One cold October evening, my siblings and I were sitting around watching television when my brother Russell walked from the living room to the kitchen where he passed the windows looking out toward our barns. In a level voice he declared, “the barn is on fire.” We all jumped up and gathered around the windows and watched the flames fly. My parents were not home so I suppose one of the older kids dialed the operator to report our fire.
By the time the fire trucks arrived there wasn’t much they could do to save our barn but they aimed their big hoses at the fire and worked into the night. Their first priority was to keep the flames from jumping onto our house which they did by covering our house with water which instantly turned icy in the frigid fall air.
Earl and Joyce Jansen and their seven kids lived in the next farm house and we were evacuated there. I remember talking to my mom who called from where ever she was with her boy friend to see if we were all safe. Apparently she watched her barn burning on the ten o’clock news.
My eleven year old brother Scott, was uncharacteristically at his friend’s house and later we would understand why. The story I remember is that Scott and his two buddies were playing in the barn and decided to light a bale of hay to keep themselves warm. There were twenty four tons of hay in that barn. I wonder how long before the fire was so big they were fleeing for their lives.
My mom passed away January 2009. One consequence of her death is my urge to write about growing up with her, the woman I affectionately call "Go-Go" because she liked to party, and in many of the photos I have of her she is holding a cocktail and wearing some hot outfit. These are my stories of growing up in the Viet Nam Era with a mom who enjoyed drinking and partying and, incidentally, had a bunch of kids.
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