Day CIII

Smoking in bed

     If you smoked before going to sleep, you needed to get up, and put your butt out in the bucket closest to you. Bunk mates made sure we didn’t doze off with a lit butt in our hand. I don’t remember anybody ever setting a bunk on fire on account of it. Besides, there were bed checks, to make sure everybody was accounted for, and if you got caught sleeping with a lit butt, you were in deep, deep doo doo… the deepest doo doo. Imho going to bed with a lit butt is…well, it’s really just plain stupid. No apology!

     I remember once, when we were kids, my stepfather threw his old man out of our home. It was the middle of the night, when suddenly:

      “Fire! Cough, cough! Fire! Wake up! Cough, cough! Get up!”

     Mom was hacking, and screaming, as she woke us up to a horrible commotion. The smoke was all over the place, it looked like London in one of those old Sherlock Holmes movies. You know where people are moving around like zombies in a clinging mist…the fog. This was real smoke, though, not some dumb movie. It was just so surreal, but pop’s screaming:

      “Ya stupid old man!”

at his father, brought us to our senses, and reality. He and mom were screaming at the same time, he to his dad, and she to us. The smoke was everywhere, and within minutes New York’s Finest was in our home. The smoke flowed out into the hallway, and neighbors called the Fire Department. As soon as they came in they sprayed CO2 on the bed, under the bed, all over the room, and made sure the fire was out. The place stunk, and we had to leave.