The Day the Blacksmith’s Shop Burned to the Ground

By Lynn Bueling

It’s funny how a childhood memory that’s lain hidden in a tangled web can reappear fully clothed with all its sights and sounds and smells intact.   On Saturday afternoons long ago farm families would drive into town to sell eggs and cream and then turn the small check around to buy the week’s groceries.  While the ladies took care of business, the men often gathered in the place that Ma always denounced as that “dirty old pool hall.”  Whenever its door opened, I could hear shouts and laughter pouring out which made me wonder why were they having such a good time if it was such a bad place.  And, that’s where Dad liked to sneak off for one or two.

Anyway, one Saturday the door opened with a bang and out poured all the men because someone had brought news that the blacksmith shop’s on fire.  It would take an event like that for men to leave their beers setting on the counter and empty the barroom.  Not many exciting events ever happened.  Of course, an impulse to be of help burned within them, too.  When Dad came out and saw me standing there, he ordered, “You stay here!”  

I didn’t, of course.  Why would I stand by myself on main street?  I ran the three blocks as fast as I could and found black clouds billowing from the windows and orange tongues licking at the walls.

Men stood in groups wondering what could be done and decrying the fact that no one had been able to start the engine on the old firetruck.  Someone brought a ladder and leaned it against the roof’s eave which Harold Nessett promptly scrambled up.  I can still see him standing up there, looking around, probably feeling a lot of heat coming through the soles of his shoes.  What’s he doing? Mike Flatt’s clear voice rose, “Harold, get down off there!  You can’t do anything up there, anyway!”   As soon as his feet hit the ground, the fire broke through the roof.  

The call for assistance had gone out to the neighboring town, but trucks manned by volunteers cannot roll immediately.  Each member of a crew needed to leave their workplace to answer the summons, get suited up, and drive eight miles with a lumbering truck filled with water and equipment.  When they arrived, the fire had finished feasting on the walls and roof, and everyone realized nothing could be salvaged from that collapsed pile of charred wood and twisted metal.  The only thing left to do was watch it burn. 

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I was just noodling around with an old memory and this was the result.