So Saturday night, we're gathered at the community center in my hometown, to celebrate my great-uncle's 90th birthday party. The guy who lives next door to the center has been pretty infamous for calling the cops to complain about the slightest little thing, especially noise, whenever there is an event being held. Last month, we celebrated my aunt's 60th, with the most mild & inoffensive elevator-music-playing musician ever. The neighbor complained about the loud music. The police came, sat in the parking lot, agreed that they could not hear any noise coming from the building, and went away without bothering the party. So when the Elvis impersonator came out to begin blasting his set list, I knew it was not a question of if the cops would be called, but when.
There I was, talking to my brother, and our cousin who was in from LA, and I saw a police officer I knew come and pull my father aside. "There we go," I told the other guys. Then my father comes in gesturing, I thought to "Elvis" to cut the music, but he's actually calling my mother over, who's dancing nearby. Suddenly she screams and starts running for the door. My first thought was my grandmother, who was staying at home, over some perceived omission from the guest list (in fact, I saw a place set with her name on it...), and we started to go to her to find out what was wrong, when she or my father said "Our house is on fire."
I grabbed my coat and went out to the parking lot where the cop took my parents and I home, reassuring us that my grandmother was all right and had actually been the one to call the fire in. We arrived to stand on the neighbor's lawn and watch as the house went up, with the fire centered on my brother's bedroom. A few hours later it was all out. Several of our family members came to commiserate and offer their help. A group of my father's friends who lived in town came, and a neighbor showed up with an armload of coats to distribute to anyone lacking one. My mother went off somewhere, to sit in a cop car, I guess, being pretty upset. Later, she went to my sister-in-law's mother's place to spend the night. The rest of us waited until the fire department and investigators gave us permission to go in the house and see what important things we could salvage. We could see my brother's room was a total loss, but he had some hope because a few years ago he had purchased a fireproof safe, in what had seemed an exorbitant expenditure for a guy struggling through nursing school. His important papers and valuables were all in it. My room is/was directly beneath his, which meant it took the brunt of the water damage and probably some smoke and heat, but I had stuff strategically placed where it might have survived.
I finally went to my brother's house to sleep around 2 AM. The next morning we went to my usual 7AM Mass, since he was up, and I had no intention of giving God a pass after all the effort He plainly made to see us alive and the damage minimized. We met up with my parents there, who told us they still hadn't been into the house. My father was worried, because another brother, who owed him a bit of money, had accidentally won a Super Bowl pool and had just given him a massive wad of cash to pay him back. He had placed it in a desk drawer, intending to deposit it on Monday. The desk was in one of the two rooms worst hit.
We went to the house midmorning on Sunday, with gloves, storage bins and respirator masks, and set about picking what we could. I got a few odds and ends from my backpack, which had been relatively protected, but was soaking wet and stunk. I did recover my tablets, and a couple of mismatched charging cords. I also found almost all of my good knives, though my axe, kukri & hunting knife were MIA, and the items I usually carried in my pants pocket, were sitting in my ball cap, where I usually put them when I get changed. The place where I normally leave that stuff was buried in rubble, but the place I had actually left them, was relatively untouched. I had left most of that stuff at home, not thinking I'd need it at the party, so until we got into the house, my worldly goods and chattels consisted of a dress shirt, a pair of dress slacks, my second best belt, a tee shirt ( "History Buff: I'd find you more interesting if you were dead." ), socks, underwear and hiking boots. Those are my winter & spring everyday footwear, and I wore them to the party on a whim, instead of changing to dress shoes. I had my wallet and my normal jacket, without the zip-in liner that makes it a winter coat. Fortunately, I keep lots of stuff in the jacket for emergencies, like mini mag-lights, duct tape, utility tools, pepper spray and my iPod, so I didn't really feel bereft or figuratively naked to the world. I was able to add to that, after the scavenging run, a few knives and other tools, a couple of tablets, my favorite scissors, my autographed copy of Crossroads of Twilight, the zip-in liner for my jacket, two new pair of jeans that were protected by the shopping back in which they were wrapped, my ball cap, a flash drive with most of my writings and so forth, and my stashed beach wallet, which had all the coupons and boardwalk admission cards leftover from last summer's trip to Seaside