On a frigid night in January 1971, my father, a volunteer fireman with the East Wallingford Fire Department, was called to a house fire on Whirlwind Hill. I was living in Alaska then, and it was days before my shocked and grieving mother could bring herself to call and tell me that my grandparents’ farmhouse was gone. The house had stood empty since my grandmother’s death that August. The men fought the fire all night long, but lost. The photo in the paper the next morning showed the ruins of the house covered with snow and icicles.
Farmhouse Ruins, Carol Crump Bryner, pen and ink, 2013
This was the end of the house with the five stairways, the six bedrooms, the two attics, the one bathroom, and the large living room with nine doors. But it was the beginning of our memories and our longing.
My brother and I dream about this house that we loved, and in our dreams our grandparents and aunts and uncles are still vividly alive. They greet us on the porch, and we walk together in a hazy silence through the half-remembered rooms of our childhood.
One of the reasons I started this Whirlwind Hill project was to bring the farmhouse back to life in words and pictures. It probably looms larger in my imagination than it ever did in its physical presence, but it was a wonderful and memorable place. For more than two hundred years its walls sheltered my ancestors and watched them move through their daily routines. During the next weeks and months I’ll revisit its rooms, peek through its doors, look out its windows, climb its stairs, and maybe discover some secrets in the dusty corners.
Kitchen door of the farmhouse around 1920 – the child in the doorway is possibly my mother, Janet Hall Crump, around age 2
On Wednesday: Foundations
Carol,
I am very much looking forward to your descriptions and learning about all the living that went on inside the house. I have only very hazy memories of the kitchen, probably at Halloween, with its warmth and wonderful smells. For me, the house was a presence from the outside, a place that I passed almost every day growing up. I was away at college when the house burned but heard about it, very emotionally, from my parents. The place where is stood became one of those holes in my life of something important that is now missing.
And this makes me wonder what my grandmother passed out on Halloween. I have a vague memory of popcorn balls, which were a favorite of my grandfather. I think your dad, who was also a Volunteer fireman, was there that night.
He was there and I think my Mom went to stay with your Mom. I will try to get them to comment. Pattis response shows how powerful the memories of that night were.
Whirlwind Hill Halloweens were the best, weren’t they? No little mini candy bars for us–we might only go to about a dozen houses (being driven because they were so far apart) but our neighbors knew we were coming, they knew us by name, invited us in to be “oohed and aahed” over, and had the “real deal” for us!! I remember the Doolittle’s house was always the best, where she had a full size brown lunch bag prepared for each of us with our name on it, and there were always homemade popcorn balls inside!
Patti, you are so right. I was jealous of my friends who lived in town because they had while neighborhoods to hit on Halloween night. They didn’t have the experience of people who knew them and who took the time to make special treats. We were the winners.
I will enjoy taking this journey with you, up and down all those staircases and through all those doors–and getting a sense of the many people who, over the centuries, lived in and visited the farmhouse.
I also love your magnificent artwork throughout. Thanks for sharing this family history with us.
And thank you for following along, Carol. Nice to have you as a reader.
What a terrible night that was! I was 12 and it was my mom and I who looked out from our kitchen windows and saw a “funny orange light” up at Grammie’s house. There was that split second of time when your mind goes through all the better options, before she said “Oh my God, it’s on fire!” It was a long night and I have fleeting memories. It was so cold (below zero, I believe) and for awhile I was up at the house,watching the fire and the work of trying to put it out. It was so cold you’d get hit by pellets of ice from the water that was being sprayed from the hoses on the opposite side of the house. I remember grown ups shaking their heads and saying “it has spread through the walls” which was the first somber inkling that the house we all loved was to be no more. There were firemen who were so cold they came to our house to warm up a bit and my mom started fixing food–anything that might help the firemen keep going. The next day (or maybe the next day after that) was one of those incredibly sunny, but still well below freezing days, and every surface of what was left of the house was covered solid with ice, inches thick that actually sparkled in the sun. The grown ups decided this fragile, gutted core of a house was safe to walk through. Shaken to my own core, I was afraid to go into the house with them, but even more afraid to stay outside by myself, so I went in. I remember walking up the front stairs with the wall next to it burned away. I was so scared!
Like you, and so many others, I loved that house, and the chance to revisit it will be wonderful. I hold on to the fleeting memories of shapes and spaces for dear life–and sometimes can’t remember exactly which door led to what. Your memories and renditions will be pure gift to me!
Thank you so much Patti for this memory of the fire. It was an awful night for everyone on Whirlwind Hill. I’m so glad to hear your first hand account. I didn’t know that you had actually gone inside. That must have left such an indelible picture in your mind.
But now it’s time to move on to better memories. So glad you’re along for the ride.
That was such a scary night! I remember going down there and standing across the street by the barn and watching the fire and hearing people say that the water was freezing even before it hit the house. My mother made thermoses of coffee for the firemen. It was SO cold!
