Verhovayak Lapja, 1954 (37. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1954 / Verhovay Journal
JENO BARTAL AND HIS MUSIC DIVINE May 19, 1954. Verhovay Journal PAGE 7 THE' FERRET SEZ NEWS FROM BRANCH 36 — DETROIT, MICHIGAN By Jolán Lucas ABOUT THE FIRE Those of you readers who bothered to read the new column, “MOTOR CITY NEWS,” in the last issue of the Verhovay Journal, may be a bit more or less curious to have your Ferret g'o into a few of the emotional and practical details of what happens when a family’s home goes to blazes in a flash fire. The Lucas Family had quite an experience, to say the least, and since fires happening to any group of people presents a fraternal kinship, it may be that some of you will want to know what to do when the Fire Department rolls up in front of your home, with sirens screeching and curious neighbors wondering what it’s all about. Now that the event is in the past by a little over five week's, (the red letter day being February 27, 1954 •—will I ever forget that date-), the actual catastrophé has taken on a nightmarish quality. We are still trying to figure out what happened, or how, or even WHY. All we can piece together is that the three of us, Luke and Larry and I (and Frosty, our terrier mutt), were sitting around a little after six in the evening, after a very early light dinner, waiting for sufficient time to pass before we dressed to go to the dinner-dance given by Detroit’s Branch 36. Larry and a couple of pals were in the kitchen guzzling some Pepsi-Cola, Luke was in the living room watching TV, and Frosty and I decided a wee nap wouldn’t hurt us, so we were relaxing in the bed room, like any normal females after a tough Saturday. I was just dozing off when it seemed as though I heard some water running in the basement, but since I was nearly in the arms of Morpheus, I didn’t pay too much attention. I naturally assumed some of my beloved males would have sense enough to go into the basement and shut the thing off —whatever it was! I now realize that the flames must have been crackling under me at that moment, but at the time it didn’t mean more than a very annoying noise. Apparently old man Morpheus got the best of me for^ an enchanted moment, because the next thing I knew, everyone was running around the place, screaming and yelling “FIRE! FIRE” at top lung power. What a nightmare I must be having, I thought to myself; any minute now I should wake up! But then I realized to myself that it wasn’t a dream—it was REAL, happening to US, a very conservative and normal family! At that moment I heard Joe Gittemére, one of Larry’s pals, yelling at the top of his lungs, “Mom, Mom, where are you?”, and I, doing a very stupid and thoughtless thing, rushed out of the bed room into the smoke-filled dining room, coughing and screaming all the way out of the house, barefooted- coatless, not realizing how serious the thing was or what was even hapening. It was only after I was slipping through the snowcrusted and wet side walk that I remembered that I had left my be • loved little Frosty mutt in the back bed room. There I was, standing, bare-footed in the cold melting snow, watching Luke and Bill Smearman of next door trying to put out the flames shooting from the basement window. By this time Larry and Daron Hairabedian, another good pal of his, had gone to the corner and broken the window in the firebox. Marie Smearman was trying to get the fire department on the telephone—our nearest station is only a couple of blocks from where we lived—and I’m on the Smearman’s porch, with a borrowed coat on my shoulders and squeezing my cold and damp feet into some borrowed shoes, wondering what could have happened'in that last half hour since I laid my tired head on that soft pillow. By this time half a dozen or so fire engines, hook and ladder trucks, an ambulance, two miliőn or so people — it seemed — and countless blue-uniformed cops were standing around, shouting, giving orders, the dark street blazing with numerous> spot-lights; Luke, Larry and I, and Joe and Daron Shivering on the Smearman’s porch in borrowed coats and jackets, but all of us wondering about Frosty’s fate in that back bed room. Both Larry and I tried to sneak back into that smoke-filled house (the fire department had to use gas-masks to get in), but efficient firemen and cops stopped us at the foot of the stairs, telling us that the mutt would be okay because the bed room door was closed and all the windows broken so that she could get air. About three hours or so later, one of the kindly cops asked around for someone to get Frosty, someone who loved her and to whom she would come, because the fire was out, the smoke was gone, and Frosty was sitting on her chair in the living room in front of her favorite window, growling and snapping at everyone who came near her. (The happy chore was mine, because even though Larry got Frosty as a gift from his