Childhood Home

It was a house of the 70’s.  Added to it was decorations from the 70’s.  The couch was a velour orange and brown big print floral with the corners torn away from cat scratches.  It faced the TV.  An old 70’s TV that had the dial channels.  We didn’t have cable and the best station to come in was the U channel.  We watched Leave It To Beaver and Bewitched on the U channel.  When we wanted to watch another channel, my dad would have to get the broom out and go outside and swivel the antenna on the roof around.  Saturday’s was Love Boat and Fantasy Island on channel 8.

The room also had a fireplace that was set at an angle.  The wall of the fireplace was made out of stones.  We had a latch hook rug wall hanging in oranges and browns, hanging on the stone wall.  When my dad pounded the nail in to hang it, the top right hand corner stone cracked and a piece fell off about 10 inches wide.  When that happened, we had our TV on the fireplace ledge and the rock fell right on top of the TV.  After that, the TV got better reception.

One cool morning we were burning a fire in the fireplace and I was sitting on the ledge of it to get really toasty warm.  My parents would burn garbage in the fireplace at times to cut down on the garbage pick up bill I guess.  On this fateful morning, my dad threw in the garbage without going through it.  It was just a small dustbin full of mostly papers.  As it heated up quickly, I moved to the couch so my back wouldn’t burn.  Soon after I moved away, a huge fireball exploded out of the fireplace and rolled up the stone wall.  Pieces of burning paper shot out and there were little smoldering fires on the carpet.  The hanging latch hook rug melted in spots.  What my dad didn’t realize is that there was an empty spray can of lacquer in the garbage.  When that thing started burning it was like a small bomb.  He quickly stomped out the carpet spots that were burning and the fireball died down almost immediately so not much damage was done.  Just some blackened stones on the fireplace and some black, melted carpet spots on the ground and on the wall hanging.  He eventually trimmed those spots with his pocket knife and we laid a rug out in front of the fireplace to cover up the bald spots.

I am thankful that I moved away from the ledge of the fireplace when I did.  Thankfully I don’t like heat and in this instance it saved me from being burned.