I can’t believe it now looking back, but we even went up near the house to help carry out a few pieces of furniture – a small table and maybe a lamp. And then someone said (very wisely) – this is too dangerous, especially for children. I was in 7th grade. I wanted to stay all night but my mother said that I would have to go to school the next day (and I was very jealous that Patti got to miss school that day!). But what a shock to realize that something that had “always” been there could suddenly disappear in just a few hours. I mostly only remember sitting in the kitchen and not saying very much (your grandmother kind of scared me). My strongest memory was your grandfather bringing in a chicken that he had just slaughtered and him pulling out not-yet-developed eggs from inside of the chicken. Ah – the education of a farm life! 🙂
Well, that’s something I never saw on the farm – the half-developed eggs from the chicken. There was always something going on in that kitchen.
It’s so interesting for me to hear you and Patti and Mike tell your stories of that night. I was so very far away and have heard my mother’s and father’s and brother’s versions, but it was always hard for them to even talk about it.
Thanks, Sue!
Oh this is always so sad to me – a stranger to the house. Patti Burkett’s comment makes the loss even more vivid. It was such a very old house, so beloved. What an awful night that must have been.
It is so sad, and I had never heard Patti’s story about that night. Makes the memories all the more precious.
I remember the house, although I was never in it as I passed on my up the hill to visit my brother Skip who was living and working at Farnhams, just up the hill from your family home. Skip remembers the night of the fire and mentioned the great loss of family treasures. The memories cannot be lost, and your journal will help others to remember how beautiful these old farmhouses were when lived in by the families that loved them.
There were so many beautiful farms in East Wallingford, and I know from reading the journals that too many of them burned. Some of the houses we think of as old farms are actually second generation buildings. And you’re right – it was the loving care that kept them beautiful.
Compared to most of the readers on this page I was a latecomer to the Hill, but I had the advantage of Patti’s and her family’s recollections and constant conversation to set it firmly in my own geography. I have always envied the Halls’ longstanding tenure on a single piece of land, surrounded by relatives and near relatives of generational acquaintance. My own family has been nomadic, wandering (for the most part) along the national road. So, when Patti and I learned to sing and love a song called “I Knew This Place,” it was Grammie & Grandpa Hall’s farmhouse I saw in my mind.
Here are a few lyrics:
I knew this place, I knew it well, every sound and every smell,
And every time I walked I fell for the first two years or so.
There across the grassy yard, I a young boy runnin’ hard.
Brown and bruised and battle scarred and lost in sweet illusion.
From my window I can see the fingers of an ancient tree.
Reaching out it calls to me to climb its surly branches.
But all my climbing days are gone and these tired legs I’m standin’ on
would scarcely dare to leave the spot upon which they are standin’.
You can find them all here: http://lyrics.wikia.com/David_Mallett:I_Knew_This_Place
And, if you wish, hear it sung: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfkRYz6RBqE
A lovely surprise to have your comment. A sweet, more recent memory is of you and Patti playing guitar and singing at a family picnic out in Barbara and Aaron’s yard, I think in 1983. It was a pleasure to hear your clear voices on a sunny summer day on Whirlwind Hill.
How wonderful to come along “late” and read all of these comments! It’s like Old Home Week in Wallingford!! So good to “see” you all! 🙂 (Mike: this is Margy Norton.)
Patti, Sue – your memories and descriptions of that night are so GOOD! I can feel the cold and see the sparkling wreckage of the aftermath. How awful and how beautiful. I don’t remember going out to see it afterward and wonder why we didn’t. Or – if I just don’t remember … but I doubt that. I’m sure I would have. What a loss.
As for Halloween … as a town kid, yeah – we got lots of loot, but you guys for sure had it best. 🙂 Really fun to hear about that.
Wonderful, Carol! Just wonderful.
xoxo
And I was one of those people who envied the “townies.” I coveted sidewalks, and now I live in two places that both have sidewalks in front of them. I always thought of sidewalks as gateways to adventure.
Carol,
Being with your mother the night of the fire in your home just a short distance away from the family house was especially poignant. We shared a constant stream of your mother’s memories interspersed with thoughts for the firemen and hopes that they could put the fire out. And then came the good news, the fire was out! What a relief and what joy! And then only a little while later we found this wasn’t true. The fire had spread within the old walls. Those old houses had no fire blocks in the walls to slow the flames. The men were so upset and disappointed, as were we all. They had all fought it so hard.
Those old houses went up in flames so fast. There are so many entries in my great-grandmother’s journals about houses burning – the Frisbee’s, the Cooke’s, etc. Beautiful old homes gone in one night. It must have been very heart-wrenching to be with my mother that night. She had so much love for her childhood home, and so very many stories about it. Thanks, Anne, for your comment!