The Fire (standard:non fiction, 1048 words)
Author: Sarah	Added: Apr 02 2001	Views/Reads: 3472/2027	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
The vivid and painful recollections of my mother as she tells of the fire that destroyed her home when she was a child of eight.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

chimney of our house.  He knew that shouldn't be happening.  It 
frightened him so bad he didn't even think to drop the heavy wire 
stretchers he was carrying before starting to run back to the house.  
He ran all the way back with them dangling from his shoulders. 

In the meantime, two neighbor boys had seen the dark black smoke
billowing out the top of the house and had ridden over to see what was 
happening.   Once there, they realized the house was burning.  They 
knocked on the door but no one answered so they rode off to town to 
tell my step-mother.  If only they had realized, they could have gone 
to the well located right next to the house, pumped some water, and 
broken into the house and put out the fire.  But they didn't. 

When the neighbors got to the schoolhouse and told my mother what was
happening, she sent the children home and we jumped in our buggy and 
raced home as fast as we could.  The school was about 2-1/2 miles from 
our house.  By the time we got there, the house was mostly gone.  A few 
pieces of wood were still burning and smoking.  Only the chimney 
remained. The well house next to it had burned down, too. 

Among other things, my dad raised peaches and apples on our farm and our
canning shed did not burn.  We lived in it for the next several months 
while he worked the farm and built us another house.  This one had all 
the rooms on one floor.  He said he had nightmares about what might 
have happened if the fire had started during the night when we were 
sleeping. 

* * * * * 

Even though it happened more than 76 years ago, in my mind I can still
remember standing there and feeling the pain of what we lost that day 
so many years ago. 

-- END -- 


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