“A happy ho-ho-ho to you!” Tis the season to be jolly and
all of that! Because this is December, I’ll dedicate my blogs to our family
Christmas stories!
It was Christmas Eve 1977. I was busy making pumpkin pies
for the Christmas meal. My five children ranged in age from my oldest daughter,
Tammy, was twelve, I think, and my youngest, Heather, was four. We had bought
bicycles for the four oldest and a Big Wheels for Heather – the big plastic
ones that sat low to the ground.
My husband decided to put the bicycles together and sent our
son, Junior, to the storage shed for the tool box. Our house had a carport, not
a garage, and the storage shed was attached to the house. Up to my elbows in
spices, flour and canned pumpkin, Junior walks by me with the tool box and said,
“The can of gasoline spilled,” meaning the gas we kept for our lawnmower.
“That can start a fire,” I replied, thinking if the gasoline
got near the gas water heater. “Go clean it up,” I hollered.
I went back to my pie making, and before I knew it, my
husband was yelling, “Give me the car keys.” I didn’t respond immediately because I was
trying to process in my mind why he was yelling about the car keys.
Well, the gasoline had started a fire. Our station wagon (remember
those?) was in the carport next to the storage. The next minutes were chaotic
confusion. My first thought was to get the kids out of the house. My husband’s
thought was to move the car and turn the water hose on the fire.
I gathered my kids, minus Tammy, who I thought was at Lisa’s
house. We stood across the street with the neighbors who had gathered to watch
the fire. “Can we help?” someone asked. “My kids’ Christmas gifts are under the
tree,” was my response. Hey, it was Christmas, and in that moment, those gifts
were my valuables.
Firemen arrived before the fire spread. I watched as a
couple of firemen stood on the roof with axes. Before I could wonder what that
was about, a group of men started a chain passing gifts out the door and onto
the front lawn. I suppressed a hysterical giggle at the sight. Giggling is
better than hysterical wailing, right?
I watched the pile of gifts grow as I mumbled, “Why are they
chopping holes in the roof?” Someone, I don’t know who, replied, “To check if
the fire has spread.” Huh? That’s how to check?
While I pondered that, I gasped at what appeared to be a ghost, actually
two ghosts, walking out the front door. It took me a minute to realize it was
Tammy and Lisa. Both looked confused. Yeah, welcome to my world. How did I go
from making pies to watching my house burn?
Tammy and Lisa moved to stand beside me. “I thought you were
at Lisa’s.” She looked at me with saucer-shaped eyes. Her mouth opened and she
wailed, “My violin!”
Seriously? Your violin? But, I asked a fireman to take her
inside to get her violin. The crowd began to disperse. I walked over to the
firemen sweeping out the charred remains in our storage. “Did you save Heather’s
Big Wheel?” They glanced at me with looks of compassion and went back to
cleaning.
The crew chief came over to talk to us. With a sigh, I
asked, “Is the smoke smell going to be too strong for us to sleep?”
He looked at me with a mixture of concern and amusement and said,
“Ma’am, you can’t stay here. Your power is off and we chopped holes in the
roof.” We spent the night with friends, Dede and Richard, had Christmas day at my parents' home, and per the insurance adjuster, found a motel to rent while we looked for a temporary house until repairs could be made on ours. That took three months.
Although there are better ways to spend Christmas, I found the time to thank God no one was hurt and that other than items in the storage shed, none of our other belongings were damaged.
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