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Titia Geertman
Member Ascendant

since 2001-05-07

Posts 5182
Netherlands

0 posted 2006-10-26 02:19 PM

My whole life I've been fascinated by flames, be it a burning candle, an open wood stove or just a campfire outdoors. Don't know why, maybe because I was born at the end of WW2 when electricity was cut off and gas was shut down where we lived and I came into the world at the light of a small carbide lamp and a burning candle. I still remember a very beautiful crib my father made for Christmas. A little stable with cows and a roof full of hay and of course the Holy Family and shepherds and Kings inside. And one day I thought that it was rather dark inside and I took a candle and put it inside the stable to give the little baby a bit more light. You can imagine, in no time the whole stable got up in flames and my elder sister was quick enough to pick it up and threw it out the window. End of crib. Fascinating too was to hold a magnifying glass over some dry grass and paper and let the Sun do it's job in igniting it.

We lived in the suburb of a big city, in a wooden house with a cellar. Normally I was very careful as to where I lit my little fires, so no harm could come out of it and one day, late afternoon, I thought that a little drain outside, against the house, was the perfect place to lit a small fire, because it was made of stone. I gathered paper and dried grass and little twigs and managed to get my hands on a box of matches. I was all set.

The paper got on fire easily and I put little twigs on top of it and I saw the little flames playing around. I put some dried grass on top, but apparently it wasn't quite dry, because suddenly there was a lot of smoke which I found fascinating too. I poked around a bit, put some more on, poked again till the little flames came back and so on and so on.

All of a sudden, the front door went open and my mother came running out. Furious she was when she saw that I was the one that had frightened the hell out of her, because minutes before she saw smoke coming out from under the cellar door and she thought the wooden house was on fire. I couldn't understand all the fuzz she made, because I was outside, I had been very carefully that no harm could be done, so how the hell could there be smoke in the house I wondered.

Well she showed me. In that drain was an opening to the cellar, closed by a grid, in order to get fresh air into the cellar. All the smoke I had made hadn't risen to the sky, but had been sucked up into the cellar which, of course, was filled with blue smoke in no time.
But that wasn't even the bad part of it all. The bad part was, that it was my sister's birthday next day and my mother had put all the cakes and pastries and other goodies into the cellar to keep them cool, because at that time we didn't have a fridge yet. And all that tasteful cake and pastry, wasn't so tasteful anymore, because it was covered by a thick layer of burned fragments and dust.

I must've been about 5, 6 or 7 years old, don't know exactly, but I never forgot what happened that day and I never forgot my sister's birthday with little bits and pieces of cake and pastry, which hadn't been affected, because we weren't rich and Mom couldn't afford to buy new ones.
Few years ago, when I happened to be in that city, I looked up our old house. Hadn't been back there in 50 years, but it was still there and so was the drain and I could only smile at the memory of smoked cake.

Like scattered leaves...my words will flow

Marge Tindal

Member Empyrean

since 1999-11-06

Posts 42384
Florida's Foreverly Shores

1 posted 2006-10-26 07:34 PM

Titia~
Oh, what a nostalgic little memory teller you are~

This is just delightful, sweetie~

I read with great interest as the story unfolded~

I'm smiling at a remember it evoked in my own childhood ... maybe, ... and it's a big MAYBE ... I'll someday develop it into a prose piece~
(Knowing ME ... something in it will just HAVE to rhyme~)

*Huglets*
~*Marge*~

~*The sound of a kiss is not as strong as that of a cannon, but it's echo endures much longer*~
Email - noles1@totcon.com

Midnitesun

Member Empyrean

since 2001-05-18

Posts 28647
Gaia