By Steve Flairty
Kentucky Today
As we all know, early life experiences can stay locked forever in our memories, and I believe we have to decide how we will handle them. Some six decades later, I still think about my favorite boyhood toy, the REMCO Johnny Reb Toy Cannon — and how I lost it.
Allow me to share a memory of when I was 10 and living in Claryville, in the southern part of Campbell County. It’s about the loss of our garage and many belongings as a result of an overnight fire. Though unattached, the building sat no more than 50 feet from our house and on the side closest to my parents’ bedroom.
It was an early winter morning in 1963, still dark, when Mom awakened my brother, Mike, and me. We had “bad luck,” she gently told us. Our garage, she explained, had burned to the ground while we were sleeping. As I recall, she related that the fire department had come and gone, and that she decided to wait until all the commotion was over to tell us.
To this day, it’s hard to conceive that Mike nor I heard or saw the curse of nature that ravaged the building, especially it being so close to our house. Pondering things now, I might have imagined it only a dream if watching it happen. At that naïve age, I already understood that bad dreams happen, and they were usually ONLY bad dreams.
But this was not, simply, a bad dream.
When daylight appeared, all of us got a good, close look and saw that our wood-framed garage was indeed in total ashes. It had burnt almost completely to the ground—just like the Channel 9 newsman said it did that morning when I watched the account on TV.
I was somewhat scared while looking, but as my childhood psyche processed what had happened, sadness soon overmatched the fear. Familiar things that brought security and were part of our family routine had, well, been reduced to rubble.
Our Ford Galaxie station wagon, one in which we traveled on many day trips around the state, was now a darkened mess with metal, melted vinyl, and small pieces of rubber mixed with disfigured tire casings and the remains of four metal wheels.
Dad’s Farmall Cub tractor, ancient but serviceable and another farm family staple, settled hopelessly in front of us as a metal skeleton, in the same straits as our car. A thousand other things you’d find in a garage, including tools used in running a tiny agricultural operation of tobacco crops and a large garden, were almost unrecognizable.
I DID recognize, however, what was left of the favorite toy of my young life, the Confederate “Johnny Reb” Cannon for which I, totally oblivious of PC issues at the time, had lobbied hard to my parents to receive as a Christmas present. Looking back, my toy loomed as a small pittance of the overall property damage dealt us, but the fact that I’m mentioning it — with some clarity — sixty-two years later shows how important that melted conglomeration of plastic wheels, barrel, and fake cannon balls was to my pre-teen sensibilities.
In the immediate aftermath, good wishes and neighbors reaching out helped us navigate the feeling of deep loss—of not just the things destroyed but the fact that life would be remarkably different for a while. My dad, especially, but also Mom, brother Mike, and a few others we knew, spent many hours in the cold cleaning up the tons of rubbish with the cautious hope that the garage would be replaced at some point.
But without an army to help, it took months for the terrible eyesore to disappear from our tedious cleanup efforts. Dad would become exhausted from exertion and the rigors of winter weather. And so it wasn’t surprising that he contracted pneumonia and spent two weeks away from his job with the Clover Leaf Dairy–with no pay, not a mere inconvenience. Those days, Dad’s modest income helped us barely get by financially anyway, and with this obstacle, I soon noticed the stress on Mom and Dad’s whole countenances.
I didn’t want to see them that way.
I’m not sure how much the insurance paid on the building loss, but even if it was a good settlement, experience shows that it’s typically not enough to handle the extra expenses such a loss entails. We would have to get another car, and not having a tractor would make raising our tobacco crop undoable and our large garden difficult. Things like simply paying the water bill began to challenge my parents. To save on that expense, Dad told Mike and me (forgive me for this) that we needn’t flush the toilet when we peed as a measure to save water.
All would have to sacrifice, he made clear, even if that meant one less flush.
But in time, with much effort, perseverance, and lots of good luck, I guess, things got better. Our family acquired another station wagon, Dad found another used Cub tractor at a good price, and when the weather broke, Dad began building a new garage—this time with concrete block walls. Our tools were gradually replaced, we raised another tobacco crop, and our garden produced well.
My Johnny Reb Cannon stayed unreplaced, and that was OK, because even at that age, I realized that the Flairty family was one lucky bunch to be alive. I knew it because our house’s exterior wood showed bubbled paint directly outside Mom and Dad’s bedroom. I wonder… how many more degrees hotter would it have taken to inflame our home, also? With that eventuality, all bets would have been off, and someone else would likely be writing this column.
Guess we’ll never know, and that’s fine with me. Fortunately, it was just property and memories, and we never found out what caused the fire. And as Mom always said about anything bad that EVER happened, “There’s always somebody worse off than us.” She was so right. Just recently, I read about three family members dying in a house fire in Kentucky.
Yet the garage burning experience looms vividly in my mind and perspective.
Let me note that there are still some of those Johnny Reb Toy Cannons around and for sale on eBay, with some costing about $150. I think I’ll pass. The first cut is the deepest, and besides, I’d just as soon have another Slinky, the walking spring toy that I loved seeing coming down the steps toward me. If it had been in the garage, maybe it would have outrun the fire and still be around.
But I digress.
Do you remember the Haddix family fire that occurred toward Falmouth when we were young? So many little children were killed in that terrible fire. I think it was caused by a stove of some sort. It has always troubled me, and I always remember that family when I drive to Falmouth and pass the area where their home used to stand.
I vaguely recall that, Donna. I better recall those lost there because of the late 60s tornado.