When I was growing up in Concord, CA, my dad worked for Wonder Bread. He was the Office Manager at the bakery in San Fransisco. We only had one car in those days and Dad took the Greyhound bus to and from work everyday. In order to get to work on time, he had to leave pretty early. My mom would take him to the bus stop every morning, and then pick him up every evening after the ride home.
One evening, Mom was cooking some hamburgers in a frying pan when it was time to go get Dad. She put a lid partly over the meat and turned the heat down when she left. I must have been in my room or somewhere not too far away. I can't remember if I heard something in the kitchen, or what, but I came into the kitchen and found flames shooting up from the frying pan. Apparently the grease had caught fire and the flames where rising up to the fan housing over the stove. I had just had a lesson in Cub Scouts about putting out different kinds of fires. I remembered learning that you can't put water on grease fires because it just causes it to spread. I remembered learning that baking power was a good thing to put on a grease fire to stop it. I quickly found the baking powder and sprinkled on the frying pan until the fire was out. I'm sure my mom was surprised to find her hamburgers covered in baking powder when she got home. I don't know how serious the fire would have turned out if I hadn't stopped it, I am glad we didn't have to find out. Mom was so grateful to the Cub Scout leaders that she baked a cake and brought it to our next meeting.
I have often wondered if our kids ever listened to what we taught them in Family Home Evening lessons, or Sunday School lessons, or Scout lessons. Sometimes it seems like they are bored and in another world. I was probably the same way, but somehow I got the message about grease fires. I'll bet our children get more out of what we teach them than we think.
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