The Burning of Little Eddie

[oneighty]

Taken from writing group. Why? Just so.

Just as I am emptying the second beer bottle full of kerosene onto the kindling wood in the coal fired pot belly cast iron stove there occurs an explosion. A ball of yellow flame and burning kerosene engulf my small body.

The damage is instant but not yet painful. I make my way out of the mud floor cellar to the upstairs. By then the pain has become insistent, demanding. My oldest sister and I are home alone. With her twelve year old fingers she points at me laughing. Later she explains she was laughing at my black face and and my head where my hair used to be.

I went into a bed room and there lay on the bed sobbing and trembling with pain. No longer able to stand the pain I venture outside into the freezing cold wind blowing in off frozen Lake Erie. The cold soothes the pain but soon I will freeze.

I walk our long drive way to Carl's house across US Route Five from us. At the door I ask Carl's mother if Carl can come out and play. I am still sobbing. Carl's mother Genny looked at me eyes wide; "Eddie what happened to you?" Through tears and blackened lips I try to explain. But words are not there only my whimpering and sobbing.

Genny pulls me into the warm house where my pain grew stronger, overwhelming.

Genny with kind words and firm soothing touch calms me. Holding me tight but gentle in her lap she applies a soothing mix of baking soda and water to the blackened areas of my body. She continued this treatment for hours. I lay there whimpering like a puppy dog.

Over the ensuing weeks I grew better stronger. My hair returns, my open sores heal. I miss several weeks of school. I live on tiny bits of bread rolled into dough balls and inserted through the opening between my blackened scarred cracked lips. Soups and liquids I sucked up through a straw.

Oh how I did suffer those first few weeks. After several years of growing older the burns heal and the scars slowly fade away.

The other scars the kind of scars one cannot see are still there. Reminding me.

That was sixty three years ago. Thank you Genny. I will never forget you.


Winter is coming on. Heating times and the burning season. Take care our children.

180

[Midlodemocrat]

1. Dear God. Is this a true story?

I'm so glad you're still with us, 180.

[oneighty]

2. Yes

A very true story. Children trying to maintain a household in the absence of parents with more important things to do.

We had no Tel, electric, running water, heating gas. Little food. Nothing but hope and not much of that either.

180

[Midlodemocrat]

3. I'm so sorry you had to go through that.

:hug:

[JitterbugPerfume]

4. this story always makes me cry ,Ed

A (((((((hug))))))))))) for little Eddie

[Haole Girl]

5. I'm so glad you had a caring neighbor

It's amazing so many of us made it to adulthood...the way we used to be left alone. :hug:

[oneighty]

6. In those years

on the country side of life there were many families such as ours..parents divorced displaced having failed during the great depression.

Our life was not really strange to my sisters and to me it is just we had not yet learned to manage it. Sharing a teabag three ways was the thing to do.

We learned to share. We learned to eventually spoil our own children as much as possible. Yes we learned that-perhaps too well some might say.

180

[Kire]

7. was that real?

[oneighty]

8. Yes a real happening

Not very smart I know-but children left alone try as best they know how to survive.

I tried and failed more than just a few times too by golly.

But we learn, we teach.

I have only written two fictions of hundreds of very short tales.

180

[Bossy Monkey]

9. God, Ed. See, some people say that living well is the best revenge;

in your case, just living is pretty damned amazing.

[Crewleader]

10. The honesty in your writing 180

touches heart strings, and of course you already know you're in my heart! :loveya:

I am glad to see you are back! :hi: :hug:

[oneighty]

11. Hey Crew

Yup! Climbing another mountain by golly. ((((((((((hug))))))))))))))

Sometimes depressing and always a challenge. But you too know about such happenings.

Ed