MY LATEST BLOG—SUMMER 2026

I hope your summer is going well. If you live in a community where winter raises its ugly head in just a few months, the summer is going way too fast. After this past winter here on the East Coast, I said to my friends, “Now I know why New Yorkers head to Florida for some sunshine during those cold, dreary winter months.” Anita and I are not fans of Florida, but we’re considering a Florida vacation this winter.

I want to thank all of you who read my blogs. Some have emailed me, left comments on the site, or told me in person how much they enjoy reading them. Sometimes I think this may be the last blog I write, but your praise keeps me writing. Please keep your thoughts coming, and I will continue writing more blogs.

The other night, it was a nice evening. We sat in our living room with our sliding door open. Suddenly, we started to hear what sounded like gunshots. Some were rapid. There were several long pauses in between. This pattern continued for quite a while. We thought someone was shooting fireworks. I’m talking about three weeks after the 4^th of July. Then, the sporadic shooting stopped, and we started to hear loud explosions. That’s when we concluded that what we were hearing was someone disposing of leftover fireworks.

But it reminded me of the two explosions I was in years ago. The first occurred in the early 1970s. I worked in a building on Madison Avenue and 45th Street. It was around the holidays because I was wearing some of my Christmas presents for the first time. My coworker poked his head into my cubicle and said, “Let’s go to lunch! There’s a new coffee shop around the corner.”

I put on my new beige wool coat, and we headed out to try this new restaurant. When we got there, there was a short wait for a table. The place was jam-packed. The noise level turned up too high. The food was good, and the service was attentive. We sat next to a wall that you could see over. The other side of the wall was where the coffee maker and the liquid refreshments dispenser were situated.

Suddenly there was a popping explosion. At first, we didn’t know where it came from. The place became stone quiet. Some chairs were knocked over, and footsteps could be heard running for the door. I looked around; there was no smoke, no fire, but still there was a burning smell in the air. My friend and I felt something hot on our faces, and brown splotches were all over the tables.

We weren’t sure what it was. We went into the men’s room, where others were cleaning the strange stuff off themselves and their clothes. Some brave soul tasted the funny-smelling substance and said, “This tastes like chocolate.” As we would find out, it was a HOT FUDGE EXPLOSION. Behind the wall we were sitting next to was a hot fudge machine for topping off ice cream or whatever else fudge can go on.

A staff member had put a full unopened can of hot fudge in the machine to store it. When it got too hot in there, the can exploded, blew the top off the machine, and sent its contents flying.

We cleaned up as best we could and returned to our office. In the building's lobby, we met the company nurse. She took one look at us and asked, “What happened to you?” When we told her what happened, she immediately gave us the name and address of a Park Avenue plastic surgeon. She said, “I’ll call them and tell them you are on your way there.”

We hopped in a cab and headed up Park Avenue to the office of this prominent plastic surgeon. As soon as we walked into the office, the staff panicked. We had red blotches on our faces, our hair, and our clothing, which they mistook for blood until we explained that it was fudge.

It was the 70s; facial hair and long hair were the trends. I had a Fu Manchu mustache and long hair, so only a small portion of my skin was exposed. My friend, however, had long hair too, but no facial hair. He did some modeling and was concerned because he'd had several burns on his face. They treated us, gave us some medication, and we went back to work, where our co-workers poked fun at us.  

My friend was ready to sue the restaurant. He knew an attorney in the Empire State Building. It was the office of the famous F. Lee Bailey. We sat in the waiting room before we met with our attorney. I noticed one of the tables had a display about how the law firm had secured a large settlement for the families of victims in an airline disaster. And there we were—the victims of a hot fudge explosion. The attorney joked, “You must have been sweet.”

“Hah, ha!” We got a nice settlement. Fortunately, we weren’t badly scarred. My fellow victim received a little more than I because he suffered some facial scarring and claimed it would hurt his modeling career.

Some years later, I was living in Los Angeles. One Sunday afternoon, Anita and I went shopping at a local department store. The entire store was on the ground floor.

The next day, I was starting a new job, and I needed to buy a sports jacket to wear to work. Anita wanted to look in the linen department, and I headed to the men’s clothing.

The store was fairly empty. Two other gentlemen were trying on sports jackets. I looked through the rack for a size 38. I found a nice black one with little specks of red and blue. It fit perfectly. Wearing the jacket, I went to show it to Anita. She immediately approved and said it looked good on me. I headed back to the men’s department to see if there was anything else I might like.

As I walked back, I could see our car through the glass front doors, but before I reached my destination, a loud explosion came from the corner of the men’s section. The glass doors were blown out, and shards of glass covered our car’s hood. I quickly returned to Anita, who had a shopping cart filled with sheets and towels. I grabbed her, and we headed out the back doors.

It took us a while to get around the building to where our car was parked. We still didn’t know the source of the explosion. Flames were coming out of the cracks in the sidewalk. We looked up, and a woman was standing on the roof. She came out of an office that was on top of the men’s department. Blood was coming from a slash on her forehead. She was screaming. There were also flames surrounding her. We could hear sirens approaching. The firefighters arrived, got the woman down, and began treating her while the other men extinguished the flames. Fortunately, there was no damage to our car. I looked around for the two guys I had seen earlier in the men’s department. They were nowhere to be found.

It turned out to be a methane explosion. This was near the La Brea tar pits, and the entire area was prone to heavy concentrations of methane. The incident made the local TV news that evening. This was more serious than the hot fudge explosion I had been in a decade earlier. I went home still wearing the sports coat and grateful we weren’t hurt. I wore it to my new job the next day, and it came with quite a story. I had that jacket for many years and loved it. I hope I never personally experience any more explosions.

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