He finally defeated a fire....

My grand father Erve Forrest Romaine; when he was a young man went into the woods in Northern Wisconsin.  There he and another young man began to take down big trees and start their own saw mill.  But one night a huge forest fire swept through all those giant trees and destroyed what they had hoped to become a place where they could make some good money.

In the meantime; he boarded with a family where my grand mother lived, and as they both saw each other about every day, they feel in love and he asked her to marry him.  She did.

Many years later they had moved to central New York and bought a farm...about 49 acres.  The soil on that farm was rocky and difficult to plow and grow anything...but they endured as they existed day by day.

It was during that time that I was living with my mother, Rita and one day she took a load of trash to burn in an old barrel and as she lit it, wind began to cause the paper to blow out and started a small fire in the dry weeds and heavy under brush around where she had started the fire.

She raced into our house and called her father-in-law to come and see if he could put it out.  He did...he went down to the end of all the land, next to a small creek and started a back fire.

I stood there with my mother and saw the fire quickly spread down through our fields and watched as the smoke and flames building as it gained more strength from more dry materials. 

My grand father swatted out the fire that was burning toward other properties and his back fire began to burn up toward the approaching fire as it came blazing toward him and his back fire. My mother and I watched as we saw those flames and smoke suddenly slow down and she knew that Erve Romaine was down there and had controlled that small fire.

We both hurried down to where he was; my mother threw her arms around neck and planted a series of kisses all over his grimy face...I just watched this, but did see him still leaning on an old broom where he had been swatting the fire as it came toward him...and as he stood there he took off  his old man and tried to wipe his face from the sweat and grim.

Maybe he was remembering when a huge fire had forced him to leave his work our in the woods in northern Wisconsin...this time he had won and no doubt had stopped this fire from burning up the valley and into more woods.

Finally it worked; as my mother and I ran down to where he was standing, my mother raced over and smothered his sweating face with kisses and thanksgiving.  I waited as I watched they embrace and I just noticed how my grand father was wiping his old hat in his hand....looking at the fire that had lost it's hold on everything.

This time it was not a raging forest fire, but a little one....but nonetheless he had won a battle that had long reminded him of the terror and loss of when we was just a young man.  I knew right then that when I grew up, I wanted to be a man like he was....finding at last a chance to prove to himself, my mother, and me...that fires can be put out, if you know how to do it....