Metuchen Edison History Features

Recollections of

Boyhood Days

In Old Metuchen

By

David Trumbull Marshall

Published by The Case Publishing Co., Flushing NY 1930

(Second Edition)- (c) 1930

The Barn Burns.

When I was about 15 years old one Town Election Day in April I had a heavy cold and had to stay in bed.

About three o'clock in the afternoon some one cried fire!

I got out in time to see that the whole roof of our large barn was ablaze.

The wind was blowing strongly from the northwest. Our barn stood on the south side of the railroad, about a hundred feet from the tracks. Mr. Ayers, who lived on the north side of the railroad, had seen the fire when it first started and had run over. He tried to get our two cows out but was unable to do so.

The haymow was half full of hay and the fire blew down and out the front door of the barn, which faced south, so quickly that it was almost like an explosion.

The chickens got out of the barn but the two cows and a big pig were burned.

The barn had no cellar under it, so after the fire there lay on the ground two roast cows and that fat pig.

Since I was a very little boy pretty much every house and barn close to the railroad had burned; set on fire by sparks from locomotives.

The railroad company paid my father a fair price for the two cows and the pig, and I believe paid Mr. Wright Robins, the owner of the barn, for the barn.

One day when I was seven years old and my little brother Bruyn was six, the house which stood on the northwest corner of the Main Street crossing, took fire from sparks and burned to the ground. It was a great day for us two kids.

At that time the crossing was at grade.

The other fires which created much excitement in Metuchen were the burning of the Gilbert house and the Reed house, both at the same time. Mr. Gilbert had some kind of a gasoline gas-lighting system in his house. I believe there was a gasoline tank in the front yard underground. The house stood on a steep slope. The kitchen was in the basement.

One morning gas flowed in from the tank into the basement kitchen and when it reached the kitchen range there was an explosion and the colored cook was burned to death.

Mrs. Reed's house, which was just east of Gilbert's, also burned.

I was too young to be allowed to run from the west end of Metuchen to the east end to Gilbert's fire.

My father took me and my little brother the next day to see the still smoking ruins. It was the first time I had seen the ruins of a house where the fire had destroyed everything burnable.

I expected to see a heap of ashes like the heap of coal ashes in our back yard. A heap peaked up like a mountain.

When a wooden house burns there are few ashes. Most of the ashes go up with the smoke.

The old house which we vacated when the Lehigh Valley Railroad went through our property, caught fire from sparks from the Pennsylvania Railroad nearby. I think a country kid would rather go to a fire than to any other kind of an entertainment.

In the country where there are no police and there is a volunteer fire department everyone is expected to pitch in and help.

Such ludicrous things as throwing looking glasses out of windows and carrying mattresses down-stairs give food for laughter and the interminable stories about "how I done it" and "how Ike nearly got burned up," which furnish material for the outfit which "sets" around the stove at the country store.