The Prickly Pear Chronicles

 12/24/2020: Mount Manure and Flaming Lasagna

Forgive me father, for I have slacked. It's been a good two weeks since my last blog. From the first day of my retirement, I haven't known what day of the week it is...how am I going to remember what I did 10 days ago? I'll start with Christmas Eve...that should be a day significant enough for me to recall. Especially when it's the day I damn near burned down the neighborhood.

Dave and Cindy had entrusted me to watch over their place while they went north for the holiday's. I diligently fed, watered and scooped copious amounts of poop each day...twice a day actually. The mound of poop six horses produce is astounding. So much so that I braved firing up Dave's tractor to keep the mound from encroaching on the entire west end of Aguila by pushing it back and piling it ever higher. Sort of a smelly stairway to Heaven if you will. On the upside, by Christmas morning Mount Manure was high enough I could have climbed to the top for an excellent view of the Christmas Star... had I chosen to do so. I chose not to do so. If the Magi could see it without scaling a giant mountain of shit, so could I.

It's been my unspoken tradition to cook lasagna for holiday meals. I've never been a fan of turkey and I think I make a mean lasagna. My living quarters does not have a conventional oven. It has a microwave. When I'm not using the stupid thing to pop popcorn, it is my bread box. Total waste of space in my opinion but Bison did not ask me when designing their LQ's. I purchased a Camp Chef portable propane oven that is the bomb...literally, so it proved this Christmas Eve.

Space is in short supply in this 8 ft. short-wall. Preparing a complex dish like lasagna was not happening. It was going to be weird enough being away from my kids and grandbabies on Christmas. I had no intentions of eating pop-tarts and Beanee Weenee's for Christmas. I picked up a Marie Calendar ready-made lasagna that fit nicely in the camp chef. Sweet.

The oven takes a long time to pre-heat, especially when you place it outside. Normally I set it up against my trailer or inside the stud stall. For some reason, I moved it away from the trailer and parked it under the grease-wood bush a few feet from my Bison. I let the oven pre-heat for 10 minutes before popping in the tray of lasagna. Stuff usually takes twice as long to cook even if you cover the oven to hold in the heat better. I set my timer for 50 minutes and went back inside. Forty five minutes or so into the timer I hear a loud: BOOF!!! Weird – must be Luke Air force doing some of their fighter jet training. I brushed it off and went about life in a glorified sardine can.

The coyotes start in around dusk every evening, setting off my dogs to barking and growling. I opened the door to yell at Hank (Shade can't hear me but will look to Hank for clues to what's going on). Instead of finding the dogs barking off into space – they are gawking at 16 inches of ignited propane shooting out of the back of the Camp Chef like a flamethrower. Right smack under the grease-wood tree.

Grease-wood is adequately named. You can light the stuff on fire when it's wet. How am I going to explain this to Dave and Cindy? “Everything good here. Except the grease-wood tree. Oh, and my trailer, but I think fire's covered in my insurance policy. How's your insurance policy looking? Dang these fires sure can jump a long ways. No worries though, I got the horses out before it spread too far. You're going to have to buy some hay when you get back though...and a new barn to put it in. Thank goodness the arena panels are steel. Dave can still rope. That may be the only thing that keeps them from hanging me from the nearest mesquite tree.

I don't think dousing this thing with flour is going to do the trick...even if I had flour. Would the propane bottle explode? I needed to pull the whole contraption, oven, stand and flaming propane bottle away from the grease-wood tree before the above scenario became reality. I grabbed the edge of the table, closed my eyes (I guess I thought if it was going to explode, I didn't want to see it coming) and drug it away from the grease-wood. I turned the oven off which did absolutely nothing.

I considered letting it burn itself out but didn't know how long that would take or how much damage it would do to the oven... or if the propane bottle would explode in the meantime. I grabbed my leather gloves and decided to try and remove the bottle. Maybe a few third degree burns here and there would work in my favor when it came to pleading mercy.

I tossed the flaming bottle onto the gravel and watched it burn itself out in about 10 minutes. The need to explain to Dave and Cindy how I'd manage to burn down their place and the western half of Maricopa County fizzled out with the dying flame.

In all the flaming chaos, I'd forgotten about my lasagna. Still gloved up like a bomb squad tech, I pulled the lasagna tray out of the oven expecting to see a chard brick of pasta formerly known as my Christmas Eve dinner. It was absolutely cooked to perfection. I couldn't have done it better had I not damn near burnt down the Aguila-hood. Christmas miracles really do happen!