Simply Awful

I mentioned earlier that I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy… And that’s why it hurt so much that it happened to one of my best friends.

Welcome to Eddie’s attic:

The firefighters had to cut two holes in the roof. Fueled by boxes of carefully wrapped glassware and dishes, the fire burned its own hole.

Again, some very, very nice vintage stuff was lost in that fire. When he and I were up there digging through the wreckage, it was a small pleasure whenever we’d find one of a set of 12 glasses or bowls or plates that survived. Occasionally, a set of 12 was reduced to 6, sometimes 2. Although, I don’t think there were any sets reduced to zero.

He also lost several wooden lighting fixtures. In one case, the glass part of them had gotten so hot it’d melted. So surreal. And let me just say that one of the worst smells I’ve ever experienced was in this attic. The mixture of charred materials plus mold and mildew was utterly horrid. I got used to it after a while, but then about 4 or 5 hours later, I started to feel ill so I had to go downstairs.

Those bikes used to be show-quality. Yeah, bad day. Very bad day.

But…he found a smile when he told me that not all of his replacement parts had burned up. He could rebuild those bikes…and I’m sure he absolutely will.

What I learned from seeing this happen to Eddie:

Life is far too short not to live it, love it and keep as much as I can of it in the “now” rather than the “some day” because “some day” may not come in time.

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