Fire at Home

This a a poem written by my son, Jonathan Arlia, about a house fire we had in October of 2000.

Fire at Home

By Jonathan Arlia

Just an ordinary night, we went out to eat,
But smoke we saw, when we got back to our street
Our house was on fire, and everyone was there.
All I could do was stop and stare.
My brother managed to get out just in time,
But our animals, unfortunately, weren’t doing as fine.
Everyone watched the firefighters battle the blaze,
While me and my family stood in a daze.
Finally it was over; the last flames were out.
The mood was sober; our home, we were without.
That night we slept at a motel
For we had nowhere else to dwell,
But the next year, our house was restored.
So full of thanks, we praised the Lord.

Remembering My Father

My father was in the Army Air Corps in World War II. He was based in Italy and flew mostly reconnaissance, but his P-51 was armed for air attacks if necessary. I read some in a little notebook he kept. It saddened him to see other planes crash and burn after a dangerous mission. He lost many friends during his stay there. He would rarely talk about the war.

 Early in 1945, he went on his 42nd mission. If he had flown one more mission, he would have been promoted to a captain. He saw a train and went lower to strafe it. Unfortunately, an enemy fighter pilot saw him and shot his "Lady Helen" fighter plane down. His plane was too low when it was hit for my father's parachute to fully open, so he landed harder than he should have. He was in much pain. He told us he wasn't sure where he was shot down, but he thinks he was over Chechoslovakia. He was mistreated by the local people and turned over to the enemy soldiers. They took him to a German prison camp where his injuries were basically not treated. He later developed ankylosing spondylitis which is a form of spinal arthritis which fuses the spine that was triggered by those injuries. He said some of the German guards were nice, but others definitely weren't. It was very cold in the prison camp; and that the food was moldy and there was'nt much of it. After about 3 months, he and a friend decided to escape. They dug under the fence and traveled at night, hiding in barns in the daytime. When they got to France, they were surprised to see people dancing in the street, drinking wine and kissing and hugging each other. The war was over! My father "found" a motorcycle and rode back to Itay to rejoin his unit. He was glad to be safe, but sad that the little spitz dog he had had as a pet was gone.

 I miss my father very much. He died in 1974 due to an ulcer he developed after falling and breaking his neck in 1970. He spent 4 years as a quadriplegic because of his fused spine.

A Visit to Granny's House

     I grew up mostly in Tucson, Arizona, but once in a great while, our family would drive back east to visit my relatives in Virginia. We always stayed at Granny’s house outside Lynchburg. She lived in a two-story house on a curve on a paved country road that had enough traffic on it to make it hazardous to cross. I was always scared to death to cross the road to visit my cousins who lived about half a mile away down a curving dirt road.

     Granny’s house didn’t get electricity or indoor plumbing until the 1960’s, so I remember her cooking on a big iron wood stove and pumping cold, rusty water from an iron hand pump outside on the concrete slab on the screen-in back porch. She would pump the cold, rusty water into a bucket, and I would pour some it into a glass from a metal dipper. It wasn’t that rusty, just a little bit , because of the iron in the pipes. It tasted so good—not at all like our treated water today.

     The neighbor lady across the road had a huge apple tree and would send over a basketful of apples. Granny would sit down in the kitchen in the evening, take out her paring knife,peel the apples, and soak them in water. In the morning, she would dry them and fry them with butter and sugar. They tasted great. She would also fry some slices of cured Virginia ham, and serve it with red-eye gravy made from the drippings from the ham mixed with coffee. She also would make fantastic home-made biscuits which we would eat with butter and honey.

     She would take the strings off green beans (pole beans, she called them), and I would help her. We would break them into smaller pieces for her to boil on the stove. My mother always pressure cooked her green beans, so this was something new to me. One other thing that was new to me was what Granny called “Shuckie beans”. These were green beans that she had strung on thread and hung behind her gas stove to dry in the winter. They would turn brown. It took a lot of cooking to make them tender again, but cooked with salted pork fat, I thought they tasted out of this world. I wish I knew where to find some today.

     Another thing she liked to eat was corn bread, broken up in a glass with “sweet milk” (regular whole milk) poured on top. I liked corn bread like this too, but with buttermilk poured on top.

     We used to sit on her front porch next to the wooden railing and the wide front concrete steps lined with buckets and dishpans full of potted flowers and watch the world go by.
 

      When it came time to go back to Arizona, she would stand on the back porch with her kerchief in her hand, hiding her mouth and trying not to cry, and giving us a small wave good-bye. It made me cry every time.

     Well, I guess you can tell a lot of my memories are based on food. In fact, the last time I ever saw Granny was in 1980. I was expecting my oldest son. I had driven back to Virginia with my mother and we had driven down to Big Stone Gap where Granny was staying in a nursing home. As we were driving around, we stopped at a Long John Silver’s seafood place at Granny’s request. Her teeth were gone, but she managed to “gum” her helping of a fish dinner and hush puppies. She said she enjoyed it.

     She had lost three of her sons that year, my father and two of his brothers, and I guess she felt she had more people waiting on the other side than she had left here; so only a couple of months later, she passed away at the nursing home. I miss her. She was always kind to me.

Memories of My Youth

     Just thinking about when I was in elementary school brings back many memories. We had moved into a new home with an enormous  picture windows that had a fantastic view of the Catalina Mountains here in Tucson, Arizona. Unfortunately, the neighborhood had a good view inside our home, too, so my father built a solid wooden fence in front of the picture windows and painted scenes of the desert on the inside of the different panels of plywood. 

     He also painted a picture on the wall behind the TV set in our living room. We had a huge wooden console TV, and because they used to believe it was bad for your eyes to watch TV in a bright room, we had a lamp on top of the television that was a ceramic mallard duck on a brass filigreed stand. (I I loved that duck lamp and kept it until a few years ago when we lost it in a house fire.) We would watch "Gunsmoke" and "Bonanza". 

     I would use a roller skate key to attach metal roller skates to my saddle oxford shoes, and skate up and down on the sidewalk. I would practice hitting a ball in my front yard, so I would do better at school when we played softball. I used a homemade ball and a carved, painted baseball bat we bought down in Nogales, Mexico. I loved to sit on the cool painted concrete hall floor in my house and play jacks with a golf ball. Another game I loved to play was hop scotch. I used to use this little plastic bear on a chain that came from Oso Negro gin bottles from Mexico to toss into the squares. It was the perfect weight for me to toss. I used to walk a few blocks from my house and play on the swings, the sliding board, and the see-saw in the public park. 

     Each day after school, I would go next door to my neighbor's house to wait for my mother to get home from working as a nurse. The lady next door taught me how to knit. She gave me some yarn, knitting needles, and a shoulder bag to carry my knitting around. She also gave me a tiny porcelain tea set for my dolls. I had a Tiny Tears doll and several others that I liked to play with. I liked to change their outfits. I miss those care free days. I'm glad I have those good times to remember.