Heights, in anticipation of a return this summer. Also my duffle bag, so I could put that stuff in it. My dad's safe and my brother's were both intact, and they got all their things. The interior of the desk drawer where my dad had his cash (and his insurance policy) was untouched. My mother's summer clothes were safe in plastic bins. The basement refrigerator was fine, so we cleaned out maybe fifty cans of soda, a dozen wine bottles and as many bottles of juice & assorted booze, maybe a score of beer cans and bottles. There was some meat and hot pockets in the freezer, with a bad of ice & a therapeutic ice pack, which we used to keep the stuff cool until we could get it to my brothers' house. Another brother (not the one with the safe, or the house, the one who won the Super Bowl pool) had ordered a passport, which was sitting on the microwave cart waiting for him to come pick it up. The microwave was melted, and the mail next to it was charred black. But the passport envelope was in the middle of the bundle and partly protected. When I tore it open, the passport was entirely in the protected section, with only a couple of browned edges to a couple of papers. The firemen had retrieved several charcoal drawings done by my mother and brother, which were framed in the front hallway, because they thought they'd have to break down that wall, so they put the pictures outside, and they were intact. A cop came up to me during the night with a handful of pictures that had fallen out of my grandmother's room. Three of them were partly damaged. One of them was dirty, but the glass protected the photo beneath, which was probably her last surviving picture of her husband, who died 34 years ago.
Beyond that, everything in the house was gone. My mother's financial documents for her job and her laptop were usable but smoke-covered & smelly. Everything else looked gone. When the insurance and salvage guys came by today, they confirmed that nothing in the house was worth saving, no matter how lightly damaged or only mildly dirty it looked. I was a bit better off than my brother, who lost everything not on his person or in his safe (his car keys even melted), but not by much, with everything fitting into the aforementioned duffle bag. On the other hand, I had plenty of money in the bank, so I was okay. A trip to Walmart for some clothing essentials now means the bag is filled tight. I got a new computer, on which I am typing this, so I'm doing fine.
The day after the fire, someone had been due to come look at the house with the intention of making an offer, because my parents couldn't afford certain expenses and were planning to move to Delaware. Most of the books and stuff I lost in the fire were things I was going to have to winnow down when I moved into a new place once they sold the house. All sorts of people have been making comments about how amazed they were that we watched our house burn while making fire puns and joking about our losses. We just kept pointing out that no one was harmed, that we have a large, very close family with plenty of options for short-term survival, and long-term, there was insurance.
We were deluged with offers of food, shelter, clothes and money. My father's friend's daughter & her husband, offered to move out of their house and into their RV, so we could stay in the house. My brother's boss goes to the same church as my aunt, and learning about the fire when my brother called in to work, told their pastor, who announced it from the pulpit and took up an additional collection. The people of this parish we had never attended in our lives, gave us over $1200. My aunt noted it was about $30 more than their most recent pancake breakfast had taken in.
On reviewing the insurance policy, my father saw that the allowed coverage would easily handle all our losses. The insurance guys were falling all over themselves to be helpful. They told us to replace what we needed right away and give them receipts. They told us to get hotel rooms on their dime, but if anyone put any of us up in the meantime, they'd pay $50 a day. They gave my father a huge check Monday and were making recommendations about improvements my parents could make upon rebuilding the house. There is no more talk about moving to Delaware. Whatever we have lost in goods, we have regained in keeping the family close together. It has honestly felt more like an adventure than an ordeal. I could still fit everything I own into the trunk of a car, but so what? This is the 21st century. I can read any book I want on a device half the size of the books themselves. Tomorrow, I'm going to try sausage gravy at the hotel breakfast for the first time. My parents are in better spirits than they have been for months. We've already got an eye on a rental property like five minutes away from our Church, and just about as close to my brother's house. We still have our free passes to the waterpark down the shore, come this summer. My brother is still getting married, we just have to move the engagement party to the restaurant that was going to cater it. As long as you lay up your treasures in heaven, and keep your health and sense of humor down here on earth, they can't take away anything that matters.
*MySmiley*
