In Detroit we call it Devil’s Night, but apparently in Brooklyn, the locals refer to it as Mischief Night. In any locale, it’s the night before Halloween, and its when the hoodlums of the area crawl the neighborhood, wreaking havoc on all that crosses their devious paths.
Well, Im a native Detroiter, now living in Brooklyn, and I caused some of my own ruckus this eve before Halloween…..
It was just after 9 pm and I had gotten out of the shower, slipped on my pjs and decided that I was in the mood for a snack. I though nachos sounded fabulous so I piled some tortilla chips onto a plate and grated some cheddar cheese over the top. At that point I remembered that we are ghetto and do not have a microwave.
“Fear not”, Sarah said, “I have made nachos in the oven using the broiler”. Believing that this was a fantastic idea, I placed my nachos in an oven-safe dish, and put them into the broiler drawer. Not even 3 minutes later, as we were chatting in the kitchen, Sarah stopped abruptly and asked, “Is something burning?!” With that she tugged open the oven door allowing thick black smoke to billow out into the kitchen and down the hallway, while bright orange flames licked the walls of the oven….
“It’s on fire!”, we both exclaimed in unison, and I shot into survival mode…
This next part can only be fully appreciated and seen in its humor totality if you can picture what I was wearing. My pajamas of choice on this unusually warm October evening consisted of a tank top and short shorts, no socks, no slippers, nothing more.
…SO I fled out the apartment door and headed up the stairs to the second floor apartment, where I pounded on the door, and shouted my plight: “My oven is on fire, do you have a fire extinguisher?!” The tenant took way too long to come to the door, so I repeated my routine up two more flights to the third and fourth floorS with similar responses. The tenants shouted, without opening their doors, that they had nothing to help me. (I'll remember that!)
At this point I flew back down the stairs, to hear Sarah shout from within our smokey lair, “should I call 911?” “YES!”, I shouted back without a second thought, as I sprinted (still barefoot and barely clothed) out the door and down the block, past the latinos playing dominos on the corner and into the health food store on 5th avenue.
“Excuse me”, I panted as I stepped inside, “my oven is on fire, do you have a fire extinguisher I can use?” The clerk, who moved at a snail’s pace, disappeared into the back room. Frantic, I decided to dart through traffic to the restaurant across the street…
(a quick aside: all restaurants are required by law to have a fire extinguisher, so this next guy is on my shit list!)
Now, this restaurant is very quaint, and lit by candles at every table in the dining room. Rather than burst in and cause a scene, I decided to crack the front door open only enough to allow my head in, and quietly motion for the waiter to come to the door. When he approached I explained “My oven is on fire, may I please borrow your fire extinguisher?” This ass-clown merely shook his head, like he had no idea what the word “fire” meant, and without saying a word, glared at me as though I had 5 heads and was spitting green venom at him!
If you ask me, I was altogether too composed and polite in this situation, considering that I was picturing my entire apartment at this point completely engulfed in flames! I could have easily thrown the door open and shouted “FIRE!”, setting in motion a scene the likes of Hollywood cinema, but NOOOOOOO I chose to take the high road, and see where it got me!?
Disgusted, I turned and ran back across the street, where the store clerk had reappeared with a fire extinguisher that appeared to be the first ever made! I scooped it into my hands, and continued my sprint back toward my apartment, serenaded by the fire sirens approaching from a distance…
Back at home, I returned to Sarah standing in the smokey apartment, still in front of the oven, but the flames had retreated, and never even left the confines of the oven. Directly behind me trotted one of the latinos from the corner domino game who had deciphered my plight and had run down with her own fire extinguisher to help out.
We reached inside the oven, pulled out the ignited black nachos, and tossed them under running water in the sink. We never ended up needing either fire extinguisher which, I have come to realize are very hard to come by!
Next come the FDNY (post fire), and parked conveniently directly in front of our apartment thanks to the strategically placed fire hydrant. They burst into the apartment in full firefighter garb, and equipped with hatchets taller than me, arriving to the scene of me, Sarah, and the domino lady (who is now hunched over gasping for breath because she ran all the way down the street to our rescue), and my smoldering, soggy nachos in the sink.
“Its all under control now”, I stated sheepishly to 4 angry faces plastered across New York’s finest. “I’m so sorry to bother you folks”.
I can only imagine what the comments were among the firefighters as they pulled away from our humble home in their flashing red truck.
My hero of the night: The Domino Lady! Without being asked she risked her life and limb (ok, so noone was really in any danger, but none of us knew that). So, next time you come to visit me and see those people on the corner playing dominos, tip your hat and smile, because they are the real good Samaritans of Saint Marks Avenue!
