Some Things Even an Apple a Day Cain't Cure

Today's Apple: A Fuji

Image 'n' text courtesy o' the fine
 folks at All About Apples

Fuji

Parentage / Origin: Ralls Janet x Delicious; Japan 1962

View list of Fuji sport varieties

Harvest / Season: Harvest: Late October; Season: October - January

Description: Tall, rectangular, medium size fruit. Yellowish green skin with an orangish red flush and darker stripes. Darker blush on sun side. Crisp, juicy slightly subacid white flesh with outstanding texture.   May require up to 200 days to mature. Good keeper.

Tree Characteristics: Vigorous, productive, somewhat bushy tree. Needs annual detailed pruning.

I was walking between a couple o' the buildings where I work yest'day afternoon, when I happened to look over towards the area where my house is. (One o' the main reasons the wife 'n' I bought our house was 'cause it's within walking distance o' where at least one of us worked.) What I saw was the kind o' thing don't no one want to see coming from the direction o' their house: it was a huge column o' dark brown smoke. 'Cause o' the dips 'n' rises 'tween where I work 'n' the house, I couldn't tell exactly where the smoke was coming from, but it did look unnervingly close to where our house was, so I was a might afraid o' what was going on.

Since the wife is the one who cain't walk to work, I didn't have the car, so I couldn't go running out to see what was what. In the short space o' time it took me to get back to my office, I'd considered how long it would take me to run up to the top of a hill close enough to see where the smoke was coming from 'n' trying to get a coworker to drive me over there. I discarded both o' those ideas as impracticle 'n' hit on the idea o' just calling the house.

Now, I knew my wife weren't home, 'n' none o' the cats're industrious enough to pick up the phone, but I figgered that, if our house was that much on fire, there wouldn't be no 'lectricity at the place, so the answering machine wouldn't be working no more than the cats do. I'll admit that, even though I was pretty sure the smoke was a little too far to one side to be from our house, hearing the wife's voice on the answering machine was more than a little relief. (Oddly enough, my very next thought was, "Great. Now I'll get home 'n' find a blank message on the machine." Strange how one can go from some level o' trepidation, no matter how slight, to relief to annoyance in just the span of a couple seconds.)

Once I determined the 'lectricity at the house was on 'n' that we weren't the ones on fire, my curiosity kicked in 'n' I decided to check the web sites fer some o' the local news gatherers. I didn't hold out much hope, since they don't usually seem to be nearly as "current" 'n' "up to the minute" as they claim to be, but I did find one o' the local stations that had a small blurb 'bout the fire. They didn't give no address, but the closest street they mentioned wasn't one I didn't recognize the name of, so I figgered it was in some other neighborhood than ours.

You might think it seems cruel er cold er heartless o' me, but it is a sad fact o' the area 'n' times in which I live that my first thought, after finding out it wasn't me ner no one else in my neighborhood that was on fire, was, "Well, that'll learn 'em to set up a meth lab in their kitchen". My second thought, again the product o' the times 'n' area in which I live, was, "Wonder how many illegals they had crammed in there 'n' was they all able to get out safely".

I found an update to the story online this morning, 'n' it turns out that the circumstances were much more mundane 'n' much sadder than that. Seems a 50 something year old lady was cooking up some hot dogs when something on the stove caught fire. (They're thinking it was prob'ly some rags er something like that.) The lady tried putting the fire out herself 'n' wound up receiving some fairly major, even life-threatening, burns 'fore the firemen got there. The other lady living in the house, who's listed as being in her 60s, got out without any harm, but the house, their vehicle, 'n' most, if not all, o' their possesions was lost in the fire.

At least, the 60 something year old lady got out without any physical harm. That's what news stories always mean when they say something like, "escaped unharmed". But what 'bout the emotional 'n' psychological damage she suffered, is suffering, 'n' will continue to suffer fer who knows how long? I don't know if the lady who was injured was the other lady's daughter er sister er caretaker er longtime companion er just even a neighbor who'd stopped by fer a bit. The fact that she was in the kitchen, fixing 'em both something to eat, shows that there was some kind o' relationship, some kind o' caring, some kind o' compassion there.  Having to face the very real fear o' possibly losing a relationship like that don't exactly leave a person "unharmed". What the news story should have said was, "while only one person in the house at the time received any injuries, no one escaped the fire unharmed".