The Burning of the Old House

The family members that did well take great pride in the family name. Often when we talk say that it is the blood; that makes them so strong and prosperous. Our family gene pool held many things that can make you excel in many ways. There was ego, passion, pride, good looks and the desire to have money. These things can be used for the betterment or the down fall of any person. What outsiders saw many times was the obvious. Sometime it was a drunken fit for the whole Corum Hollow to hear. Sometime it was a car ran in the ditch. Then there were a couple of fires. On a better note there was a good cotton crop, the church services we attended, how nice we looked in clothes that were handmade, and the help lent out to the struggling farmers surrounding our home.
One of the major fires was when Grandmother’s house burnt while she was in the hospital. The trip to the hospital was devastating for me more than anyone. It meant that I was to be left with, Granddaddy, Daddy and Mama to watch after my little brother and me. The worst part was I could not go with her to the hospital. She always made me feel like an idiot because I did not want her to leave me. I never could understand that. I know she should have been happy for me to want her with me so much. Maybe it was that I was an easy target for her. My brother stayed out of sight most of the time. He was probably smart in doing so.
She left for the hospital leaving with Daddy and Granddaddy both drunk. It was November, but not cold at all. It was more of just a cool fall day in general. Daddy was in his take care of things mode that day. I was in desperate need of shoes for school. The trip to Rogersville was not far and would not take long. The selection of children’s shoes was limited and I had a pair picked out almost immediately. They were dark brown, kind of spotted with lighter brown. They resembled what a pilgrim would wear. Daddy was at this time driving a white Plymouth; we all were in the front seat, Mama, me in the middle and Daddy driving.
Topping the hill just past the Phillips house was a point that from the house you could always see someone coming our way or if you were heading towards the house you could look to the left and see in the distance the white farm house as well as Corum’s Chapel Baptist Church. We had barley topped the hill when Daddy saw the smoke. He got a look of panic on his face and started driving really fast. I could see the biggest/blackest smoke imaginable as we topped the hill. The speed that he drove made us get to the house in just seconds.
When we got there fire trucks were already trying to put the fire out with no success. The neighbors were all lined up and down the road watching as the house was burning. One neighbor that lived a little farther than you would actually call a neighbor told Daddy that he needed to go in the house and get his dad. Daddy asked him was he in there, Preston Dean said yeah he was out here but ran back in to get something. Daddy ran to the front of the house just as Granddaddy was coming off the porch. He grabbed him and through him to the ground. Just as he let him go he was running back into the house. This man was drunk, crazy and selfish. This persona rolled into one made him no matter what have get a snuff can that had seven-thousand dollars in it out of that burning house.

He had these beady little eyes that were evil blue colored and as he was stumbling to the house he really looked scary. He was small and often had skid marks on the back of his pants from not wiping or wet farts one. He would sit on this light blue chair and when he got up there would be brown left from his bottom. I look at pictures of him now and can’t imagine anything as evil as this man. The pictures are even of him as a younger man, but I still have an image of him burnt in my mind as the dirty old man he was. He had this thing he did with his pointer finger. It was as if you summoning someone to come to you. The way he did it was more as he was fingering someone sexually. He sat with snuff dripping from the corner of his mouth with a want me? Look moving that pointer finger. The thought of it to this day gives me chills. I am almost sure he done it to any female around. He thought my grandmother would not believe anyone that told her he did such things. My grandmother believed, but just ignored.

After all the wrestling Daddy did to keep him out of the house at last the house began to fall in as it fell the attempt the crazy, drunk man was making finally stopped. The house burned all the way to the ground leaving them with nothing. The seven thousand dollars that he had tried to go in the burning house to get was not even in the house. Grandmother had hid it in the well house, before she went to the hospital. She knew that the whole time she was gone he would be drunk and there would be men over drinking with him. She hid the money out of the house; with the irony that this was the money that would be used to build the house back. This was 1970 and that amount of money with some added would build the three bedroom brick house that she and her husband both died in back.