The Fire!

"Ladybird, Ladybird,

Fly away home;

You house is on fire,

And your children will burn!" - nursery rhyme

Childhood should be a NeverLand - a time for ice cream and cake, playing games and singing nursery rhymes. It should be a time to be safe, happy, and loved. Memories from this time of life should all be happy ones, and indeed they are… I'm a perfect world.

The truth is, not all memories are happy, pleasant ones. Among the "Swelling Ranks of Things That We Look Back Upon" are some dark, sad, unpleasant times that children should not have to go through - but all to often do. 

I was but a toddler at the time. The year was 1956, and I was only 4 1/2 years old. We lived in Washington, DC at the time, in an apartment in the 1700 block of Pennsylvania Ave., NW, across the street and one block from the White House. 

I came down with the measles in the last days of May. I was still sick in the first days of June, on the day it happened.

My eyes were sensitive to the light, so my mother, in an effort to cut down on the light, put a towel over the lamp on my bedroom. 

She went out for a short while, either to the grocery or the drug store - or maybe both, leaving me alone and unattended. It was just going to be for a short while.

I was playing in the kitchen, entertaining myself with whatever toys I might have had. I heard a strange knocking sound: "rat-a-tat--tat----tat!" The sound pattern repeated itself, as if tapping out a coded message. 

(I imagined a black-haired boy hitting on the wall with a Ping-pong or Fly-Back paddle, trying to warn me.)

I walked to my room to see what it was, and I was shocked to see my room on fire!! The lamp an my bed were burning. I gasped, then immediately ran out of our third story apartment.

I fled down the seemingly endless flights of stairs in abject terror! I ran past Cullin Photo Studio on the second floor down to the first floor and up to the heavy metal and glass doors of the main entrance. 

I tried to open the door, but it would not budge! I was trapped! This was a desperate situation I was in. In anguish I watched helplessly as patrons walked past the glass of the door and filed into the Blue Ribbon restaurant downstairs. 

I cried out, banged on the thick glass, and desperately pleaded with them to open the door for me, but my plaintive and tearful cries for help went unneeded, and they just walked past.

I fumbled with the lock mechanism, nearly out of my reach, hoping it would budge.  (It seemed to me back then that it took a very long time.)

Finally, the latch opened!! I was free! I ran into the restaurant and up to the manager whom I knew from eating breakfast there in the mornings.

"Our apartment is on fire!" I shouted. 

"We know," came a matter-of-fact reply. The whole thing was surreal: There's a fire in the building upstairs, a 4-year-old toddler runs in screaming "FIRE!" and everybody in the place is just sitting around nonchalantly eating instead of evacuating, going outside to gawk at the fire, or to show any concern for the little boy. 

It was just then when my mother returns from her errand. I meet her at the entrance, and she suddenly decides to play fireman! She said something about a fire-extinguisher in the ceiling, and that she was going to go out the fire out. She wanted to save our belongings. I knew at that tender age that those things could be replaced, but she could not. 

I blocked her path and desperately begged for her to not go. I told her that the firemen were on their way, and for her to let them do their job. That they had ladders and fire hoses with lots if water.

I knew in my heart that if she did, she would never return. She finally agreed, and to this day I feel I did the right thing and am happy I was so adamant.

Soon enough the firemen arrived. I remember sitting well within the interior of the dining room. The only memory I have of the firefighting was when they pumped the firehose onto the large plate-glass windows which fronted on Pennsylvania Ave. 

The restaurant owner gave me his coat, and we left the restaurant with the clothes on our backs, and headed for the airport. We took the next plane for New Orleans and stayed with my grandparents. 

Later I saw a film of the charred remains of our apartment and our things. My mother returned was able to retrieve a few paltry items, but basically we had nothing.

It was time to start over. A new chapter in our life had begun.  

EPILOGUE:

My grandfather said it was all Kismet: what will be will be, nor can all the powers that be alter or change it. 

I started school in New Orleans, living with my grandparents, and my mother stayed in DC. 

I got my little record player back - it was not in its original condition, but rather it was all taped up. However, it still worked. 

I remember looking at a magazine article. It had different activities for different months. For the month of June, there was an illustration of a boy hitting on a wall with a paddle! It was the VERY IMAGE I had in my mind of the person who alerted me to the danger. My hair stood on edge as I beheld the boy who saved my life!

Just why he tapped out that exact code onto the wall remains a

mystery to me. Why not just bang on the wall?