AP – JANUARY 12, 2010
A wayward kitchen oven was restored to functionality yesterday to the great relief of the Bahr family of Laurel Hollow, NY. The appliance, a DCS 1800, was arrested in June for attempted arson when it refused to turn off and sent smoke billowing into the house. The crafty and rascally device waited until the adults of the family had left, and then dared the children of the house to stop it, a scandalous crime that rocked the Cold Spring Harbor School district and attendees of the annual spring benefit for the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities (SPLIA).
The Oyster Bay-based Atlantic Steamer Company responded quickly and managed to thwart the plot by turning off the circuit breaker and without even having to smash all of the windows in the house. The oven had remained disabled since June, prompting a variety of novel cooking efforts by Rebecca “Martha” Bahr in the interim. Bahr taunted the nearby imprisoned oven and set a U.S. record in early December by baking 22 different types of cookies in a small toaster oven normally restricted to “Eggos,” and the occasional tuna melt.
Ted Bahr, 51, contacted the Appliance Correctional Review Board and asked that a pardon be considered after his wife set plans to cook a whole suckling pig in a crock pot, saying, “Ok, this has gone far enough, we need the damn oven back.” The ACRB released the oven under it’s own recognizance.
Robert MacKay, Executive Director of SPLIA, noted that, “there’s quite a history of ovens committing crimes on Long Island actually – beginning during the Revolutionary War when several ovens used for baking bread in Oyster Bay tried to burn down the homes of known British Loyalists….and then during the War of 1812,…..”
