One time something big happened in downtown Auburn.
I was in the Auburn Avenue Theater one Saturday night watching Evel Knievel (the one with George Hamilton as Evel for crying out loud). I think I may have been in there with my brother Don. Suddenly, the movie stopped and the lights came on, subjecting everyone to sudden blindness. Amid the mumbling, booing, and other noises that erupted, a voice started apologizing to us for the inconvenience. The person went on to tell us that we needed to exit the building right away and we would be able to get a free movie pass as we left. As we joined the grumbling masses and wandered out into the night, Mr. Mullendore, the giant, imposing man that owned the theater was outside the door handing out the passes as we squeezed through the doors. I got my movie pass, but I wasn't really paying that much attention to Mr. Mullendore or the passes--I was looking at the activity at the corner. Main Street was blocked off by police with lights flashing. Nelson Jewelry was on the corner, and only a tiny little business (whose name escapes me) separated the Auburn Avenue Theater from them. When I poked my head around the corner I saw fire trucks spraying water on a fully-engulfed fire at the end of the block. This was huge and exciting beyond belief to a young boy! I looked back toward the theater and saw that Mr. Mullendore had moved away from the door but was still handing out passes. I saw an opportunity and we went back into the throng of outstretched arms twice more, scoring coveted free passes each time. My greed satisfied, I couldn't wait to get down the street to where the action was going on.
Imagine my surprise when we got down to the end of the block and found that it was The Value Store--Auburn's five-and-dime variety store--was fully engulfed in fire. My grandma Dot (Dorothy, but everyone called her Dot) worked at that store! It was Saturday night, so all the stores were closed, but I remember worrying about Grandma because that was her job. We watched the fire activity from various vantage points with wide, unblinking eyes for quite a while before it finally got dull and we reluctantly headed for home. What a story we had to tell the rest of the family!
Being a paperboy, I was out in the wee hours the next morning doing my Sunday morning work, but this time all I could think about was the fire the previous night. The more I thought about it the more I couldn't wait to pay it a visit to the scene so I could see how bad it looked in the daylight. My route took me all the way from L Street (at the east end of Auburn to Auburn Way (also known as C Street), which was only a block from the big fire. By the time I got there the sky was beginning to lighten. I was surprised at the fact that the whole place was deserted, and the only thing there to keep people out was a ring of the yellow "DO NOT CROSS" tape around it. Naturally, being the kind of person I am, I just had to explore.
It was eerily quiet, due to the fact that it was early Sunday morning. I parked my bicycle a little ways away and made my way past the barriers and into the small single door that led from the rear corner of the store out to the parking lot. Inside that door was the cash register that grandma Dot was always working at when I would pop in and say hi to her. The jar that used to display a GIVE label on the outside of it had burst, and even though a little voice in my head told me it was wrong, I pocketed the change that lay there among the shards of blackened glass. Most of the store ceiling was gone, and everything inside was charred black. Along the back wall was the former home of several fish aquariums. I stepped carefully through the rubble and broken glass, my steps making crunching noises that sounded overly loud in the deathly silent surroundings. All the aquariums were broken--no doubt from the extreme heat, and my gaze fell to the floor in front of them. There, among the broken glass and charred rubble were the many goldfish that, only the day before, had been happily swimming around in their tanks, waiting for someone to come into the store and buy them. I stared at their lifeless eyes and felt so sad. Their shiny, orange bodies were a stark contrast to their black surroundings, emphasizing the tragedy that took their lives. I was shocked strangely mesmerized by the destruction around me. There was hardly anything that had survived. I remember noticing the BB's that were everywhere, released from the confines as their containers had burned away. I walked all around the store digesting all of it, comparing what I was seeing with how it looked before. I was creeped out and excited at the same time. It was as if the slow, careful footsteps that crunched as I negotiated my way around the store echoed to the world that I was an intruder. "Police! Come, there's somebody here that shouldn't be! Police!"
When all these wild thoughts and feelings of unease got the best of me I hurried back out the door to my bicycle. As I pedaled away and I was once more relaxed, I went the long way back around the block by way of the theater I was at the night before. Riding my bicycle down the sidewalk in front of the stores, I ducked under the yellow tape and carefully rolled my bicycle up to the front of the gaping, blackened storefront that had once been The Value Store. Inside the front window a wet, dirty box containing a new, small reel-to-reel tape recorder that had only the day before proudly been on display in the large front window. I looked up and down the empty street. I quickly grabbed it and stuffed it into the empty canvas paper delivery bag across my handlebars. As I pedaled away I kept looking back, probably wistfully, and probably out of guilt for violating the sanctity of the final resting place of all those poor goldfish. Or maybe because I was now a looter.
They never did rebuild The Value Store, opting instead to tear it down and turn it into a parking lot. Grandma never did work again after that either. I can still see those goldfish and the memory of it all comes flooding back. I sure had a lot of fun with that reel-to-reel tape recorder though.
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