Colors of fire
Somehow, without my recalling the circumstances, Dad acquired a case of miscellaneous, hand-baled electrical wires of different colors, thicknesses and weights. He didn’t have use for the large quantity, but he knew that actual copper wire, removed from its rubberized plastic sheathing, could earn more from scrap metal dealers, then known as junk(wo)men. Stripping devices may have existed, but Dad didn’t have one at that time. He pondered how to strip the many individual wires.
A natural problem solver, Dad devised a win-win solution. He resolved to build – naturally, with my youthful and free labor – a backyard fireplace to roast shish kebab and simultaneously burn off wire coatings. His envelope sketch has gone missing, but I remember his design. We built it with concrete blocks and filled the voids in the upper course with cement. The fireplace consisted of a lower front half for the wire reduction process and a higher rear portion for cooking meat.
Dad apparently ignored the fact that the smoke from the front fire would permeate the kebabs. On the fireplace’s maiden – and only – run, Mom toted out a tray with several wooden-handled, stainless steel spits that Dad had made, skewered with red wine-marinated lamb, onions and peppers. Positioning the bales of wire on the lower grill and the meat on the upper, we started a wood fire and added charcoal briquettes using the steel tongs Dad had also made. Brilliant, or so we thought.
I suspect you, my reader, probably don’t know what burning coated wire looks or smells like. Neither did I until that fateful day. The red-coated wire created a red flame, the blue wire a blue flame and the green one a green flame, etc. Combined with the normal yellow and orange kebab flame, we had the most beautiful rainbow fire I had ever seen.
I asked Dad if we weren’t contaminating the meat with such a particulate-rich, kaleidoscopic fire. Stoically, Dad didn’t think we had a problem, except that the smoke from some of the wood, which may have been painted, was probably worse for us. I didn’t exactly feel relieved as I breathed the putrid combination of wood smoke and contaminants from burned wire.
I will say this for Dad, however: once the coatings burned up, what remained was copper wire covered with ash that was easy to knock off once cooled. Mom humored Dad with his crazy idea about efficiency, but the shish kebab was not up to their typical delicious standards.
In those days, there was much less concern over environmental pollution. It was deemed okay to burn leaves in the backyard, which we did, except during bans due to dry conditions. Come to think of it, burning leaves did not smell any better than incinerating wood and coated wire. In retrospect, what was tolerated environmentally was shameful, but everyone seemed to do whatever was allowed.
I remember Dad at the grill the day we burned the wire, clad in his apron, shorts, black socks and white sneakers. Mom looked her usual stylish self, fashioning the stiff and thick stainless steel bracelet Dad had made for her as a gift. She also wore one of her trademark colored berets, a tight-ish skirt and pointed high heels, which Dad obliged but rued at what they cost him – far more than his entire barbequing outfit.
Once the wire was burned, Mom really didn’t want to go through that ordeal again. She asked Dad to purchase a charcoal grill and dismantle the fireplace. We disassembled it and breathed a sigh of relief that, fortunately, we had not used reinforcement bars as part of its construction.
Evidently, I didn’t suffer any negative effects from my exposure to the toxic flames. I don’t have three eyes or two noses – one Armenian nose is enough – and I don’t think I speak with an odd tic. Do I?
