Feast of Beans Explodes
Brothers Who Learn Cooking in The Whittier School Cause Panic in Home.
A meek and lowly pot of beans with their puritanical New England minds singly beat upon filling the cavernous stomachs of two hungry school boys on their return from the master's rule of the morning, had a brainstorm, blew up, wrecked a gas stove and caused the fire department more trouble yesterday than if an equal quantity of nitro-glycerine had gone on a spree.
The two sons of C.A. Goetz, 317 West Twenty-fifth street, 11 and 12 years old, who do their own cooking according to the applied sciences taught in the domestic science department of the Whittier school, placed a pot of beans in the oven of their gas range when they went to school. At 11 o'clock neighbors detected smoke issuing from the Goetz apartments, accompanied by an odor that was stifling. The firemen were met, as they assailed the house, with a bombardment of exploding beans like the firing of musketry. The pot of beans, still smoking and with little ammunition left, was thrown down a near mountain side of snow at the rear of the building, where it shot a few holes in the snow and banged up a few tin cans.
Minneapolis firefighters like these responded to the bean blast: Engine Company 7, 21st Avenue S. near Franklin Avenue, in about 1909. (Photo courtesy mnhs.org)
A singing class at Whittier School, Minneapolis, in about 1925. Hey, that little "organ" looks a lot like a cardboard box! (Photo courtesy mnhs.org)
