A Fire Story and a Story of Neighbor Love

Thirty-Eight years ago, I was a struggling single mother living in a third floor walk-up on 8th Street in Philadelphia. Our building had mice and roaches. Aside from my apartment being three floors up, the laundry facilities were in a dark dank basement an additional set of steps down! Hauling my stroller and my baby, groceries and diaper bags and my school bag up and down all those steps was an ordeal, matched by the ordeal of walking several blocks to get the bus or the speedline to New Jersey, then walk several blocks to my babysitter's house before I walked to school. At the time, I taught junior high school, the classes where all the students had failed the minimum basic skills test, Remedial English. The students were hardened riverfront kids largely born into families with alcohol and drug addiction, often neglected and abused. They were angry and uncooperative students and I was a brand new teacher, "thrown into the shark tank" you could say.

My romance with my daughter's father was mysteriously deteriorating but I hadn't the energy to try to figure out why and my romantic partner who had been such a short time ago, passionate and loving, had become distant and indifferent. Still he was the babysitter on the one night a week when I was forced to take the bus back to New Jersey for a night class I taught in the library.

It was all too much - new mother, hard work, difficult travel, and I used every ounce of character and resilience I had to rise to the challenge for the sake of my daughter whom I loved with a deep bond that defies description. Because of that, I determined, when Governor Murphy, in New Jersey, gave all teachers, across the board a two thousand dollar raise, I was going to look for a house in New Jersey.

I had visited the school in Philadelphia that my daughter would be attending if we stayed there and it was grim. It reminded me of the hideous grade school in South Philadelphia that I had attended, a brick factory style fortress reminiscent of a Dickens brick workhouse. I wanted better for my daughter, a green yard, a new and attractive school with nice children.

As it happened, the best friend of my baby sitter saw a house for sale around the corner from her, a tiny bungalow with a big yard right off the bus route and a couple of blocks from a beautiful grade school. She told my babysitter who told me and I begged a teacher friend to give me a ride over to have a look. Immediately my heart leapt out to the little house which was identical to the cookie jar I had from my mother and which I had played with as a child when I was sick in bed.

Several varieties of obstacles fell into my path which is always the case in 'hero and holy grail' stories. The realtor was an obstacle, down payment was an obstacle, and my quest coincided with my parents' retirement to West Virginia so they were largely unavailable financially and in person to help me.

Despite it all, I persevered and in August of 1985, forty years ago this year, the house became mine. My first big obligation/and promise for my daughter had been realized, we had a home with a yard in a nice little town with a good school, a place where she could grow up safely and securely.

There is too much to tell about the next 40 years in the little house, but let me get to the crisis that ensued a year ago in summer.

My now grown daughter, Lavinia, who lived in New York City was home for a visit and we were walking my dog around the neighborhood when Lavinia noticed a fire in a wicker chair on the porch of the woman who had told us about the house for sale all those years ago. Her name is Kitsy. My daughter called out "Mom, Kitsy's porch is on fire!" I immediately ran to the house on the corner and banged on the door for a neighbor while Lavinia phoned the fire company. Then I ran to another neighbor. The first neighbor ran over with a fire extinguisher and began to squirt the wicker furniture all of which was on fire now. The second neighbor ran over and turned on the garden hose in the back of Kitsy's house and began to wet down the porch walls and roof which were also, by now, on fire.

Bu the time the fire truck came, just a few minutes later, the neighbors had put out the fire. At a ceremony at the Borough Hall I was presented with a pink fire hat, and the fire marshal tod me the fire had gotten into the roof and entered the ceiling and had broken through the porch window so the speedy help of the neighbors had actually saved the whole house from burning down.

The home of the neighbor who had found the 'forever home' for me and my daughter had been saved by the people she saved, and neighbors had saved neighbors!