Cubmaster five years before, she was loyal only to one female, me, so the cop kindly held my hand and led me into our dark and smoke-filled home (smell only, by now), and when Frosty heard the beloved voice of her mistress she jumped clear across the room, whining and shivering, trying to tell me about her ordeal. It must have been sheer panic for the sweet little home-grown mutt, because the back bed room is near the clothes chute, and even with the door closed, she couldn’t help but hear the rush of water trying to put the flames out in the clothes-chute, and the dining room, flames shooting up to the kitchen by the basement stairs, walls being chopped out, furniture being moved, water roaring around, unfamiliar man voices yelling for more pressure, and no familiar family voices anywhere near to reassure her. Trying to see the fire through Frosty’s eyes, actually the sole victim of the nightmare puts an enormous fact in my mind, because even though we were burned out from under our roof, we were safely in the warm and cozy house of those angels of mercy, Bill and Marie Smearman next door, with hot coffee and tea, and a wee occasional nip from the squat bottle to settle our nerves. Finally, the fire department and the cops, with their endless questions, the fire chief with his morbid tour around the dark, cold and forsaken looking dump, which i,t had become, left us and went their weary way back to the warm fire house. About the time we felt like just sitting and, talking about the catastrophe, the arson squad moved in- on us, and then the fire insurance investigators, and the gas company, and those scavengers of misfortune who hound all fires feeding on human misery a-nd looking for exciting pictures for the papers. The Mountain William landlord and his wife came over with a million questions (from their comfortable home about four miles away), trying to put the blame on some specific individual, and it took all of Larry’s pals to hold me back from making a darn fool of myself in front of these nicp ((did I say nice ?) people who held us in* their grip (and our check book) for some 13 years ,four months, and eight days, at 2522 Carson Street, Detroit 9, Michigan ... might as well write that familiar address one more time... If you think this is all there was to it, you’re terribly mistaken, because the fire was just the beginning ... Sunday, Feb. 28th, Luke and our friend Rod Rogers, Larry and a half dozen or so pals, started digging, through the soggy and charred ruins in the basement, where the fire apparently had started. The water was still a foot deep, threefourths of the basement stuff was burned and the other one-fourth wan’t worth crying about... most of it went into the alley to be picked up by the Department of Public Works. Monday, we' all went to work, packing, in any manner, because who could take the time to sort and pack properly in a cold house, no lights, no telephone’ broken windows, weather blasting in with a March 1st blizzard, the insurance company’s renovators and reupholsters taking the cream of the crop of furniture to remove the smoke and repair minor and major damages, mostly made from the fire departments powerful hose ^id handy little axes ... all of the clothes had to be either dry-cleaned or laundered, even the clean and new stuff. Imagine, I the mistress of the house, trying to give order to properly sort and keep room furniture separated ... boy, those very helpful guys piled everything in on each other. Golly knows how I will ever sort everything out-that which remains — so that I can put them in their proper places! That part wasn’t so heart-rending as when I caught Larry all alone in his room, that awfully nasty Blue Monday — he stayed home from school, no clothes, you see — and he was packing his treasured with tears streaming down hrs eyes. Kis model airplanes hung from the ceiling, his baseball pennants and collection of Army and Navy and Marine patches pleasingly displayed on the walls of his room, his drawing board, his baseball mitt and ball and bat, his skates; you know, all those treasures that 15 year old kids the country over can manage to collect (Continued on page 10) Taken in Washington, D. C. Private First Class Donald G. Borsh, member of Branch 278, Omaha, Nebraska, is shown with his uncle, Charles Borsh of Washington, D.C. The Young marine is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Borsh, Jr. of Omaha, Nebraska. He received his boot training at San Diego, California, was at Quantieo, Virginia, and at present is stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. He was recently on a Trainers Cruise in Puerto Rico, lasting six weeks, and was expected to return to the States about the first of May. Private First Class Borsh’s address is: Pfc. Donald G. Borsh, 1424614, TRAEY III Ammo Co., 2d Ord. Bat., 2d Marine Div. F.M.F., Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
