The Story of 2 Potatoes

It all started innocently enough with 2 potatoes. Ben and Carolyn decided to barbeque some steak and have baked potatoes for their dinner on Sunday night. Ben went out to light the barbeque and shortly thereafter, Carolyn went out to put the potatoes on. Kristen was home too, watching TV and doing her homework upstairs. A peaceful, relaxing Sunday evening.

Suddenly, the doorbell started ringing incessently. Kristen, hoping someone else would answer the door took her time in coming down the stairs to answer it. Sammy was barking like a crazy dog and she chased him into his kennel before she opened the door as Sammy has a tendency to run outside as soon as the door is opened. There was the unmistakable sound of fire engines in the distance but that was not unusual as we live just a few blocks away from a fire station. However, when Kristen opened the door she was not met by a person as she had expected but by a wall of fire.

She ran down the stairs to tell Ben that the fireplace was on fire (she actually meant the barbeque but she was in a state of panic and not making a lot of sense). Ben raced up the stairs and tried to put the fire out with the garden hose but was unsuccessful. Trying to put a fire out with a garden hose is not much more efficient than spitting on it. He then ran into the house to get the fire extinguisher and was able to put some of the fire out. (*Note: Fire extinguishers need to be charged more often than once every 12 years.) Just as he realized that this was more than he could handle, 3 fire engines came screaming into our quiet little bay with a crowd of fire fighters. They had the fire out in no time.

It seems that the hose where the propane goes into the barbeque got pulled away and propane started spewing out onto the floor of the porch. The barbeque is toast, the whole lower part of our deck needs to be replaced, the garbage bin is burned although the plastic garbage cans are still intact and not melted.

We'll make an insurance claim and hopefully get a better looking deck out of the deal. We didn't tell the insurance adjuster that Wes was out that very morning measuring the deck because it needed to be replaced. Wes had also prayed that God would provide the funds for us to replace the deck. Hmmmm.

Incidentally, even with all the fire and smoke, the potatoes are still raw.