Prairie Fire

Note how the firepit was located close enough to our house to cause alarm!

After writing that post about the ants, I remembered another story I had forgotten about for a long time. The Taylors had come over one Friday night, and we had a barbeque outside. After we had finished eating, the adults went back inside and Nora, Cole, mei sisters, and I went up to play in the prairie house as usual. But this time, mei daed allowed us to help him build a fire in the firepit in front of the house! We folded our pinafores into baskets and gathered as many pinecones as we could. Cole and Hannah brought handfuls of dried pine needles from the woods. We watched in wonder as mei daed lit the heap on fire and the flames began licking up all our offerings. After a while, he went back down to visit with the adults, and Nora, Bekah, and I went into the prairie house to clean up after our supper. Hannah and Cole stayed outside to keep the fire well-fed with kindling and pinecones. We were busily scrubbing the table and sweeping the floor when all of a sudden Cole let out a scream. "SARAH!" We three girls ran to the windows and looked out to where Cole and Hannah were backing away from the firepit. The fire had begun to creep out from between the stones and was burning its way slowly down the hill! I yelled for Hannah to go through the "secret passageway" and tell Daddy. We escaped through the woods and watched from below as he and Mr. Jerry hosed down the area until all the flames were extinguished and all that was left was a smoky black path of charred grass. Of course at the time we were absolutely terrified, but after it was all over, it surely was fun to tell the story of our "prairie fire"!

The Secret Passageway.... a little trail we beat down through these trees.

I also remember that we loved going up there at night. It was so much fun to bring all the lanterns up and sit around reading and discussing all the hardships of our "lives" as pioneers. We had a little radiator up there that was perfect for heating water from the creek or melting snow in the wintertime for out tea. We all had our set beds - the table, we decided, would be turned into a bunk bed at night, with Hannah on the bottom and Cole on the top. Being the "ma", I got to sleep on the long wooden bench. Nora and Bekah either slept on the floor or in the rocking chair. Another special time was going up there in the rain. It was so much fun to pretend we had our own little house, all cozy with the rain streaming down the windows outside and us all warm and dry on the inside, with all the lamps lit. Hannah and Cole liked it because we would send them on errands and they got to get wet! Something we worked ever so hard at during the good weather was cleaning. Shining windows. Beating rugs. Every single part of that house was scrubbed down whenever company came to help. And we made flour. We would take a brick out by the firepit, and Nora and Bekah would gather pebbles from the little creek in the woods. Then one of us would take the "pounding rock" or our well-treasured rusty railroad tie that we had found buried by the creek and we would grind the pebbles into dust, collecting it in a little container for flour. We're lucky none of us ever lost a finger, but I think the only casualty from our flour-making was a blood blister or two.