Our old house burns, but memories remain unscathed

   An email arrived at my cellphone on a hectic morning at the church rummage sale. I intended to read it later, but the subject line caught my eye:
    Fwd: 1164 Genesee Park blvd  

The address of my family’s first home intrigued me so I opened it. I was stunned. Our old house had caught fire the night before.

    Our former neighbor Linda had written at 12:45 a.m.: “The house next door is on fire. There are 7 fire trucks out there. The 4 deaf residents got out but their cats did not. The whole front of the house is gone.’’

   My thumbs couldn’t move fast enough to open a TV website to find footage of flashing lights on fire trucks, police and firefighters huddled on the front lawn, and onlookers assembled. Two firefighters were hacking at the siding on the second floor. The entire scene seemed like it was plucked from Chicago Fire.

       How often does this happen?  The odds were much greater than once in a lifetime.

   With our rummage sale responsibilities done by early evening, Mary and I beelined to the boulevard. We stopped to comfort our old neighbor, who was exhausted from a sleepless night but thankful her brick home, only six feet away, was not damaged.

   The commotion was over, but the scars remained. The entire front of the 1923 colonial was blackened from the porch to the third-floor attic. A pile of charred rubble sat on the front lawn. Windows, most boarded up, were dark with no sign of life inside.

   Twenty-seven years had passed, and the home we owned for 11 years had changed hands once, but it remained our touchstone. The memories of your old homes resemble protected files in your computer – you never lose them. You cherish them and retain the stories, whether they are the idyllic sunsets over the St. Lawrence River in Morristown, the hijinks among four rookie journalists at the farmhouse outside of Cleveland, or the beautiful woodwork (gumwood) that captured your imagination when you bought your first residence. All are seared into your memory.

    “It was first permanent thing we did together; the first thing we owned,’’ Mary remarked, gazing at the front porch.

   She was quick to recall the story of the giant Halloween pumpkins – gourds that weighed 60 pounds and stood 3 feet tall – that we carved with Katie, Liam and Claire, then positioned near the front door. We would get 150-plus trick-or-treaters each year, and passersby held the giant pumpkins in the same awe as our children.

   One memory led to another.

   There had been 11 St. Patrick’s Day parties. We set two records there. The attendance standard was set with 145 guests. The longest party broke up at 5:50 a.m. It was the same morning a sportswriter was trying to romance a copy editor in the driveway as daylight gathered. From my bedroom window, fueled by exhaustion, I almost reprised the scene from “It’s A Wonderful Life – “Why don’t you kiss her instead of talking her to death?’’

  My favorite story remains the 80-something man, bedecked from his brogans to his cap in green, who rang the bell during the height of a St. Patrick’s Day bash, and asked me: “Is the this still the McNamara’s house?’’

   “No, we’re the Hollerans, but you’re welcome to join us.’’

   He wandered into the crowd, chatted with several people, then disappeared an hour later out the back door. He was simply lonely and wanted to visit people. It was like the angels sent us a leprechaun.

    We brought Liam and Claire home from the hospital to this house. There was Katie’s 9^th birthday party that a friend described as a “United Nations gathering (that was a compliment).’’

   As we walked around the house, the memories persisted:

• We survived the Ice Storm of 1991 when the 12-inch limb from the Norwegian maple missed the house but crushed the swingset.
• The neighbor boy, Billy, once asked to rake our leaves so he could jump into them from the top of the split-rail fence. Sure.
• The pesky squirrels who would camp next to the picnic table, hoping our little tribe would drop a slice of pizza. When we tried to trap them, we caught a possum. Ugly.

  Our favorite story was the sexist neighbor who seemed puzzled about the construction crew milling around our back door. When we decided to add a deck, my mother and her sisters beat us home on the day the work was to start, then began removing the siding and measuring for flashing and a ledger board. As the neighbor walked by, the disdain on his face could be interpreted as: “Do those women know what they’re doing?’’

   Eileen Holleran, with sisters Helen and Rosemary and the leader, Cay, took charge. They made a statement about feminism and completed a professional job in a couple of days. They dubbed themselves The Erector Set. Before we sold the house, Mary crawled under the stairs and scrawled the date and their names in permanent magic marker. Then she had individual Erector Set ballcaps made.

   The only redeeming tale about the fire was the quick thinking of a neighbor. When he spotted the fire, he couldn’t wake his deaf friends so he broke down the rear door and ran up to their bedrooms to alert them. They escaped unharmed. Thank God for good neighbors.

          Morristown native Jim Holleran is a retired teacher and sports editor from Rochester. Reach him at jimholleran29@gmail.com or view past columns under “Reflections of River Rat’’ at https://hollerangetsitwrite.com/blog/