Frugal Fire
I may have told this story before. I honestly don’t remember. I guess I’m getting senile, after all.
My father was in the Air Force. I’m sure I’ve said that before. He wore black leather boots to work every day. Let’s face it, even though he was in the Air Force, they were called army boots! They had to be super-polished, so Dad made a big deal about polishing his boots every night.
He used kiwi black shoe polish in the little black can. When you used it for a while, you wore a bare spot in the middle of it. Eventually, all you had left was a little ring of polish. Dad, being the frugal dude he was, would save those rings until he had a bunch of them. Then, he’d put them in a saucepan and melt them on the stove. He would pour the melted polish back into a can until it was full, basically giving himself another can of polish.
One time, when we lived on Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska, Dad caused a little incident. He started to put his polish in a saucepan, but, Mom caught him. She didn’t like him using her saucepan to do that. Instead, she gave him a pie pan to use. Now, Mom was pretty frugal herself! That pie pan was one that she had saved after buying a store-bought pie
Dad dumped the rings of shoe polish into that pie pan, and put it on the stove. The minute that polish melted enough, it started to seep through the tiny holes that dad did not realize we’re always poked in the pie pans saved from store-bought pies. They did that so that the piecrust wouldn’t get soggy. Anyway, as you can imagine, the polish exploded into a mass of flames.
Dad was able to get the fire out. Unfortunately, he wasn’t fast enough, because the walls of the kitchen were covered with a greasy black film. Mom was furious at Dad for making a mess of the kitchen. Dad was furious at Mom for giving him a pie pan with holes.
My youngest son was working with his shoe recently. He had a bottle of shoe polish that he was just dabbing on it. Too bad for Dad- they didn’t have that stuff back in his day.