Health & Fitness
Country Gal/City Woman: My Father the Hero
A fire at the local courthouse leads to a charred memento that ticked the days away for three generations of Cranstons.
It started out to be a normal early Spring morning that March in 1932, which soon turned into one that transformed local citizens into volunteer firemen, Dad being one of those who broke out into a fast run towards the billows of dark smoke arising above the trees in the middle of our small county-seat town of Atlantic. The courthouse was afire!
The five of us kids under the age of eight (that would be nieces and nephews...LeRoy and Peggy Prall and Glee and Wayne Knight with me in temporary charge) were to follow Dad's hurried instructions to "Stay put!" at 210 Birch and help Mom if things got even more serious. Now, Atlantic back then, was not that spread out. We lived on the western edge of the town of 5,000 plus population and could jog the distance to the courthouse in "no-time flat" (yet another one of those strange country sayings.)
It wasn't until we saw hot ashes landing on the roofs of the homes and in the streets in our neighborhood that we realized Buck Town could be in for some serious trouble. Those of the townspeople who could were helping the volunteer Fire Department and the Court House employees try to save the building and the all-important county records.
Our childlike fascination with all the excitement soon turned to frightened wonder as we watched the twisting and twirling charred bits of paper and embers landing around us. Garden hoses probably saved the day as the neighbors who remained behind took brave measures to save Dad's Haven of Peace and Buck Town itself. (Well, that is how I would have "written it up" if the Atlantic News Telegraph had asked for my opinion.)
The courthouse was lost to be rebuilt later, and most of the records were saved by the fast and furious efforts of the citizens. Dad came home with a slightly-scorched pendulum wall clock that added a little bit of history to our living room (as opposed to the William McKinley portrait holding court in The Woodshed) for years after that great fire. One of the clerks had pushed the clock into Dad's hands and said, "It's yours, George...a memento!" That clock faithfully regulated the lives and times of three generations living within the family home at various times until well after I left Atlantic in 1948, as a young bride for our new home in California, and was a constant reminder of our Dad who turned "hero" in our eyes, for the first time that one early Spring morning in March of 1932...