Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Update on the neighbor
John got home last evening. I don't know if someone was able to reach him on the road, or if he came home to the ashes, expecting things to be normal. Chris and I talked to him and he was in a lot better shape than I expected. 'These things happen,' he said very matter of factly.
He knows that the Salvation Army would give him a voucher to stay in a hotel for a few days, but he said he has everything he needs in his rig and would prefer to sleep there. He did not have insurance, but he didn't have a mortgage either. Apparently he was kind of renting to own, and the 'owner' of the house had insurance on it. So the house will be covered, but John's contents will not. He said that the only thing he'll really miss are the photos of his kids.
He already has a plan: His boss is going to lend him a travel trailer to put on his property. He'll stay in that while he cleans up the debris and decides what his next step will be.
The dogs came back, but we haven't seen the cat. I think the nature of cats will keep him away longer than the dogs.
He knows that the Salvation Army would give him a voucher to stay in a hotel for a few days, but he said he has everything he needs in his rig and would prefer to sleep there. He did not have insurance, but he didn't have a mortgage either. Apparently he was kind of renting to own, and the 'owner' of the house had insurance on it. So the house will be covered, but John's contents will not. He said that the only thing he'll really miss are the photos of his kids.
He already has a plan: His boss is going to lend him a travel trailer to put on his property. He'll stay in that while he cleans up the debris and decides what his next step will be.
The dogs came back, but we haven't seen the cat. I think the nature of cats will keep him away longer than the dogs.
idyllicchick, 9:17 PM
2 Comments:
That's what kills me to think about (then I think maybe I'm too attached to my crap). My photos. My dad's ponytail. My yarn stash. All of my books! I have so many first editions, so many autographed, so many that couldn't be replaced. Ugh. It makes me a little queasy to think about losing all of that. On one level I know that they're just "things" and "things" can be replaced... but... family photographs? MY DAD'S HAIR? Ugh.
Lorena, at Nov 9, 2006 7:45:00 AM
It is one of my deepest fears (I guess it is all of ours, really) to come home to a pile of ashes and debris. When I was home from college on xmas break, I remember my mom coming to pick me up at my temp job and breaking the news to me that we'd had a fire. Really, the only thing that burned was the door frame and the side of my beloved piano. But the heat and oily smoke damaged every corner of the house. It was a time when we had one of those clunky vhs video cameras, and we had recorded everyone opening xmas presents in that room the week before, so there was no problem replacing things like tennis rackets and ceiling fans. But my pile of music books was terribly smoke damaged and so dry that pages crumbled as if they were hundreds of years old. To this day, it really hurt me that my dad didn't replace my favorite Rachmaninoff and Chopin collections - instead, we got generic hymnals and "pop tunes made easy" books that he chose. I still hang on to those crumbly books and use them when I want comfort music.
Yikes. Didn't mean to be so darn wordy!
Yikes. Didn't mean to be so darn wordy!
