My uncle yesterday reminded me of something that warrants an addition to the last entry. One of the things I knew. The other related item, I did not.
Just after WWII, in 1945, my father's family, including my uncle, lived in a Bronx apartment on Davidson Avenue. My father was living there at the time, presumably while he sorted out his post-infantry life. One night, as my father returned home from a late evening of galavanting (my uncle said that he did quite a lot of galvanting in those days) he came home to a well in progress fire at their apartment. He somehow was able to alert the fire department AND get his family to waken and out the winter's icy fire escape, all the more fortunate, given just how white hot the fire was, leaving nothing but the stones. His new wardrobe. Gone. His then fiance's (my mother's) engagement ring. Gone. All mementos from his time as one of the administrators of a prisoner of war camp in Florence Italy, including a portrait of him, in copper, by a German artist. Gone.
But all lives saved!
That part of the story I have long known, although I had not thought of it in conjunction with the events of the other night, specifically the part where my father's alert saved his family.
The other part, which I did not know, makes what happened the other night even more a case of cosmic synchronicity.
I am told by my uncle that refrigerator electrical fires are exceedingly rare for a variety of reasons.
The fire on Davidson Avenue all those years ago was caused by a refrigerator.
Food for thought.
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