Fire!

"Fire"

The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, 1968

Tuesday afternoon around 2 p.m. A telephone call from my breathless wife. The house is on fire. Get here quick.

Such was the start of my adventure back on Oct. 14. I got in my car in Berryville, learning quickly that Carroll County drivers do not understand the significance of emergency flashers on cars, and got home in time to see the Holiday Island Fire Department start to leave after extinguishing a fire which wrecked the kitchen and left most of the rest of the house covered in soot and smoke.

Oh, and my wife was sitting on the big rock in the front yard, literally getting ready to have a heart attack.

As you might expect, I was overwhelmed. I got the wife to the hospital, and she was transferred to Washington Regional. I returned home and went to bed in the guest bedroom, which was largely untouched by the smoke and soot -- probably not the smartest thing to do, but that's what I did.

The next morning I looked over the place. Surprisingly, except for the kitchen appliances and the upper reachers of cabinets, the house was in good shape. The fire breached the ceiling of the kitchen, but the fire department kept it from spreading into the attic. And the adjacent living room carpet was soaked.

Other than that, surprisingly little else was destroyed. The clothing has cleaned up easily.

So here it is, the last week of October, and with no house insurance, we have been living by the graces of our daughters and my income from two jobs.

Bit by bit, daughter Tracy, as well as daughter DeLee and Stacy, a close friend in Rogers, and their friends have shoveled out the kitchen, stripped out the living room carpet, and removed many valuables that can be reclaimed of sold, for safekeeping.

Being a pack rat at heart, I really thought most of the stuff could be saved. But hundreds of books, as well as the appliances and upholstered furniture, have gone into a huge dumpster ensconced in front of the garage. To the best of my knowledge, the only 'treasure" I lost was my antique pressed glass Lord's Supper bread plate which belonged to my grandmother. It was in a cabinet in the kitchen. I'm not sure if the ornamental German coffee cup that belonged to my great-grandfather was saved or not.

The verdict is still out on many of the art works, including the still life by Helen Terry Marshall and the old house painting by Tommy Thomas.

The dumpster is approaching capacity, and I guess the whole experience reinforces our desire to downsize. But I never expected it to take place so quickly and abruptly.

And friends have come out of the woodwork with offers to help in any way they can. An on-line self-help group my wife belongs to is pitching in, along with PervertedJustice.com, which the wife also belongs to. At the newspaper, someone stuck a $20 bill in my car. At Walmart, they're having a $3 a person fund-raising lunch for us. And people are coming up with all sorts of ideas of how to replace the furniture and such.

I figure, however, the first order of business, after Pine Sol for the clothing, is Kilz.

And, while writing this, I got a call from the wife. Instead of going to the lodge where we are staying, she want's me to come to the house and sit in the sunroom where it is clean and we have heat and watch "All My Children" tonight.