It was the day our house caught fire.
I don't know how much (if at all) any of my brothers and sisters remember about it, but we came that close (holds up a finger caliper that reads about .625 inches) to losing our house one day.
We moved into that house in the summer of '68 so I'm going to say it was probably somewhere around the following year that it took place. If memory serves me it was in decent weather, so let's say it was spring or thereabouts.
My dad had this little shoestring business he started while we were still living in Algona. It was called Williams & Son, but I really had nothing at all to do with it. I think he thought it just sounded way cooler. It does sound professional--I'll give it that. His "business" was selling parts & accessories and repairing small single-cylinder Honda motorcycles. It was never about getting rich, rather, it was about him paying for the needs of our family motorcycles. He didn't have a business license but through the use of the name and/or letterhead he had found a couple of suppliers that would sell to him at wholesale. Basically, he made just enough money to help offset some of our own motorcycle expenses. Anyway, instead of having his business in his garage like normal people, he opted to have it in the basement when we moved into our Auburn house. That would be fine for the tools, the workshop and all that, but not for the actual repairing of motorcycles. After all, there were basement steps to navigate, right?
One day he had someones Honda downstairs and had done some sort of repair to it and was attempting to start it. Right off the bat that doesn't sound too bright does it? We must have loved the smell of exhaust. Anyway, I wasn't directly involved in the repair process, but I was down there with him, watching and learning like I usually did. There was some sort of malfunction (I'm going call it a fuel leak). He most likely had the spark plug out of the cylinder and plugged into the spark plug wire and was kicking it over and checking for spark. Well, the spark was there. So was the gas.
In as instant, it was on fire. Panic ensues. I was already on the side of the bike that was opposite the door, and when the POOF of flame happened I shrunk back away even further. I'm sure I had no idea what to do--A flaming motorcycle in your basement kind of takes you by surprise. My dad was grabbing stuff and swinging it at the fire which was getting bigger. Sometime during the first few seconds he brought my mom into the picture and she called the fire department. It was HUGELY chaotic. Obviously, I can't remember the actual events as they happened, but I remember them hollering at me to get out of there, so I ran by the burning motorcycle and hot-footed it out the door. Their house (yes, they still live there) has a very low basement ceiling like many houses do, and the fire was reaching the ceiling above it by the time I ran past.
I have no idea if they ever tried any water or anything on the fire. I would guess not because everything was happening so fast. There were no fire extinguishers (not many houses did to my knowledge).
I remember only one thing that got taken out of the house in the panic: The long front drawer out of our desk. I don't know why--I guess it had some important papers in it. More likely: He hollered at her to grab and she just grabbed. Maybe they got more items than that out of the house. If so I don't remember it.
The fire department came quickly. Lucky us. The fire was put out quickly. It had eaten its way through the floor into the bathroom above, but had been caught in time that a great deal of damage wasn't done. Maybe my dad did manage to suppress it a little to buy some time before the fire department got there--I don't know. When it was all put out, I remember the FD hanging two giant doorway fans in the house--one in the back door blowing outward, and one in the front door blowing inward. The smoke was evacuated pretty quickly, but entire house was thick with smoke for a while so I'm sure there was plenty of cleanup.
We were lucky. I don't think we had lived there very long at all at that point, and I know for a fact that everything we owned as a family was in that house. Our family was always heavy into taking pictures. I can't even imagine us losing those hundreds and hundreds (thousands maybe?) of slides and pictures of all of us as we were growing up that we had accumulated.
Lucky.
I'm pretty sure that was the last gas engine of any kind that was ever started within the walls of our house.
I could be wrong though. Time heals all wounds, and as wounds go, that fire was a shallow one.
0 comments:
Post a Comment