Fire, Hawks and Slim

I am sitting in front of a gorgeous fire I just built. It has started to rain. The frying sound of the rain on my rooftop plus the metallic ticking of the wood stove are two of my favorite sounds. Slim*, my pussycat is curled up in her little plush winter bed in front of the fire. We both have full bellies and are feeling quite content.

Now, if only a million dollars would drip through one of my slightly open windows (I love fresh air through each season). Ok, if not a million how 'bout 250 grand? 50? Twenty bucks? A coupon for a dollar off Boca burgers?

*Slim: You know you don't have to act with me, Steve. You don't have to say anything, and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and... blow.

And here for your viewing pleasure is a photo of the “real” Slim:

Slim Hawks and Jimmy Stewart, ca. 1940



And the other “real” Slim:

Fire, too

About 1:00 p.m. Shep, Charlie and Keith; and then I, a bit later, went up to the house. A new blaze had broken out. By about 4:30 they had it out, finally after 3 separate attempts in two days.

This is the side entrance into the bathroom.



My walk home with the small, double roof of my house barely showing on the right.

It's all different now.

Fire!

Saturday, December 2, 2007 about 3:00 p.m. I saw from my kitchen window smoke up at the house and called 911. A few seconds later Judy called and left a message on my machine telling me that the house was burning.

I couldn’t take pictures of the first fire. My batteries were drained from a trip to Florida a week earlier and I was too full of adrenaline after getting Judy's call to find fresh ones. I couldn’t have taken them anyway once I got there and saw...

photo by Priscilla Holcomb

The photos that follow are from 12/3/2007. The blurry, bluish ones were taken about 6:00 am. I called 911 to report smoke billowing out of the house. The Fire department responded and put it out.

Skeletal spruce. The ass't fire chief said her son got trapped when this tree went up in flames. She said he knew he was in trouble immediately and was really scared. He looked for his partner (firefighters work in pairs at all times for this reason) and realized that she had gotten to the other side of the tree just as it went up and didn't know what had happened. He figured his only way to survive was to kick the fence down. His partner realized quickly what had happened and from the other side, she helped him tear the fence down.

Here is the missing section of fence the firefighters tore down.

About 1:00 p.m. Shep, Charlie and Keith; and then I, a bit later, went up to the house. A new blaze broke out. By about 4:30 they had contained it finally.

[photos not uploaded yet]