ENDING THE YEAR... Odds & ends (Part 167a)

ENDING THE YEAR… Odds & ends (Part 167a)

It was a typical weekend… mostly chores… a trip to the landfill, yard work and the like. Elle had delivered the last of the donated clothes that I’d picked up in the city to the Thrift Shoppe at the church and around lunch time I was curious as to how those things had been accepted by the public so took a quick trip down to the church. For the church I was like Rex at the sailing center… the unpaid custodian/repair man. Any time I was at the church I’d make a cursory check of the grounds and building. There usually wasn’t much to be concerned with during the Summer but with colder weather there was usually something. With the extra money coming in from the shop we’d gotten back in the good graces of the heating oil company and they were there to do preventive maintenance on the “new” old oil burner. There were probably a half dozen people there looking at the clothes when I walked down the stairs to the undercroft. I took a quick look around and it seemed like the piles of clothes were reasonable so I asked how they had done for the day. The minister’s wife who had taken charge of the shop answered with a smile and said it’d been “a good day”. It was like that statement set off a chain of events that ruined my day… and created a major problem for the church.

The mechanic working on the oil burner yelled out at the same time I saw a big flash and heard a long ‘pop’ come from the room that housed the burner. It was instant panic. There were only two ways out of the basement and one was right there… three stone steps up to the back door. The other way was at the far end of the room and it was a narrow flight of stairs into the church itself. The one thing I remember vividly was yelling for everyone to get out of the room. I also remember the mechanic emerging from the room that housed the oil burner and with his face completely black. The people nearest the door headed up the steps as I headed for the other end of the room. The two women who were there were panic stricken and, in spite of my yelling at them to open the door right by where they were standing they just stood there. Getting to them I grabbed the door handle as well as the arm of the woman who was closest to it and shoved her through the door. The other woman was just standing there with her eyes bugged out. I yelled at her to get moving but she didn’t. That’s when I grabbed her and sort of half lifted her towards the stairs. But the other woman was now lying on them and not moving. I didn’t know what to do.

I looked towards the back door and could see the mechanic standing in the open doorway. I do remember not seeing any flames but I did see a lot of black smoke. I yelled for the mechanic to come help me. If you’ve ever seen pictures of the old vaudeville days where the performers would put black on their faces to perform, that was this guy at that moment. I still had the one woman by the shoulders and told him to grab her legs. When he got her feet off the floor I headed for the back door. Outside we lay her down in the grass and headed back for the other one. I don’t really know if she had passed out or not but when we got to her she still wasn’t moving.  The guy climbed over her and grabbed her shoulders while I grabbed her ankles. It was while I was carrying her that I actually took a look at her. I didn’t recognize her but, with the shop open to the public that was to be expected. A guess would be that she was around forty. Thankfully, she was fairly light weight. It was while we were going up the stairs that she started talking and moving, wanting to know what we were doing. When we got her outside we laid her down next to where the other woman was now sitting. As soon as her butt hit the ground she started to swivel around to look at the woman and as she did she pulled her legs up to her body. I’d squatted to put her down and, unexpectedly, I had an up close and personal view of her flowered panties as I was trying to get her to respond to my question as to how she was feeling. When she heard me she turned back towards me and realized that she was in a compromised position. All of a sudden she pushed herself up to a sitting position and started screaming at me with a burst of profanity. It happened in a matter of seconds and it was a total shock to me. The oil burner mechanic was now right behind her and started yelling at her to calm down. In just a few more seconds we were all standing and the woman was still yelling at me like I’d physically attacked her. It was at that point I that realized what was more important was that there had been an explosion inside the building and ran back inside. The mechanic followed me as we headed for the door to the room where the explosion had taken place. Thankfully, there was no visible fire.

The minister’s wife had been one of the first to leave and had run around the outside of the building and run up the steps to the church office. Inside, she called the fire department. While the mechanic and I were looking in the room we heard the sirens of the fire trucks and within a few minutes they arrived. I recognized the first men there and they told us both to exit the building as they rushed in. Outside, I finally asked the mechanic if he was OK and he sort of nodded that he was. I looked around for the two women we’d carried out and both were gone. By then there were any number of other firemen there and I watched as they took the mechanic away for attention.

I have no idea how long all of that had taken to unfold. When the firemen started to leave I was told there was no structural damage. By then the minister had arrived as well as a few other vestrymen and we took a look at the mess we had. It was mostly soot. One of the men was familiar with oil burners and suggested that it had been a “backflash” and that the burner itself was still probably useable. Cleaning the soot up was what we had to face. That was when I looked at the piles of clothing on the tables and knew there was a big job ahead. It was then that I refocused on the two women who I’d helped to carry out of the building. I thought back to the verbal attack the one woman had thrown at me. Here I’d just carried her out of a building that had experienced an explosion and she proceeded to cuss me out for an inadvertent look up the hem of her dress. There was no “Thank you” for helping her… just a verbal barrage. It was another experience with a female that just added to my not understanding how the feminine mind work.(68)

The afternoon was spent attempting to clean the basement up. All the clothes had to be removed with the real problem being that we had no place to put them. Calls went out for volunteers to take the washable clothes and to wash them and I ended up delivering piles of clothes to a couple of them. It was an annoyance that I certainly didn’t need… until I drove up one driveway. Right there in front of me was a clothesline with a bunch of panties and bras blowing in the wind. There were both bikinis as well as full brief panties there. I wasn’t sure who lived there and when I went to the door I was greeted by cute girl. I immediately associated her with the bikinis. She didn’t know anything about the clothes I’d brought so left me standing there to find someone to help me. I recognized the woman who then came to the door as being an older parishioner and she told me where to put the clothes. Initially I was disappointed, hoping that the full brief panties belonged to a younger woman. But, at least I got a view of some panties.

To be continued…