adjoining driveway. He was a rotund bald man who paid me a dime a week during the summer months to get up before he did and roll down the windows in his Buick so that it would be cool when he went drove it to work. I resented him for the pretentious way in which he presented me with the dime each Sunday. The payout was complete with criticism about how early, how late, or how not at all I had performed the task. The only plus to this job was that he did not deduct anything for rainy days. To this day, the sound of morning rain still brings a smile to my face and to my heart.

All of that aside, I was happy to see an adult with whom I could share this disaster. I rushed over to him, and while trying to keep my ten year old heart in its place, I told him what had happened. He gave me the look he reserved for those 90 degree plus mornings when I overslept and agreed to survey the damage. Slowly, he walked by the rubble in the driveway and into the darkness of the garage. He lifted his shiny head and inhaled deeply testing the breeze like a bald lion in a man suit. Then he reached into his pocket and took out a pack of matches. Testing the aroma of the air again, he struck a match and dropped it on the wet floor. I held my breath. The match went out and he pronounced the garage safe for habitation by storables.

To this day, fifty plus years later, I can see him dropping that match in slow motion only this time; we are both vaporized in a fiery ball of exploding kerosene. In this twisted updated version, the police find only some bits and pieces of uncle Fred and me and a few heat fused 1954 dimes.

I've often wondered if Uncle Fred knew what he was doing. I think not. It was years later that I determined that sometimes adults do stupid things. Why? I guess it is because sometimes we just don't think. Sometimes there are things we don't think about because we can never imagine them happening. Several years ago, a friend of mine told me that the plastic that covered one of the family's television screens had become clouded. Upon closer examination, he saw that this plastic protective sun screen with which most portable models of that era were equipped, was not only clouded, but it appeared to have been etched or abraded as if someone had used sandpaper or thrown acid on the screen. After interrogating his children, one of them confessed that she had wiped off the screen with a napkin. Further probing revealed that she had used the same napkin to catch the drippings from a pear she had eaten. The acid in the pear juice had permanently clouded the sun screen of the TV.

So, when we are warning our children of the many dangers that lurk in the world, we must remember to tell them.....now remember, dear, whatever you do, don't wipe down the TV screen with pear juice and don't drop a lighted match into a garage that a ten year old has certified to be free of spilled kerosene.