This is the seventh article in our series of “Looking Back…Memories From Anna Mary Etter.” Anna Mary passed away November 20, 2013 at the age of 100. In 1997 at the age of 84, granddaughter Roxy (Jones) Chivington recorded Anna Mary’s recollections of growing up. Daughter Jean McKibben is sharing these stories with the eNews.
Howard and Anna Mary with Zora (Howard’s stepmother) and Samuel Etter (Howard’s father).” I’m On Fire”
I feel it’s only by the Grace of God I lived to be an adult. When I was 17 I received terrible burns. I worked in Kalida for Mr. Reynolds when it happened. I had been turning the wick up on an Aladdin kerosene lamp so I could finish dishes, but now that they were done, I turned the wick down. As I began to fill the lamp with more kerosene, a flame came out of the hole where I was filling the lamp and the can that I was pouring the oil from caught on fire. I dropped it, but the oil splashed back up on my dress. No one was in the house because Mr. Reynold’s daughter, with her baby had gone to Hillsboro to take hogs to the fair with her brothers. All I could think of was to get out of the house before I caught it on fire.
It just happened that Mr. Reynolds had milked the cows and he had just finished putting the milk through the separator in the basement of the house and was returning to the barn, which was quite a distance from the house, with the two large buckets of milk. He was near the old pump that was about half full with water when I came running out of the house. He came and grabbed me, threw me down, and poured that water on me. When he did so I had burned my hand and a big chunk of skin peeled off and that’s the only part of my body that hurt. I went in the house and walked the floor back and forth holding my painful burnt hand.
Mr. Reynolds called his son that lived down the road and told him to come down. Mr. Reynolds kept trying to get me to go in and lie down on the bed, but I just kept saying that I was all right. Finally he said “Babe, you’ve got to go in on the bed because your dress skirt is all burned off you.” Here it was all burned off but just a little strip but I hadn’t realized it and I didn’t hurt anywhere but my hand. Mr. Reynolds and his son wrapped me in a sheet and took me to the doctor in Kalida.
My folks were then called, and they came to the doctor’s office and took me home. My left side was very badly burned below my waist. Thank God, it was probably the tight belt I had on that kept the fire from burning me above the waist or I wouldn’t be here to tell this story.
(Jean’s Note) Mom was deathly afraid of fire after that. Many years later the neighbor’s house caught on fire and Mom called med. She was frantic when she told me about the fire so I hurried over to her house. I was just a little girl when I saw the deep scars on her leg. When I asked her about them she told me, but I didn’t understand. —To be continued, previous “Looking Back” articles can be found under the “Community” tab on the eNews homepage.
