BLUE TOILET FIRE (1955)

FROM MY memoir, TWEVE DEAD FROGS: <https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35987705-twelve-dead-frogs-and-other-stories-a-filmmaker-s-memoir?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=Aqd2jVCwwx&rank=1>. Enjoy!

BLUE TOILET FIRE (1955) 

By age eleven I would occasionally do sleepovers, and it was on one of those frigid Chicago winter nights in the mid-1950s that I received permission to spend the night at Mack’s house, situated on a little side street near the Midway, not far from where the El train ran toward the Loop and beyond. At some point my mother explained that both his mother and father were scientists. I hardly ever saw Mack’s father, only spotting him once or twice. I still have a clear picture of him passing quickly across the hall, hand outstretched, holding a pen tightly between his thumb and forefinger as if he’d been snagged by some fisherman trolling with ballpoints and was being reeled in. 

After a dinner of hamburgers, we retired to Mack’s room and read comic books for a while.   As soon as the coast was clear, he set up an 8MM film projector and showed some blue movies that his older brother had collected. I have no idea how many hours it was that we were left alone, or where his mother disappeared to, but we certainly had ample time to betray whatever confidence she had in our good taste and better judgment. 

I more remember the illuminated contour of the headboard and texture of the wall than what was actually projected. The images looked fairly disgusting; reddish, raw and meaty looking people, red patchy faces and strange shapes. I was obviously too young to really appreciate the raunchy sex appeal of that early pornography. 

Tired of the projector noise, and irritated by the difficulty in rethreading the small 8MM film gauge, Mack turned our attention back to TV. The only show we found interesting was something called “Crossroads,” a documentary series about WWII. We sat there for about fifteen minutes, watching warfare in all its pyrotechnics – airplanes bombing cities, armed soldiers running through half-destroyed streets, battleships ablaze, ignited diesel fuel licking the sides of grey aircraft carriers and PT boats. The screen was constantly filled with fire and brimstone. At some point either he or I got a brainy idea that almost burned down his house. 

It seemed impossible for us to believe that fire could actually stay lit on the surface of water, like we’d just seen on TV. After all, everyone knew that water put out flames. So how could something burn on water? Our over-active imaginations just refused to let go of that Mr. Wizard-type mystery. So we decided to run our own experiment, and went about gathering the ingredients. 

Mack wandered off, returning in a few minutes with a can of lighter fluid, which he said was “just as good as gasoline.” And just a few feet from the door to his second floor bedroom we found the most obvious patch of water to recreate our TV images – the toilet.  We squirted some fluid into the bowl and then peered into the water, wondering if the amount was sufficient. Because of its colorless nature, it was hard to know if we’d added enough fluid. To be sure, we squirted in some more. Finally it was time to activate our test. 

It was Mack who lit it. Fortunately he knew enough to stand back and toss a match in from a distance, or he would surely have lost his head of unruly brown hair. Instantly, a huge fireball exploded out of the toilet, propelled upwards toward the ceiling as if shot from a canon. The small bathroom was suddenly engulfed in fire, flames licking the ceiling as the wooden toilet seat ignited, its blue paint peeling rapidly from the middle opening toward the outer edges. Our quiet little experiment now threatened to incinerate the room. 

How could we put out a fire that was burning on water? Finally one of us had the inspiration of depressing the toilet handle (I’m thinking it was Mack...), and we stood back as the fiery mess spun around and flushed down the drain. The toilet seat remained in flames until a few handfuls of water from the sink ended that as well. We stood there watching the enamel seat sizzle, smoke a bit, then finally turn into a crusty layer of carbon. It seemed hard to believe that mere seconds ago flames were shooting out of his toilet at almost twice our height. But all was quiet again. We were lucky the smoke hadn’t filled up his house, but had been sucked up by the vent. Almost everything was back to normal again, except for the partially black ceiling and the burnt toilet seat. 

As the shock wore off, our pre-pubescent brains clicked over to problem solving. We immediately set to repairing the damage, cleaning up the mess so we could return to the safety of his bedroom before his mother returned. Mack went downstairs and quickly returned with a can of BAB-O cleanser, some rags, a quart of blue enamel paint and a large brush (quite a coincidence that the paint he found was blue like what we needed). 

Climbing up on the closed toilet lid we first scrubbed the ceiling, wiping off black soot and drying the surface as best we could. Then we scraped away the burnt areas of the toilet seat with a butter knife that Mack got on his second trip downstairs. Finally, we applied a solid coat of blue paint to the surface of the seat, making sure that we didn’t get any blue drips on the bowl or floor. 

Standing back we examined our tidy job with some measure of pride. The results seemed highly satisfactory to both of us. Mack returned the painting supplies and cleaner to wherever he’d found them. Then quickly scampering back to the bedroom, we resumed reading comics and watching TV. 

I remember hearing his mother reenter the house, familiar sounds of a door being opened and closed then a pause – was she hanging up her heavy winter coat? Then more rummaging around as she did other things before mounting the stairs (clomp, clomp, clomp). Mack cut off the light and we acted out our parts of being asleep in adjoining beds. She ducked her head in and asked if everything was alright. Mack mumbled “Yes” and “Good night, Mom,” and she disappeared. Before I could worry about much else I conked out, asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. 

The next morning (possibly a Sunday), my mother came to pick me up after breakfast, and did her usual chitchat with Mack’s mother before we departed. I was impatient to leave the scene of the crime, get away from the house, flee before our misdeed was discovered. I certainly didn’t make any eye contact with Mack at that point. It was just too risky! 

Finally my mother and I trudged our way through the snow banks to the door of our Chevy, got in, and sped toward home.  At every intersection, her right hand left its grip on the steering wheel and extended itself out stiffly across my lap, forming a human seatbelt – no factory-installed straps in those days. Along the way, we played our usual game of pointing out all the decorated Christmas trees glowing behind curtains, framed by passing windows and archways.  I snuggled up next to her on the soft car seat, feeling secure once again. And I never heard anything more from Mack, regarding our near-catastrophic toilet fire.

Thinking back now, a good, memorable end to this “toilet” story would have been if, when I saw Mack at school the following Monday, he’d have described his spanking by his mother.

“She hit me with her hand…” he would have begun, sheepishly, and then finished with, “…it was blue.”

But neither THAT happened, nor him ever mentioning it again.