Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Fire on the Mountain
Dear Michael,
It is usually the students who cause the commotions in the study hall area of our high school. Now it is the teachers who are causing a commotion by coming around to tell us to leave the school immediately.
Then both teachers and students run to the windows where they point excitedly at the thick black smoke that is coming up to meet the deep blue sky in the direction of my mighty fortress home. There is no need for me to join them. From my vantage point in the back of the study hall I can see blue sky turning dark and ugly. I need no further urging to leave.
I bolt for the stairs, run out the side door and down to the library where I make a sharp left up the avenue. The avenue is a long steep street, but my feet scarcely touch the pavement. I run past the rows of houses to where the pavement ends. There are people running toward me and they are yelling, “Turn back. Turn back. The wind is blowing the fire toward town. You must turn back.”
The air is no longer clear and easy to breathe. The acrid scent of burning pine trees stings my nostrils and the smoke coming from the fire brings tears in my eyes. I make it up the gentle slope to the first turn (my relief spot). Now there are more people coming towards me urging me not to go any further, because the wind is blowing the fire toward the town and all must get out. There is a huge knot in my stomach and the tears begin to flow, not from the pall of smoke that envelops me, but from the knowledge that my mighty fortress home stands directly in the path of the fire. Those great walls that have withstood the coldest wind will surely crumble at this coming conflagration.
Somehow I make my way make my way back down to the downtown area where the town fire alarm siren blares ceaselessly. Reports that some of the outlying neighborhoods are on fire are rampant and there is a line of cars leading out of town. Friends offer me a ride out of town, but I stubbornly refuse to leave. Finally, I find my stepfather and he confirms my worst fears. He says that from the Red Jacket pasture he witnessed the fire consuming our mighty fortress home. This is a hard man, but on this day I witness him sobbing uncontrollably for the first and last time. We are left only with the clothes on our back and the family sedan.
I have now witnessed the results of this deadly menace with my own eyes. Any slight hope that a miracle could have occurred to save my mighty fortress home from the flames now dies a painful death.
The flames pause only ever so slightly in their dance of death and destruction to do its deadly work on my mighty fortress home. The blackness of the night matches the blackness of the earth seared by the passing conflagration. As my stepfather and I pull up in our driveway the car headlights seemingly struggle to hold back the blackness that envelops us. There is nothing there but a collection of twisted metal rising up out of what used to be our basement. Surely we have turned into the wrong driveway. This cannot be my mighty fortress home for this is only a charred and still smoking ruin.
Dashed forever are any hopes that the flames passed by my mighty fortress home and the despair that washes over us is almost too much to bear. Not wanting to stand in one spot after alighting from the car I walk up the hillside carefully following the path that will take me directly in back of our home. Once I am at the highest point of the path I can look down and see ruins of our once mighty fortress home now illuminated only by the headlights of our car. Suddenly our two dogs come bounding out of the blackness to greet me. Where they have been and how they escaped the fire I will never know. They seem as confused as we human beings.
The scorched earth around my mighty fortress home has turned a gray ashen color by daylight.
Even the sky above has turned a matching gray color. Perhaps the clouds have noted the destruction below and will not allow the sun to shine through until this day passes. There is nothing left standing but the concrete steps that lead up to the porch and now they stand there, awkwardly, by themselves leading nowhere. My two dogs sense that something is fearfully wrong with this picture. They are sniffing the ground seeming to be trying to locate the things lost to them. I have brought food for them and they eat heartily, but they resume their sniffing immediately after eating. The hounds of hell have roared down the forest hill to consume my mighty fortress home and change these dogs and my life forever.
This unlikely trio soon turns from the devastation at hand and begins a hard walk up Roosevelt road to follow the path of destruction. Our neighbors log cabin is but a smoldering ruin and the home that our family rented out, the “white house,” has fallen to the flames. Only faint wisps of black smoke rise eerily from the ruins. Farther up the road and as far as the eye can see there is only more destruction so my dogs and I turn back. When we arrive at the car I put out what is left of the food I brought for the dogs. Under the circumstances it will be okay to give them an extra helping.
Those were dark days after the fire.
What I do remember about them is when my mother and stepfather leave town for a couple of weeks to go visit my sister in Montana, my friend Billy and I join forces. Billy has a big old ’54 Pontiac Chieftain with that big straight eight engine powering it. You could easily out walk that car in the quarter mile, but once it got rolling you would have to sit back and hang on for dear life. Buying beer was no problem, so we drink beer and cruise the highways nightly. When both of us drink too much to drive, we pull off to the side of the highway and sleep off the effects of the beer. That is my way of dealing with the pain.
I only lived in the “Hills” for the first sixteen years of my life and I always thought I would never ever live anywhere else. What little did I know about what was to come.
I whine, I plead, I beg, anything to get my mother to change her mind, but it is all to no avail. Gone is our mighty fortress home and there is not one single thing to keep my mother in this town any longer. My stepfather envisions a life of no more work living in the Florida sunshine on the little bit of insurance money they get. To my utter chagrin he goes along with her. They will soon put me on a plane bound for Florida. It will be many years before I return to my homeland.
At last the day has come to leave for Florida. I stand on the street below my school and gaze up at the steep steps leading to the entrance. It seems as though the steps once so familiar and welcoming now have become an insurmountable barrier. The principal of the high school, Mr. Krug, has given me my grade transcript and now there is no need to climb these steps one last time. I attend morning classes, but now it is time for the afternoon classes. I make the decision to walk away from this place, slowly at first, and then I begin to gain speed until I am running as fast as I can. Where I am running to and when I will get there I have no idea.
Headlines and stories on the second day of the fire from our town newspaper read:
“Northern Hills Holocaust Believed Controlled.” The blaze that started about one in the afternoon yesterday has destroyed hundreds of acres of forest and is now under control. The fire started when an elderly resident of a nursing home went out to burn some trash and burning embers from that trash fire flew into nearby grass. The dry grass quickly caught fire and spread to nearby pine trees. The resulting conflagration destroyed two homes on Roosevelt Road and evacuation of the town for a time was necessary.
Heavy smoke in the Terrace Street area worried a number of residents, but one woman refused to go. She was quoted as saying, “I thought it was just smoke, but I cleaned up and dressed up before I went to bed--just in case.”
Items from our town newspaper on the third day of the fire:
A man arrested by the Highway Patrol for starting a fire near the fire area to roast hot dogs receives a fine of $30.00.
A couple that is on their honeymoon trying to get away from the fire, stop at a checkpoint. The firefighters manning the checkpoint ask the man to help fight the fire. He agrees and works several hours on the fire line and then rejoins his bride.
A helicopter operated the U.S. Forest Service comes to the rescue of 25 firefighters trapped by flames atop Mt. Roosevelt. Guided to a beaver pond by the helicopter pilot they lay in the water until the flames passed by.
UN COUNTRIES FEARFUL OF LAMA REQUEST The article explains that the Dali Lama has made an urgent request for intervention against the brutal Chinese Communist invasion of his country, but not one country is willing to come to his aid. It seems that the United States government does not want to open itself to a charge of playing war politics and as a result one million innocent Tibetans will lose their lives.
From the theater section:
This is the last day for Imitation of Life starring Lana Turner and John Gavin. Coming attractions are Hercules starring Steve Reeves and Ride Out for Revenge starring Rory Calhoun and Gloria Grahame.
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