Near-deathby chocolate, round two

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/07/2019 (2515 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When I was a kid, I used to dream about swimming in a river of chocolate, kind of like that character in the Willy Wonka movie.

Which probably explains why I grew up to be a 290-pound newspaper columnist with Type 2 diabetes and more cavities than you can shake a toothbrush at.

The truth is, I am not allowed to bring anything containing or covered in chocolate into our home, partly because it sends my blood-sugar level soaring, but mostly because my wife, She Who Must Not Be Named, is completely unable to resist the sweet stuff.

You might think I’m kidding about her chocolate addiction, but I’m not. My wife’s weakness for all things chocolate means she would make a terrible spy, as you can see from the following conversation I just made up:

Enemy agent: “Where did you hide the microfilm?”

My wife: “I’d rather die than reveal that secret.”

Enemy agent: “Would you like a nice Hershey bar?”

My wife: “IT’S IN THE CUPBOARD BEHIND THE STAIRS!!!”

But that is not today’s sickeningly sweet point. No, the point is my wife and I were in the den the other evening watching the news on our big-screen TV when we saw an alarming item about a worker at a New York candy factory who had to be rescued last week after falling into a 20,000-pound tank of melted chocolate.

“We arrived to find a fairly young man lying on the ground, covered in very thick chocolate,” is what paramedic Tom Hughes said of the 37-year-old worker who suffered a minor arm injury after falling into the mixing tank.

“First thing we had to do was get the chocolate off him to assess his condition. So, with the use of a garden hose, we washed the chocolate off of him,” Hughes told TV reporters.

Ambulance chief Mike Hoddinott explained the man fell in the thick, gooey mixture while working.

“He had gone in to try to free something to operate the machine. It was in between mixing. Somehow the machine was still on, and he became entangled,” Hoddinott said.

Fortunately, his co-workers pulled him out of his sticky predicament, called 911 and, other than a mildly injured arm, he’s just fine.

“He actually said he would never eat chocolate again,” paramedic Hughes told the media.

Back in our den, my wife watched this report about the worker’s narrow escape from death by chocolate with the same laser-like intensity my dogs display when they watch, drool dangling from their furry mouths, as I suck down a juicy hamburger.

“That is my dream,” my spouse chirped as the TV news segued into a non-chocolate-related item.

“You know,” I replied in what I hoped was my wise tone of voice, “it’s more important to fall in love than fall in chocolate.”

It occurred to me later that I didn’t know whether my wife’s “dream” was to (a) be totally immersed in melted chocolate, or (b) miraculously find herself in the company of a man who has been liberally coated in a thick layer of a sugary substance she is unable to resist.

For my part, I mainly felt an overpowering sense of déjà vu, which prompted me to park myself at the home computer and scour through old columns until I found something I’d written for the Free Press almost 13 years ago to the day, way back in the summer of 2006.

You will find this hard to believe, but that column was about me and my wife sitting on the couch in our den watching a TV news report about some hapless guy in Kenosha, Wis., who slipped and got trapped in a giant vat of melted chocolate.

Back then, inspired by my wife’s fascination with chocolate, I actually called Kenosha and spoke with acting fire chief Matthew Haerter to get the facts about that near-deadly brush with melted chocolate.

“Man trapped in chocolate — that’s how the call came in,” is what Haerter recalled at the time, noting his emergency crew was a bit taken aback when the drama began. “It was very Willy Wonka-ish.”

The fire chief told me he had been inundated with media calls since Darwin Garcia, 21, slipped and rolled into a giant mixing vat full of gooey chocolate.

“His feet became entangled in a supply pipe,” he told me. “The chocolate was very thick. It was like getting your boots caught in mud.”

Haerter noted Garcia spent about two hours chest-deep in the 110 F chocolate — hotter than a hot tub — before rescuers struck on a brilliant plan.

“We added cocoa butter to thin out the chocolate and then we were able to pull him out,” the chief beamed. “He’s fine now.”

So it turns out that falling into large tanks of gooey chocolate is far more common than we thought it was at the beginning of this column.

Just like in 2006, last week’s rescue reminded me of one of my all-time favourite comedy routines, one performed back in the 1960s by the legendary Smothers Brothers, Tom and Dick, who sang a hilarious tune that passed on this important safety tip: if you fall into a vat of chocolate, always yell, “Fire!”

Because nobody is going to come running to save you if you yell, “Chocolate!”

Not unless, of course, my wife happens to be within shouting distance.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca