my house burned down
33 images Created 31 Jan 2013
In December my brother awakened me with an early morning phone call. "The house burned down," he said, in disbelief. "I'm on a neighbor's couch."
The house was the house in Hillsboro where we grew up, where he and our parents still lived. The fire department could not determine a cause, only that an explosion had occured, the flames were thirty feet high, and the house was gone in thirty minutes.
Last week, as I drove up to the ruins, two deer bounded out of the ashes. I don't know what they were looking for. I only found a few things that were even remotely recognizable:
My grandfather's tools and coin collection.
My father's tie rack, with bits of carbonized polyester.
A couple cast iron pots.
Melted porcelain and glass.
A stack of my charred and soaking-wet college papers, all stuck together, with notes for songs-in-progress.
A sheaf of letters regarding wheat and other crops, written in very old-looking script.
Metal skeletons of mattresses and chairs.
The chimney, tilting, holding up the three remaining boards of the roof.
What could only have been the stove, stuck under a melted bathtub in the crater of the kitchen.
A doorknob attached to a door-shaped chunk of ash.
The rusted guts of the grand piano.
And the fir tree on the western side, 60 feet tall now, much larger than when it served as my family's Christmas tree in 1982 when we moved in. I was two years and my brother two weeks old.
The tree is half burnt but the other half shows signs of life. It may survive.
The house was the house in Hillsboro where we grew up, where he and our parents still lived. The fire department could not determine a cause, only that an explosion had occured, the flames were thirty feet high, and the house was gone in thirty minutes.
Last week, as I drove up to the ruins, two deer bounded out of the ashes. I don't know what they were looking for. I only found a few things that were even remotely recognizable:
My grandfather's tools and coin collection.
My father's tie rack, with bits of carbonized polyester.
A couple cast iron pots.
Melted porcelain and glass.
A stack of my charred and soaking-wet college papers, all stuck together, with notes for songs-in-progress.
A sheaf of letters regarding wheat and other crops, written in very old-looking script.
Metal skeletons of mattresses and chairs.
The chimney, tilting, holding up the three remaining boards of the roof.
What could only have been the stove, stuck under a melted bathtub in the crater of the kitchen.
A doorknob attached to a door-shaped chunk of ash.
The rusted guts of the grand piano.
And the fir tree on the western side, 60 feet tall now, much larger than when it served as my family's Christmas tree in 1982 when we moved in. I was two years and my brother two weeks old.
The tree is half burnt but the other half shows signs of life. It may survive.