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Browsing Tag: #fire
November Writing Challenge Day 25 Smoke. Not an easy one to write about, as we’re nearing the one year mark for the Chimney Tops Fire, but I’ll do my best. Last year on this day there was smoke in the valley. There was smoke on the hills and hollers, both. There was smoke everywhere. It’s a year later and nobody can believe it. Friends from out of town ask how things are…and I don’t remember until I’m reminded. Life has gone on, pretty much as scheduled, since summer and green once again took over the hillsides. For me, anyway. But I’m not in Gatlinburg every day. I’m not in Gatlinburg at all. I don’t see the devastation or the rebuilding in person. I’m not depending on the generosity of others to help me face another day as I struggle to have half as much as I used to. I was talking to one of my friends who works for dispatch the other day, and she brought up a new kind of post traumatic stress disorder that hadn’t even occurred to me. People who were right there in the smoke and the fire and the mayhem are having trouble being around it again. As you would. So here we are at the anniversary, and everybody’s memories are being jarred again and again by news…
Y’all ain’t gonna believe this. So, you know how yesterday I was telling you about dropping 500 horseshoe nails in the floor? And how I compared it to dropping toothpicks? Well. I’m in the kitchen, fixin’ spaghetti, the aroma of onions & garlic filling the air, pasta bubbling away on the stove. I go to get the Italian seasoning out of the cabinet. This would be the cabinet above the stove, crammed with all manner of spices, excess olive oil, Crisco, & whatnot. It happened so suddenly, I’m not sure what happened. I’m standing there, toothpicks raining down around me, when Johnny appears from the basement with the garlic bread I had requested from the chest freezer. I stood paralyzed. They were everywhere: in my hair, on the stove, scattered all over the floor, IN THE PASTA. I sprang into action, frantically scooping them out with a spaghetti fork. Did you know toothpicks float? Well, you do now. About that time, I smelled something burning. I hadn’t put the bread in yet (that’s what I typically burn) so it couldn’t be that. There were several charred toothpicks lying under the eye. I turned the burner off, moved the pot, & turned the blower on, sucking away the smoke that was making my eyes water. I think this catastrophe was somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 toothpicks. I bought one of those containers from…
