The house that burned

Daddy had worked graveyard shift at Red River Army Depot the night before and was asleep when the house caught on fire. The Depot was running three shifts, repairing and rebuilding vehicles damaged from the war in Korea. Daddy had worked at the Depot since the late 1940s. 

The house was wood, with what was then called a “tin roof.” The house was at least 50 years old and had never been painted. That many years of hot Texas sun made the walls very dry. Electrical wires were bare in the walls and attic or wrapped in paper. Squirrels were known to eat the paper and then become electrocuted when touching both AC wires. Sometimes, too, old age caught up with paper-coated wires and the two AC wires lost the insulation and came in contact with each other, producing a spark, which in a dry attic often caused a fire. Daddy said that is what he figured caused the house to catch on fire.

Smoke woke Daddy. He knew immediately that the house was on fire. He knew, too, that the old, dry house would burn fast. He grabbed a pair of pants, shoved through the bedroom window screen and got out. He walked away from the house and watched it burn. There was nothing he could do; he had no way to fight the fire. The house did not have running water. The well was in the kitchen.

Mama and I were at the café east of Maud on Highway 67. Daddy and Mama had started the café with a VA loan. The café was a new attachment to an older building that during the war produced something. There were lots of electrical motors on tables when Daddy bought the building. He opened the place first as a BYOB dance hall clearing out the electric machines and wood tables and building a stage. There already was a hardwood floor. Daddy played in a Saturday night dance band, so didn’t have to worry about finding a house band. When the dance hall didn’t pay off, Daddy and Mama made the building into a bowling alley, with the café added to the front. Bowling didn’t make any money, either, so they closed the alley and went with the café only.

Mama, Daddy’s older sister Ruby and I were standing outside the café before noon that morning. I was absent from school, first grade, because of a reaction to the smallpox vaccination from a week before. Mama and Ruby were talking, and then we all saw a dark cloud of smoke about three or four miles to the northwest.

Ruby said, “Wanda, that looks like it could be near your house.”

Mama knew Daddy was asleep at the house. She said to Ruby, “Watch Bob!” She jumped in the car, a brown 1938 Pontiac coupe, and drove away, fast, spinning gravel.

To get to our house, Mama drove through Maud, turned north onto a dirt road a mile or so west of town, then down the sand and clay road for another mile, then took a right onto the half-mile path. She later said, “I took those curves on two wheels.”

I don’t know what Mama and Daddy did when she got to the house. It must have been pretty much on the ground by then. It was a small house -- two bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen as near as I remember. We spent a few days with relatives. Everybody lived within 10 or 15 miles. At that time other than Mama and Daddy, there were Carolyn, my older sister, me, Francis, 3 years old, and Bill, who was 2. Within a week, Mama and Daddy had another rent house.

We went to the remains the day after the fire. The house was burned. That was the first house fire I had seen, and it was completely burned.

As we looked at mostly unidentifiable things, my cousin Bobby Holly pointed and said, “Bob! There’s your cap pistol.” It didn’t look like my cap pistol. My cap pistol had been a Christmas present. It was the best cap pistol I ever had. I looked at the melted aluminum and plastic. I would not cry. “I don’t care,” I said.