The Fireplace

The tiles surrounding the grate of this fireplace were designed by Anne’s mother. She used to work at a tile factory in Roseville when she was 17 years old, and specially designed them for the fireplace. The wood burning stove was eventually replaced by a coal burning pot-bellied stove. But the register the fireplace supplied heat to upstairs was always a favorite listening spot for Anne and her younger brother, David. Long after the grown-ups had thought they were soundly asleep in their beds, Anne and David would hunker down on their bellies and listen to all the interesting conversations of the grownups downstairs.

When Anne was around 8 years old, her mother and Aunt Lucy took the automobile to the store for groceries – leaving Anne alone with 3 year old David the first time. She felt very responsible, and wanting to be a good babysitter and homemaker, decided to start a fire in the big fireplace, which was used to heat the entire house. She found a copy of the Saturday Evening Post and began to tear the pages out and put them in the fireplace. Then she lit them, and sat in front of the nice warm fire and regularly tore out another page to add to the flame.

On their way back from the store, Lucy and Anne’s mother drove by the front of the house and saw the fire through the front windows. They drove around the back alley to park the car and then Anne’s mother came screaming into the house, grabbed Anne and hauled her upstairs. She then proceeded to whip her good and proper. Anne didn’t really understand what she’d done wrong until later. By using magazine pages as tinder for the fire, she had put the entire house in danger of burning down. The pages stacked up and sent tendrils of still-burning paper ash up the flue and chimney and over the roof to the lawn. The bits could have very easily lodged somewhere in the chimney or on the roof, or even could have flown out of the grate and caught fire.