Mr. One Speed

After a long, arduous, 2500+/- round-trip journey to NC &SC we are home. Every time I make this trip, I swear I'll never make a road trip again. When we go to Texas, we drive just as many miles because relatives and friends are stretched from Brownood, Stephenville, Denton, DFW Metroplex, Ferris/Ennis, Wolfe City and Houston. these points are 50-200 miles apart.

Today is a short story about an incident I witnessed between my husband (H) and his sister, my sister-in-law (SIL). We were eating a light meal: As I remember I sliced an apple. (H) was eating a sandwich and SIL had something else.

We had lots of leftovers from which to assemble numerous meals. SIL's generous friends, church family and her husband's family provided a stream of casseroles, desserts and entrees for the last few weeks of her husband's illness and death.

H & SIL wanted toast. H quickly made his in the toaster, and, after grace was offered, commenced to consume his assembled sandwich. SIL made her toast in a toaster oven which seemed to take longer, so she offered the grace and began to eat other parts of her meal.

We each were concentrating on our delicacies when the acrimonious odor of burning bread began to permeate the air. SIL looked back at the toast oven to see her bread in flames and smoke billowing out into the kitchen, dining and living area.She ran to the kitchen and unplugged the oven but the flaming bread kept burning like a baked Alaskan dessert. The slow, undulating flame was enchantingly contained in the oven; I should have grabbed my camera.

Meanwhile former firefighter H and I sat like bumps on a log, transfixed by the scene. SIL called her brother to help extinguish the flames. He arose from the table and moseyed into the kitchen area.

Now this is not a long distance but he seemed suspended in time, plodding slowly to the kitchen. "Hurry up," SIL said. "I'm coming," he said.

There was discussion how to extinguish the burning log in the toaster oven. H slowly grabbed a dishrag in the sink, saturated it to dripping with water. Then he opened the toaster oven door as more smoke pour out into the room.

H threw the dishrag into the oven covering the now burning ember, which once was bread. The water sizzled and hissed, and the smoke finally ceased to permeate the room, although there was a visible layer hanging from the ceiling.

The silence which often follows an accident or crisis was interrupted by my coughing response to the smoke.

After the crisis was over, the fire scenario became humorous with SIL marveling how slow--could we say deliberate--H, her brother, responded to the crisis. One could say he never panicked nor did his pulse, heart or breathing rate increase; neither did his blood pressure..

After 41 years of marriage I can say,and he will agree, he has only one speed, SLOW. I'm sure SIL will agree.