One Hot Summer's Day

It was a hot day, one of those summer days that you want to be somewhere cool, and be drinking something cool and not have to move or think. It was more than 100 degrees out, all I could think about, as I drove my daughter home from school, was floating in the pool.

At that moment, to the left, I saw a small plume of smoke about three blocks away. This was not a normal sight, in this quiet town of 7,000 people, on a hot summer's day. We heard no fire sirens. I thought we had better take a look as it was in a residential area and many of the people were still at work.

My philosophy in life is that God does not put you in a spot unless you are to do something about it. I said to my 7 year old daughter, Ariel, "Do you want to go and see a fire?" She said "What about the fire trucks?" And I responded that we would call them if no one else had.

To my horror, when we arrived at the location of the fire, it was directly on the hillside behind the local children's day care in this small town. I sped up into their driveway, flung open the car door, and went running into the building to alert them of the fire on the hillside. The plume of smoke had tripled in size in the three blocks we had to drive to arrive there.

A miracle had transpired, the custodian ran out saying he had just called the fire department . . . and that all the kids had been bused to an adventure, out of town, that day. What an immense relief!

Then we noticed the home next to the day care. The fire was coming down the hill toward all of the trees in the home's back yard. The fire was slinking toward the house in a dangerous manner.

Ariel had gone to this day care, next to this home, and in a small town you do not know everyone in town, but generally you know of them. What I knew of the lady, in this home, was that "Betty" had cancer surgery, was recuperating, and was in her 80's.

I drove over to her home, flung open all the car doors, and the trunk........I ran into her home. She was in a frenzy, trying to remember what needed to be removed, in a hurry, as the fire was approaching all of her memories wrapped in her home.

I had never met Betty, until this moment, but I knew that she did not have a car......so I told her we would start loading my car up with her valuables. She gave me, a total stranger, her money, her bank information, her prized antique doll collection. She gave me everything that meant anything to her and had the greatest value in her life. Eighty years of memories were filling my car.

I grabbed a paper bag and opened her drawers and stuffed in as many clothes as I could take, as after a fire it is so disheartening not to have your own familiar nightie or underwear.

She took the paintings off her walls and we stuffed them in my car, my 6-year-old carried all that she could.....the stereo, the phone was loaded.....try moving in 15 minutes as a fire is raging toward your home. The heat off the fire, the 104-degree day, made every movement slow and heavy.

There are three parts of this life experience that remain with me. One is that as the heat built in the home, and we knew that time was getting short, I ran out into the front yard with an armload of articles and called out to the building crowd, who were standing there observing the speed of the fire, and asked them to come in and help pack up....no one moved. I did this three times on my way to the car........and not one person stepped forward. I shall never understand that.

The other memory is of a total stranger allowing me to get in my car and drive off with all of her valuables, her memories, the pictures of her family, and she did not even know my name! Betty trusted me with so much......this was the greatest contrast in human nature in the shortest amount of time.

It was bewildering to me, as I drove past the police officer blocking traffic and saw all the gawkers. Here my daughter and I had no room to sit in the car, we were packed so tightly she had to sit partly on my lap and on one of Betty's large stuffed Teddy Bears, and I was leaning in the tiny space left. We could not fasten our seat belts, we could not find the seatbelts.

About 6:00 p.m. that hot 91 degree evening, after all the fire trucks left, and Betty's home had been miraculously saved, she called and asked me to return her belongings and treasures. The good news is that to this day, 10 years later, we still love each other and are the best of friends......it took a near disaster to throw us onto the same paths of our lives.