I was never much with machinery. I could see how things worked for other people but they did not start for me, or soon broke, or sometimes spontaneously combusted, though it was hard to figure out how they could do that because some of the things I burned to the ground were not actually made of flammable materials.
"How exactly did this happen?" the Chief of the Joshaway, Texas Volunteer Fire Department and Masonic Lodge #134 asked me. "I mean, it was a cast iron safe. Those do not burn. They just do not burn. Yet, there is nothing left of this one but ashes."
The way the Joshaway, Texas Volunteer Fire Department became one with the local Masonic Lodge was brought about decades before when the Masonic Lodge's prior building burned down to the ground. I had not yet been born and could not be blamed, though I did later ignite a fire storm in a trailer park during a tornado warning in my haste to get out of the trailer park since anyone who watches the Weather Channel knows that tornadoes hate trailer parks and will find one, will turn out, mass up, drop down and find one, will find it if there is not one in seven counties as yet undisturbed by a funnel cloud, so great is their hatred of modular construction. There was only one lane in and the same lane out of the trailer park, this due to the major lack of zoning in Joshaway in those days, when the Old Man Prattwhiler, Eleanora's grandfather, ran the City Council, served as Post Master, drew a pension as City Marshall, though he never arrested anything but the pension check, and cut hair on the side.
It looked funny, his haircuts, only cut on the side like that, but he was a short man, a very short man and miserly, very, very cheap, so he never invested in a barber chair that would go up and down according to the length of the customer. He cut the sides and your mom or wife finished the top at home, so you looked funny only for awhile, but it seemed to jar people passing through town.
"What is wrong with all the men in this town?" vacationers would ask.
"The war was hard on them," a lot of the women would answer.
That was the standard answer you gave in those days to all outsiders who asked anything about your townsfolk. The war was just hard on the men, really hard, though no one ever said which war or why it was so hard the men had lop-sided heads ten years later. We were a patriotic bunch and an appeal to the war effort was meant to silence any questioning or criticism.
"Remember our boys in the war," Old Man Prattwhiler was still saying in 1956, although we were between wars at that time.
Old Man Prattwhiler never had a boy go off to war. He had himself served briefly in the War to End All Wars but he did not see actual fighting except one night in a bar in Boston when he got his jaw broken by a Red Sox fan who mistook him for Joe Jackson. This was a fortuitous punch, for his broken jaw kept him out of combat long enough for the war to end. He never forgot his hitch in the National Guard, though, and wanted all others to remember his service as well.
"Remember the boys in the war," he would say when things grew unquiet in town, or when someone complained about their hair cut. "Remember the boys in the war."
So, I had no part in the burning of the Masonic Lodge #134 building. Fire started in the upstairs portion of the old house, where the sacred rituals were performed and, some say, where the still was kept, this happening during the days of the Volstead Act, which the citizenry had all heard about but took no more seriously than they took the repeal of the Act of Seccession.
The entire building was eventually engulged in flames. "Engulfed" is the standard term for what happens to a building on fire, like "disgruntled" goes with "postal employee."
The Joshaway, Texas Volunteer Fire Department arrived late, which was not unusual in those days, what with their motto being, "We Have Never Lost a Slab."
This showed the boy's ability to laugh at themselves with airy good humor, which was good, since no one could actually remember a fire they had extinguished. In fact, the town of Joshaway came into being because the old town three miles to the West, Caddo Mills, had burned to the ground, lock, stock and Masonic Lodge #133 one night when the railroad announced it was coming through, after all, but locating its tracks three and one-half miles to the East, near Old Old Man Prattwhiler's homestead, which he had sold for a cotton gin that failed due to the Boll Weevil Infestation of '89.
"Wisht I had helt onta the old home place now," Old Old Man Prattwhiler said, and spat tobacco juice down the front of his bib overalls. He was a bad businessman and an ever worse spitter. Some of the locals called him "Old Spittoon," because he never actually cleared his pot belly with a chaw.
They did not lose this slab, either, the Joshaway, Texas Volunteer Fire Department, but the rest of the structure was engulfed, sure enough, and a powerful explosion occured when flames reached the ritual site in the attic and ignited the still.
"Kabooom," went the still and, with it, the site of Masonic Ritual.
The Joshaway, Texas Vounteer Fire Department, with their usual good humor, and feeling somewhat guilty about the loss of the still, offered to have the Masonic Lodge #134 move into their building with them, which many townsfolk thought was a good idea, since the Joshaway, Texas Volunteer Fire Department had now lost two lodges and a still owned by the Masons. The idea seemed so natural the Lodge agreed to move in with the Joshaway, Texas Volunteer Fire Department temporarily, and then stayed on to keep a watchful eye on them for years.
I had never been asked to join either group. If I had, perhaps I would have been otherwise occupied the night I wrecked two cars in Burleson, Texas, and I might never have become a Pearl Diver at the Local Greasy Spoon.
Opinions expressed here are mine alone.
This is a fiction story. Any similarity to any persons, living or dead, in this story, is purely coincidental.
Recent Comments