Our family home burned down when I was 9.
Now, this sounds wayyy more traumatic than it was because we weren’t actually living in it yet. The house was a 4-bed, 2-bath colonial revival (for my fellow architecture nerds) that sat on a corner lot, a 5-minute bike ride from the local high school.
Two weeks before we were set to move in, the current inhabitant, a lifelong smoker at the ripe age of 73, decided it was a good time for an at-home oil change. So, he moseyed his way into the garage for some handiwork before dinner. At some point (according to the stories we were told about the reports), a cigarette butt that wasn’t quite out lit a little fire. That little fire climbed its way around to an old gas can. And then BOOM!
The older couple said that by the time they heard the noise, the garage was already half in flames, and by the time the fire department arrived a few minutes later, it was completely gone, along with 30% of the home.
I remember my parents driving by the day after. I was in the backseat, slightly horrified but mostly memorized by the scene. It looked like a movie set — burnt wood and black ash everywhere, and then, at just the right angle, everything appeared perfectly fine.
We drove home, and I remember thinking to myself…a little fire did this.
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