My “bedroom” is actually just an extension of the play room down in the basement. The laundry area is also connected to my room and being a family that adheres to a strict 15-outfit a day per person policy, my mom and I spend a fair bit of our waking moments in there sorting through clothes and getting out skid marks in underwear. One of the other fine benefits of living downstairs is the fact that I get to enjoy the sounds from above in their full glory. When somebody walks through the kitchen, I am treated to loud thumping. When somebody runs through the kitchen, I hear elephants wrestling. When two humans are actually wrestling in the kitchen (it happens in this household), I hear the full wrath of God coming down upon me.
Last night, I was performing one of my hourly rituals of transferring laundry from the washer to the dryer. This lucky batch included bed sheets, socks, and a rug Koral had peed on, among other things. Juls was watching television in the next room and Clay was playing on the computer, so the only person upstairs was Colton, who was supposed to be in bed falling asleep. It was right around the point where I was pulling out the rug when I froze dead in my tracks and my heart stopped. The entire house, not just the laundry room, shook with a violent force and my chest literally vibrated for a second. The deep boom that filled the air lingered in my ears for what seemed like minutes and before my brain even had time to compute what was happening, my legs were in Emergency Mode and carrying my body upstairs.
I’ve never moved as quickly in my life as I did during those few seconds.
I was upstairs and in Colton’s room before Clay or Juls were even out of their seats. The rumble was so heavy, so consuming, that I knew it wasn’t just Colton tripping and falling down. Something else far more massive had succumbed to the force of gravity with him and my mind was racing with visions of him trapped under a bulking set of chester drawers or a massive armoire or even a collapsed roof.
You can imagine my surprise when I burst into his room and was greeted by Colton, sitting up in bed with a giant grin spread across his face, and telling my, “WHOA! That was a big explosion! It woke me up!” Clay and Juls spilled into the room moments later and we all stood there for a second looking around before my mind finally caught up with the situation again. I barked out a few orders to the kids and went to look around the rest of the house. Something, somewhere, had to be wrong in the house. The noise had sounded as if it came from upstairs, as if the entire roof was trying it’s hardest to come crashing down upon us.
And yet not a thing was amiss. None of the large object in the house had fallen to create the shudder. A few small things here and there had been knocked over due to the shock, but for the most part, everything was fine. Having made sure the kids were safe and the house wasn’t falling apart on my watch - because I’ll be damned if I’m blamed for it! - I decided to venture outside and see if maybe a car had rammed the house or something. As I stepped outside, I noticed I wasn’t the only one out searching for answers and finally I realized it wasn’t just confined to our house. Just about every single person in the neighborhood was outside, trying to figure out what had just disturbed them as well. We all stood around with a queer look on our face for a while, trying to guess what had happened. Someone thought a plane might have crashed, but I ruled that out because with most plane crashes come fires that light up the nearby night sky. Others thought maybe there had been some explosion at one of the nearby factories, but again, I figured we’d at least see a fire if that had happened. My money was on a gas explosion somewhere and literally right as the words tumbled out of my mouth, Clay got off the phone with his friend and burst with the news.
Clay: “Ryan, a house blew up down by Matt’s! It just….exploded!”
Ryan: “By Matt’s? That’s only two hundred yards away! How come we don’t see a fire?”
Around this time an entire brigade of rescue vehicles came screaming down the road and swerving around the corner. In fact, I had enough time to go get Colton out of bed and over to the window to watch them since the stream of sirens and flashing lights was almost endless. Before long, the vultures started coming in full force and by vultures I mean curious people who are only getting in the fucking way and who should have just stayed home. I can understand slowing down to look at an insane car wreck, but people who go out of their ways just to drive by the car wreck get on my nerves to no end. A cop finally pulled up alongside our house and started turning people around. Clay, Juls, and I sat on the steps listening to what he was telling people and we learned that there had been a gas leak in a nearby house for what must have been house. It built up in the garage and when the father went outside to start up his car, a spark from the engine ignited the entire place. He managed to crawl out of his car and into the street, where he was airlifted to a nearby hospital and luckily, nobody else was home at the time.
Needless to say, Clay and I were glued to the late night evening news and finally, we were able to see some pictures of the destruction. One of the first answers we got was why there was no fire blazing in the night sky - there was nothing to burn. The entire house was virtually vaporized and in its place was a pile of rubble and twigs of lumber that were smoldering with small fires. Debris was actually scattered across a few miles radii and they still won’t let us down there to take a look at it. I wanted to include some pictures along with this post, but the local news in this town makes the Spartanburg Herald Journal look like the New York Times, so I guess I’ll have to wait until they let us down there in a few days.
But don’t ever let me say again that nothing interesting happens up here.
