Newscoma

Tonight, dealing with the joys of ralphing periodically throughout the day, I got a phone call from Big Daddy.

“Where’s your sister?” he said on the phone. He had a tone in his voice that was, quite frankly, disconcerting. He’s my father. I know when he’s upset. “I need her phone number, my numbers are out in the car and I need to talk to them right now.”

“She’s taken Bear to tumbling,” I said. The tone was sorta scary.

“The building, their building outside Clockworks is on fire,” he said. “I need to find her.”

“I’ll call her,” and I went into overload. As I called her, I was getting out of the everpresent muumuu, throwing on a sweatshirt and falling down trying to get my jeans on. You see, there are times that you just have to go and it’s just the way it is.

Squeegee Monkey answered the phone and I told him what was going on. I told him I’d meet him there as he was about ten miles away and I was about two minutes down the road.

“I’m turning around,” is all he said. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.” He said later that he could see the flames from Martin, which is about ten miles away from their business, which is in Dresden. You can imagine the terror they felt. Hell, I felt it. They’ve worked for ten years to get their business off the ground and to think it might have all gone up in smoke was terrifying. Every dime they have is tied up in that T-shirt business.

We ran to the car. Squirrelly and I went flying down the road and as we pulled out of the driveway, you could see the smoke and flames which were about a mile away in the falling dusk. I drove like a maniac, SQ bitched at me, I bitched back but was really on our minds that we didn’t know which building it was (there are a couple on their property) and we were frightened.

SQ and I got over our bitching and I pulled in about 100 yards from the back end of the firetruck. We ran toward the building and fortunately, the portion that has their equipment in it was okay. They bought this piece of property and it has these huge metal sheds on them that were built like a million years ago. The building used to be a used furniture store that also rented out U-Hauls. Welcome to Hooterville. On the outside of the main property is was this funky metal building. They’ve only owned the property for a little while and my sister even said she’d never even been in the building that burned. (There was an issue of a fear of snakes. Snakes mess Homer up and she will kill you if you even tease her about it.) A man in town was using it for storage and when they moved in, they let him keep his stuff in it in an arrangement made through Big Daddy.

Anyway, the fire was hot and really scary and when Homer and Squeegee Monkey showed up, they looked in shock. I could tell Homer had been crying. The girls were in the van with a police officer watching over them, so I told my sister I’d take them home. They are little. They were crying and they didn’t understand what was happening so I grabbed the keys and we went home.

There’s quite a bit of damage (well the metal building is flattened toast) but the main area is okay although the fire broke a couple of windows.

No one was hurt.

Tomorrow will be filled with insurance, fire investigators and the like. We can’t figure out why the building went up in flames, because the thing was engulfed when we got there.

We all stunk to high heaven with the smell of smoke and soot. I didn’t get it as bad as they did because I left with the nieces who needed to get out of there. They were freaked out. One of them asked me if CSI was coming to check it out. The oldest one asked if the fire investigators were as smart as Nancy Drew. I said I thought they might be.
I assured them that the authorities (I couldn’t think of an other word) would come and investigate how the fire started and we should have some answers in a few days. I also reminded them that is was really a blessed day because no one got hurt. (It was a huge fire, campers. I’m talking huge and scary.)

Homer and Squeegee are okay. We all are.