John was a pyromaniac!

My two brothers, Tad and Van and my sister, Alice and I spent more than an hour on Skype last Monday morning trying to remember things about growing up in our house in Murray.  We plan to do this every Monday morning.  Tad mentioned in one of his comments on the Norman Family History blog that when I was very little 4 or 5 that I started his bedroom on fire.  Well it is true and my memory, although limited, is as follows.  Somehow I found a box of matches and took them into Gar and Tad’s bedroom which was in the southwest corner of the house.  Mom had a basket of clean clothes partly folded on the matching twin beds.  They were wood and I think Alice inherited them.  Some of the clothes were hanging over the bed and I crawled under the bed and started playing with the matches.  At some point I caught the clothes on fire.  I ran out of the room and went and sat next to my dad who I think was watching TV in the knotty pine room.  I was scared to say anything but I think he knew something was wrong and was asking me what “was the matter.”  I don’t remember if I finally told him.  I do remember crying.  But the long and the short of it was he either smelled smoke or I said something and he went in and put the fire out.  It had gotten big enough that one of the beds had black burned marks deep into the foot board.  Unfortunately, that was not the only time I started a fire. A few years later, I started a field on fire and the fire department had to be called to put it out.  I think I was 5 or 6 and there was a big field behind the Day and Andersons it was in the summer and the field had a lot of dry weeds and grass.  I don’t even remember what or how the fire got started but after the fire department had put it out, I confessed to dad and he made me go over to Andersons and apologize to Mr. Anderson because he was a part time fireman.  I got in a lot of trouble for that one but alas I can’t remember what my punishment was.  Van says that growing up in Murray during the summer all he ever wore was a pair of levis, no shirt or shoes.  That you could be gone all day and no one would ever check on you and he had very little supervision.  I don’t think our parents were negligent but we lived in a different time and had a lot of free time to entertain ourselves.