In the summer of ‘62 when I was 11 my family spent a weekend at some close family friends summer cabin near Guerneville, Calif. (this was before we moved to Sonoma Co.). One afternoon while the adults were out at a local bar and I was reading my latest Mad Magazine I got a craving for a Swansons Roast Beef TV Dinner.
They had a 24” gas stove that ran off of propane. We hadn’t had a gas stove at home for about 18 mo. after getting an electric stove. But the O’Keeffe and Merritt gas stove we used to have had a pilot light for the oven and burners.
So, I put the TV dinner into the oven , set the thermostat to 350F and continued reading my Mad Magazine. After about 20-30 mins I checked to see if the TV dinner was done. Well, the oven was cold.
Stupid me then noticed the little hole at the bottom front of the oven that said “light here”, so I got some matches and lit one. BAM, the stove leaped about 6” off the floor, the explosion threw me back across the room, all the while as Gene Pitney was singing “Town Without Pity”on the radio.
The front of my crew cut was singed off, along with my eye brows and eye lashes. Miraculously, there was no fire and I wasn’t burned otherwise. Whew! I was glad the adults weren’t home because I sure would have been in trouble!
Undaunted, I checked to see if the oven was now lit, and it was, so I closed the oven door and waited for the TV dinner to get done.
I guess fate was on my side that day, thinking my family had already been thru enough tragedy that summer having lost my dad in a auto accident the month before. But I’m certain I used up one of my nine lives that afternoon.
And I also learned to be very careful with gas stoves and space heaters after that near miss with terrible injury or death.
Eddie