Stories from my grandmother - STORY ONE

I realize it has taken me longer to post this than I had planned. I have been swamped and I apologize. Without further delay, here it goes.

Intro: Eerie as this story is, I love to hear my grandmother tell it. She said, "Now, why do you want to hear this story again...it gives me chills to tell it." I told her that I was weird, I guess, but that I just love to hear her voice when she tells it. She makes me feel like I was there. That is why (I guess and hope) that I love hearing her tell this. (This is told from her point of view.)

One afternoon, while doing some house cleaning, I went outside to beat some rugs. The kids [my mother, aunt, and uncles] wanted to go down to the little service station to get a candy bar. On any other day, I would have given them a little money for a treat and they would have walked down to the store and returned to the house, with candy bar in hand. However, I was busy this day, and I kept telling the kids to wait a few minutes and that they could go later. A few minutes after me telling them to wait, I heard an explosion. I looked out through the yard and saw the service station at the bottom of the hill on fire. I told my friend, who was visiting, to take the kids to the top of the hill behind the house. Then, I saw a ball of fire coming up the hill toward the house. As it got closer, I realized that it was a man....a man on fire! I threw a blanket around the man to put the fire out. He was still ALIVE! His skin was charred and I am sure he was in extreme pain. Dr. Frazier was nearby and he came town to tend to the man. Dr. Frazier tried to give the man a shot, but was unable to because the man's skin was so damaged from the fire. The man asked for a glass of water. I ran and got him the water and the doctor gave him some pain pills. I think that he passed away before they got him to the hospital.

Later, we found out why the service station had went up in a blaze. A group of 'gypsies' had been painting houses and doing repairs through out the town. They needed some work done on their van. While Mr. Puckett, the owner of the service station, was doing repairs on the van, he needed to do some welding. The 'gypsies' didn't tell Mr. Puckett that there was paint, paint thinner, and tar in the back of the van. When he began welding, the station exploded. If I remember correctly, the only way they were able to identify Mr. Puckett after the accident was by his dentures and a belt buckle. After the accident, they also found the hand of a man who was in the station during the explosion far from the scene.

To this day, I think that Mamaw's maternal instincts kicked in and warned her about the events. Maternal instincts and God saved her children from the blaze.

I know that I can't tell this story as vividly as she can, but I gave it a shot.