Match + Pencil Box = “FIRE” | Grandma’s Stories

Oct 31st Match + Pencil Box = “FIRE”

When you are a “FIRST-GRADER” there comes a day, when you grow up in a hurry! For a “KID” I generally was the happiest of kids! Being the first, in the family I usually knew what was going on and what was about to happen, as it always helped me to keep my ears – listening? I believe that I had heard someone say, “Are you paying attention, to what I am saying?” That phrase is boring and makes no real sense to hear, once it has been said? So I have myself always in listening mode!

What an explosion, when I opened the door, coming home from school, in such a good mood? One million questions bang, bang and what did you, and where did the matches come from? If ever a “KID” needed a good lawyer, it sure was then! I’m hardly in side, cannot figure what is going on or what happened, but I do see “SNEAKY TOMMY” – on the wooden red stool, trying to look all innocent , as if I had done something terrible? I am ushered into the room where “SNEAKY TOMMY” had taken the matches out of my pencil box and started lighting them. And since they were such short and little matches, I guess he could not hold on to them, dropping them instead, and near the window the curtains caught on “FIRE!” I heard at least a hundred times of all the damage that could have been done, as well as they also could have died!

“LUCKY” for us that my father has “eagle ears and nose” to see and hear what “SNEAKY KIDS” might do and be able to immediately “POUNCE DOWN” on the emergent situation! Did I say I was “LUCKY” too, – if there had been any real damage done to the room or house, if no adults were in the house, and as dumb as “TOMMY” was to just go and sit in another room, waiting for a fire to come out where he was and burn him and the whole house down? How dumb can a kid get? But, like I said, no damage – I escaped any and all punishment, since “Tommy” stole the matches and did something he should not have done.

In some of the pictures that I have posted you can see the room where the fire took place and you can view others that I have and you will see no “FIRE” damage to the room and no damage to the furniture. The dresser with the marble insert was right where you see it in the picture in the 1940’s and then in the 1950’s was sold to an antique dealer for top dollar. “NO DAMAGE” and no fire department, no police, and no orphanage for the children, as there were no reasons to be sent there by a “social” worker!