Fran was startled out of his trance by a loud roar from above. He leaned forward and stared up through the windshield of his car. An enormous Boeing 747 was screaming overhead as it began its final descent to Rochester International Airport, located a trifling ten miles to the northwest as the crow flies.
As Fran watched it hurriedly disappear over a treeline bordering the mythical hilly field known as “Baldy” in the near distance, the time machine swooped in, scooped him up, and transported him far back in his lifetime once more………
…….…he was at work when they managed to get a hold of him. Couldn’t have been at the factory more than an hour—possibly two—when a pretentious messenger from the corporate office came to his machining station wearing a grim frown, stepping daintily over the cement floor in his fancy wingtip shoes as though the manufacturing facility was an onerous dung pile.
Fran instinctively wondered what was wrong.
Had he screwed up on his timecard again…….or maybe someone from management was going to chew him out for being late to work the previous week when his cantankerous old car had rebelled and obstinately refused to start……
But when the snazzy-dressed “bean counter” broke the horrific news to him—that his house had caught on fire and he better rush home immediately—Fran’s heart leapt into his throat. He suddenly felt physically sick–unbelievably nauseous–though he successfully fought off the first wave of queasiness that urged him to puke right then and there on the corporate guy’s expensive brown wingtips.
Fran hurried home, naturally—screamed home….…he negotiated the normal twenty minute drive in a record fifteen minutes–and felt a ginormous thrill of relief when he spotted all four members of his family—his wife Julie and their three young sons—safely assembled on the grass in their front yard. Fran stopped to inquire whether they were okay and was gratified to hear a unanimous “Yes!”. He then turned all of his attention to the stinking, smoldering building in front of him.
August 30th, 1990.
Up until then just an innocent, self-effacing number on the Roman calendar, but from that point forward an infamous day Fran Blahnik would never be able to forget irrespective of passing time and his mightiest efforts to throw a bridle on the nightmare…..
His and Julie’s ancient house—a modest yet inherently noble dwelling which had been built in 1856 and was the oldest surviving abode in Fillmore County—was completely destroyed. Staring at the still-smoking monolith, Fran felt tears well up in his eyes. Everything he owned—every material possession he treasured and held dear—was inside that smoldering caricature of a building.
Amazingly, the shell of the venerable structure still stood tall and proud, and from the outside it really didn’t appear to be in that rough of shape. But the building’s infrastructure had been gutted so extensively by the fast-moving blaze that when wed to the heinous smoke and water damage the old edifice had incurred during futile attempts to save it, repair or remodeling was wholly out of the question.
No, he would have to bite down hard on his lip and burn down what remained of his nineteenth century house and then rebuild entirely, but where in God’s name would the unearthly sum of money needed to do that come from???
Fran stopped to consider for a moment. Y’know, it was funny how life operated sometimes..…
He had bought a cheap little oscillating fan at a farm auction earlier that summer—only paid a few dollars for the object, if memory served—and his family was using it to help cool the upstairs of their house a smidgeon during the sultry “dog days” of August. Fran thought the fan was a helluva deal at the price he paid for it, one that in good conscience he just didn’t believe he could afford to pass up.
IN GOOD CONSCIENCE, YOU SAID?!?!?!
And just what did he get in return for his miniscule initial investment……his prized steal of a purchase?
Burnt their goddamned house down with the fuckin’ diabolical little thing, that’s what!!!
Fran bit down hard on his tongue and desperately wished to God he had never seen that goddamned little fan at that goddamned miserable auction on that goddamned worthless Saturday when he had nothing goddamned better to do with his goddamned fuckin’ free time than go to a goddamned fuckin’ fuckin’ fuckin’ auction out in some godforsaken shithole of a place. He shook his head back and forth in despair and his whole body trembled like a Saharan shepherd trapped in a vicious Arctic winter.
GODDAMNED IT ALL ALREADY!!!!!!!
If there wasn’t such a thing as awful horrendously shitty luck, he—Fran Blahnik–would have no luck at all……
Fran finally built up the nerve to venture inside the gutted house to cautiously snoop around. Almost everything had been effectively destroyed by the cataclysmic fire—walls, ceilings, upstairs, furnishings—except……except miraculously, somehow the iconic ancient twelve-gauge shotgun he had inherited years ago from his father had survived the conflagration. Fran picked it up, gently opened the weapon’s magazine—peered inside to cursorily inspect for damage–then slammed the magazine shut and was astounded to discover the vintage firearm still seemed to function normally.
Again, the eternally stoic Francis Blahnik fought to stifle a tear. He had lost virtually everything he owned in this calamitous house fire, but at least all the members of his family were safe–and now to discover that his undisputed favorite material possession in the entire world was likewise intact…….that…….that was completely unexpected and a real good thing to be thankful for, no doubt.
Who knows, maybe preserving his heirloom gun from the horrors of the conflagration was somehow a favorable omen from a newly sympathetic God and a token sign of mercy for the long-suffering Fran Blahnik and his family of five. Maybe God had something significant in mind for that cherished firearm at a later date, although for the life of him Fran could not imagine just what that might be…….
Fran next set his jaw and stepped out the front door of his house, staring resolutely back at the bleak, burnt-out structure as he slowly shuffled away in the direction of his waiting family. He would rebuild on this exact same site, he vowed to himself right there on the spot.
And not only would he rebuild in time, but the next house he owned would be superior in every respect to the one that had just gone up in flames…….even if he had to do every bit of fuckin’ work on it himself to ensure that arbitrary outcome!
Fred's Soapbox 