Up until the time I was about six years
old, I slept in a trundle bed in my parents’ bed room. Dad never did like that arrangement very much. Maybe that’s
why I never used to know when he would come to bed. He would always wait until I was fast asleep. On the other hand, he did
read a lot. He enjoyed reading the Bible or a newspaper. And with a fair amount of regularity, Dad used to read the Montgomery Ward’s and Sear’s and Roebuck catalogues…and dream. That could have been the reason he never went to bed especially
early.
One late summer night, Shep was raising
a genuine ruckus. I say genuine because Shep used to bark at about anything. Dad used to claim, unfairly, that Shep slept
all day and barked all night. This particular night, though, his bark was serious, urgent. “Wake up!” he was saying.
“Wake up! Something’s wrong!”
Well, I never did know if Dad had just
been coming to bed or if Shep had woke him up. All I knew was that a feeling of great excitement filled the air. I think Dad
was trying to keep me from waking up—without success. Too much noise. Too much “electricity” in the air.
When I peeked out, I could see Dad standing with Mom, looking out of the south window, and all my brothers and sisters were
clustered behind them. Through the window, I could see a great, orange glow on the horizon, almost as though the sun were
rising in the south. In the south? How could that be?
“Its Charlie Gushwa’s farm,
I’m sure,” Dad said. “Either his house or maybe the barn is on fire.” That’s when he said it.
“Please, dear God. Don’t let any of them be harmed.” Then he
said, “We’d better get over there and see if there’s any way we can help. Lloyd, put your clothes on while
I get the car started. You’re going with me. Now, hurry!” In just a few minutes they were gone. Dad took with
him two milk buckets and two shovels.
The Gushwa farm was about a mile southwest,
as the crow flies, two miles by the road. It was not a still night, and as the wind would move back and forth, the orange
glow would likewise move from east to west and back again. Never before had we seen anything like it, and I for one never
wanted to see it again.
Mom kept trying to get us to go back
to bed, but we were all just too wide awake to even think about sleep. She couldn’t sleep, either. As the night wore
on, there was no longer an orange glow in the sky. Then the wind shifted, and we could smell the fire.
Finally, Dad and Lloyd came home, exhausted
and dirty—black from head to toe and smelling of fire. They told us it was the barn. Dad’s prayer must have worked.
No one was harmed. Neither the house nor any other buildings had caught fire. Thankfully,
none of Charlie’s horses or cows had been in the barn either; but some hogs were trapped inside. They died. Dad said
a lot of men showed up to help. They managed to save at least some of the farm machinery. There were no fire hydrants to draw
water from, however, and the fire trucks had their own limited water supply, so after they ran out of water, they had to let
the fire burn out by itself.
The next afternoon, Dad drove all of
us over to see the damage. The barn was still smoldering and the fire trucks
were still there—just in case it flared up again. It had literally been packed with hay. It, too, was still smoking.
I’ll never forget that pungent odor. It was new to me.
A while back, my brother Charles and
I stopped by the old Gushwa farm. Byron Foltz lives there now and has owned it for some time. At the time of the fire, he
and his family lived on the farm east of us. After visiting and reminiscing for some time, I asked Byron if he remembered
when Charlie Gushwa’s barn had burned.
“Do I remember? I think of it almost
every day. Let me show you something.” With that, he led us out in the yard where he showed us a good part of the old
foundation of that same barn. Some memories have tangible reminders.
