The Day of the Big Fire
After working at the post office in Nicholasville for about a year and a half, my supervisor, Don Carter, asked if I might be interested in painting the trim on his house. He lived (and still lives) in a two-story brick house near Camp Nelson on Christopher Lane. He wanted me to paint all the trim and windows on his house and offered to pay me cash for my work. The thoughts of a cool bundle of cash for my labor tempted me to take on this extra job.
I liked the thought of having a little extra money but was conflicted about how I could pull it off. At the time, I normally worked about 60-70 hours a week at the post office and that didn’t really give me very much extra time. Don suggested that maybe I could take a week’s vacation and paint his house. I could earn the extra money for painting and still be paid at the post office. This seemed like a tremendous idea to me, and I volunteered to do the extra job.
I set about painting the trim on his house on a Monday morning. Don’s house is pretty big, and the yard is very un-level. It is also surrounded by many large trees, several which hung down over and around his house. Don has insisted throughout his life that no tree should ever be trimmed, not even the slightest little limb. This made my painting job harder, but hey, I was earning two checks for the week. I persevered throughout the week, even though I began to wonder why I would be so greedy as to give up a week of my hard-earned vacation just to try and make more money. Although somewhat discouraged, I pressed on, knowing Don and Phyllis would be happy to have this big job finished.
As I headed to paint on Friday morning, I was overjoyed by the fact this big job would soon be behind me. I could finish up relatively early and head home to a nice weekend before going back to work on Monday. I worked diligently all morning, and just had 4 more windows on the back side of the house to paint in the afternoon before I was finished.
As I was beginning to paint the last window of their house, I heard a very noisy, sputtering vehicle in front of Don and Phyllis’ house. It creaked, groaned, sputtered, missed, and occasionally backfired at it drove slowly past the house. I had never heard a vehicle that sounded so poorly. Don and Phyllis live on a dead-end lane, and at the time, there were only four houses on the entire road. Don’s house was next to last near the end of the lane, and Don’s cousin, Paul Christopher, lived just a little farther down the lane in the last house.
Since I was on the backside of the house, I couldn’t see the vehicle, but I wondered to myself who would be driving a vehicle that ran so poorly. Don had come home from work, and, not feeling well, talked with me for just a bit and headed upstairs to lie down. The vehicle finally got turned around and sputtered back down the road. I was just anxious to be finished and didn’t have time to think about some old junky vehicle.
In just a few seconds, I heard a loud noise, and then some terrible sputtering, creaking, moaning coming from a vehicle unlike anything I had ever heard in my life. I couldn’t understand what was going on and was mystified for just a bit.
About that time, a young man came running around to the back of the house, hollering, “Does anyone have a fire extinguisher?” I put down the paint and ran to the back door to summon Phyllis. She had a fire extinguisher. I got it, and the young man and I ran back to the road where his vehicle was. There it was, on fire, with flames coming up from under the hood. It was also wedged underneath a large oak tree that overhung the road. The young man had previously tried to turn around the second time and got his vehicle stuck under the large limb of the tree. That explained all the additional racket I had heard a little earlier.
We ran up to the flaming vehicle. The fire was billowing from the engine area, coming out the grill and around the edges of the hood. We were unable to open the hood because of the flames, but I emptied the fire extinguisher, trying to extinguish the fire, which was growing bigger and bigger.
He shouted, “I have to get this truck unloaded!” I said, “What do you have on the truck?” He exclaimed, “Oxygen!” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. We ran around to the back of the truck, opened the back, and he hopped into the truck and started handing out to me those large cannisters of oxygen. I would take one of the cannisters and carry it just a slight distance from the truck and toss it into the grass. I then hurried back and got another, and another. After unloading about 20 of these large containers, I realized we were going to have to abandon ship. I told the young man to get out of the truck immediately because the truck was beginning to be engulfed in flames. This particular vehicle had its gas tanks just under the doors on both sides of the truck. Flames were lapping around these tanks and had overtaken the interior of the truck completely. We ran hurriedly from the vehicle and back into Don and Phyllis’ house, which was about 200 feet from the burning truck.
Phyllis had called the fire department and they were on their way. She also had run upstairs and said to her nearly asleep husband, “Don, get up. There’s going to be a big fire!” Don, not knowing what was transpiring right outside his house, while half asleep and about two thirds sick, said later, “I wondered, how could Phyllis possibly know there’s going to be a big fire?”
The young man was frantic. He paced nervously back and forth across the kitchen floor. He asked numerous times if anyone had a cigarette. We told him we didn’t, as none of us smoked. We stayed in the back of the house, knowing the danger of our situation. Soon, the oxygen canisters began to explode as the fire got to them. The explosions would shake the entire house.
The young man asked to use the phone. He called his place of work, and we all overheard the conversation he had with his boss. Now, please remember, this is a late Friday afternoon. I am sure the boss, as well as everyone he worked with was anxious to be finished for the week, and then the following phone call came.
“Hello, this is ______, my truck is on fire. No, the entire truck is on fire. The oxygen tanks and everything is exploding!” Then, one of the gas tanks on the truck exploded, nearly knocking the house off its foundation. “I think one of the gas tanks just exploded!” He turned and asked us again, “Does anyone have a cigarette?” “No, no, no, it’s stuck under a tree and the whole thing is on fire.” The other gas tank exploded, shaking the house and all of us again. It was a chaotic scene indeed.
“Does anyone have a cigarette?” the young man asked us again. We told him no, we didn’t smoke. He walked the floor and we all stayed somewhat hunkered down in the back of the house. The explosions finally stopped, and we walked out into the yard and saw the remnants of the destroyed truck. The large oak tree, probably 200 years old, was on fire and the flames seemed to reach to the sky. All that was left of the truck was the frame, its four tire rims, and a burned to a crisp propane tank in the back.
We could hear the fire truck sirens down on old U. S. 27, but they hadn’t ventured up the lane. We found out later the reason they hadn’t was because they knew the truck was carrying the 250-gallon propane tank in the back. We were told if it had exploded during the fire, an area approximately ½ mile in diameter would have been completely leveled. Thankfully, the tank had a working pressure release valve that kept it from exploding.
I called Deb and told her I wouldn’t be coming home for quite some time. There was only one way out, and that way was blocked by a mangled truck and a burning oak tree. About 4 hours after the fire, the fire trucks ventured up the lane and extinguished the still burning tree. A wrecker came and loaded up the burned and mangled truck. I followed soon after.
At the beginning of the lane and facing old U.S. 27 lived a nice older man and his wife. The man’s name was Clifford Anderson. He had served during WWII and survived the Bataan Death March in the Philippines in 1942. As I passed by his pretty house that late summer evening, there, in his manicured front yard, lay the burnt to a crisp propane tank, which had unknowingly fallen out of the charred truck wreckage and off the back of the wrecker when they were exiting Christopher Lane. I couldn't help but laugh just a little, although I prayed it didn’t explode during the night.
