Tina and the Electric Plug

   At our recent Fyke family gathering, the five ‘kids’ were reminiscing about their youthful experiences. Barbara (the youngest) said her mother was the very best at instilling fear in her. She said, “She had me so scared of electrical plugs that all she had to do was point one at me and I thought killing electricity was going to jump out of those two prongs and strike me!”

   Then Harvey added that they were darned lucky to have had a mother. He told of a time when he was about 3 or 4, which must have been about 1940---he heard the story from one of his parents much later. They lived in an apartment in Peoria. It had limited electricity, and the only place to plug in the electric iron was into an outlet hanging on a cord from the ceiling.

   One afternoon Willis came home to a completely dark house. He asked what happened, and Tina just said that the lights went out. He went to the basement and put in some new fuses, and all was fine. Except that he saw a table knife with a very blackened tip lying on the table. He quizzed Tina on it and learned that she couldn’t get the iron’s plug out of the socket, so she stuck the knife in there to pry the two apart.

   Then Jim remembered seeing that knife around for years and years, and suddenly all their memories coalesced and they had the whole picture, and Barbara finally learned why Tina frightened her so about electric plugs.