Everybody always wants to hear the whole, dang story about how I came into that car. Well, that is a long story, and before we get into it, there are some things you ought to know.
First of all, despite what you may have been told, not everything that happens in this story is my fault. Sometimes accidents just happen. You know how it is, it starts pretty small, and not real bad. But then, no matter what you do, when you start trying to fix things, the situation just gets worse and worse. It can go from a hangnail to a disaster in no time at all.
That’s what happened a few years ago when I was just a little kid and our house in Sweetwater burned down. I remember it like it was yesterday. Dad had bought this really, really old house because Mom liked it and it was empty. It was so old that most of the house didn’t have electricity or running water. Dad had an indoor bathroom put in right away, and he was having electricity put in the parts of the house that didn’t already have it. They weren’t quite finished doing that, so in the older parts of the house, we still used candles and oil lamps.
Well, on the day after Christmas, I was sitting in the parlor with my big sister, Sweet Pea. That isn’t her real name, but that’s what Mom and Dad called her, so that’s what everyone called her. She was sitting at piano practicing ‘Heart and Soul’. I wasn’t doing nothing but picking sock lint from between my toes and watching her play. She’s going to be a big star some day. Last year on the fourth of July, they crowned her ‘Little Miss Lady of the Lake’ over at Sardis Reservoir and set off a bunch of fireworks because she was the prettiest girl there. Mom has her learning how to dance ballet. If only she could sing, she could be on Ed Sullivan’s TV show or maybe Lawrence Welk.
Anyway, I was getting down to some serious link picking when I got this big tickle in my nose. I let out a ginormous sneeze that was so big it shook the house. When I sneezed I kicked out with my foot a little bit and accidentally kicked the leg of the end table that was beside the couch. The table banged up against the wall. This made the big, old, tall, skinny candle on the table rock back and fourth three or four times. Each time it would rock, it would pause just a second or so at the peak of the swing, then it would flop back the other way. Each time it swung, it got closer and closer to falling. Finally, it swung just a fuzz too far, and it fell over against the wall. It just leaned against the wall for barely a half a second. The flame of the candle flicked up on that old wallpaper just like a snake’s tongue. Quicker than you can say ‘Jack Sprat’, I jumped and snatched up the candle.
I blew it out. “Whew! That was close”, I thought. “I almost set the house on fire.”
The wallpaper on that wall was really, really, really old, so it was really, really, really dry. You had to look really, really close to see it, but something weird was going at the edge of the wall paper. Apparently, that half second was all it took for that snake’s tongue of flame to light the wallpaper on fire just a little, tiny bit right there on the edge. It was lit just a little at a seam that had come loose between two pieces of wallpaper. There was just a little, thin line glowing bright red. I watched it for a second as it slowly ate its way across the sliver of wall paper. It was the weirdest thing I have ever seen. As the red line crept across the paper, the paper turned black as the red line got close. Then, the red line ate the black wall paper, and once it finished, the paper had magically turned gray and looked like it was made of ash. It was amazing. I looked over at Sweet Pea. She hadn’t seen a thing. She was still staring at the sheet music and playing ‘Heart and Soul’.
I looked back at the little red line eating the paper, and I thought, “I’d better put a stop to this before it gets going.” So, I blew on it to blow it out.
That was a mistake.
That little red line didn’t go out, it just got bright red, almost white and went ‘whoomph’. It wasn’t a little red line anymore. Now it was a little fire. Sweet Pea must have heard that because she stopped playing, turned and looked at the fire, then at me and said in an amazed voice, ‘You set the house on fire?”
“No”, I hollered! “It was the candle!”, but she wasn’t even listening. She hollered “Miss Mary! The boy set the house on fire!”, and then she turned and looked at me, saying “You’re gonna get in trouble! You’re gonna get in trouble!” in that sing songy voice that girls do when they are trying to get you in trouble.
It was a just little fire on the wall paper about the size of my finger. I panicked. Things were starting to go down hill really fast and I didn’t know what to do, so I blew on the flame real hard trying again to blow it out.
Well, that was another mistake.
When I blew on it, the harder I blew, the hotter it burned and the bigger the little flame got! All of a sudden, it started spreading like mad. I blinked twice, and the half wall was on fire. It spread so fast and so hard that it went ‘WHOOMPH!!’ again, and I lost my eyebrows. It did it so hard that it kinda shook the all air in the room. Quicker than a cat farts, the whole dad-gum wall was on fire, and it was starting to spread across the ceiling. The way the fire went across the ceiling reminded me of how cold syrup just kinda spreads out when you pour it on a stack of pancakes. The fire was a blue and red syrup spreading across the ceiling. It was amazing. The heat from the fire burned my face and the black smoke was making me cough, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of it.
Miss Mary, mom’s helper, must have smelled the smoke just about the time she heard Sweet Pea call out. She came running in and saw the fire. Her eyes nearly jumped out of her head and she started hollering ‘Lordy! Lordy! This house is lit on fire! You babies get on out of here! Run chillens! Run!!!” Sweet Pea started moving right then and started saying ‘You’re gonna get your butt beat! You’re gonna get your butt beat!” in that damn sing songy voice, but I just sat there looking at the fire. I was just frozen watching the syrup eat away at the ceiling.
If you think Sweet Pea is bossy on a normal day, you ought to see her when the house is lit on fire. In just a few seconds, the fire burned a hole through the ceiling and was starting to spread into the room above the parlor. The ashes from the fire were swirling in the smoke filled parlor like a blizzard of black and gray snow. Sweet Pea was not happy. She picked up her sheet music and got real bossy real fast. She grabbed me by the arm and started giving me orders as she headed out of the house. She mostly dragged me out because I couldn’t take my eyes off of the fire, the smoke and the snow. Miss Mary ran upstairs through that black, smelly smoke to get Mom and the Goob (he was only a week old). She hustled Mom, the Goob out of the house before it fell in. The fire department came but it was too late. The old house was gone.
In the end, nothing was left but the brick columns out front of a pile of smoldering coals and ashes. That house had been one of two houses in Sweetwater that the Bastard General U.S. Grant did not burn down when he came through Sweetwater on his way from Vicksburg to Memphis during the War Between the States. He used it for a hospital, and that’s why he didn’t burn it. Anyway, apparently I had accomplished something Grant failed to do during his stay in Sweetwater. If you want to piss off a whole town, just burn down a landmark and see how that works out for you.
Now, whenever we go back to Sweetwater and someone asks me “Are you Doc’s boy what burnt the house down?” I look around for a second to see if the Goob is close by, and if he’s not, I always say “No sir, that was my brother.” That seems to keep the visit from going downhill.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I hope you enjoyed the first chapter of Me, Boo and the Goob! You can finish the story by ordering the book from Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Audible or your local independent book store. It makes a great gift for all ages. You can buy it now by clicking the button below!