“Fire! Fire! Get out, quick!”
November 29, 1929 was a bitterly cold and icy night in Westbrook, but five-year old Phil, his parents, and grandma Georgie slept soundly, bundled under the heavy quilts Georgie loved to make. The Laviolettes were blissfully unaware anything was wrong until 9:00 the following morning when neighbors burst through their door and shouted that their roof was on fire! While the fire brigade was called, everyone rushed in to rescue what they could. They started with the most valuable items, such as the rounded glass China closet and their radio -- the only one in the neighborhood at the time.
That evening, the Portland Evening Express reported on the blaze:
Firemen were kept busy for over two hours this morning battling a blaze in the upper part of the house of William Laviolette on Mitchell Street, Westbrook.
The blaze apparently started from a spark dropped on the roof. Water lines were run up inside the house and on ladders, the firemen finally checking the fire before it damaged the lower part of the house. The damage was estimated at $300.
The newspaper got a major fact wrong. The house didn’t belong to William, but to his mother, Georgie. It was the home she worked so hard to buy during a time when home ownership was an impossible dream for most widows of her economic class. I can’t imagine the anxiety she felt watching the fire rage for two hours, fearing there would be nothing left, yet hoping firefighters could salvage it.
Phil’s notes on the incident also don’t match the newspaper’s reports. He wrote, "Faulty electrical caused a silent fire to burn between the walls on the 3rd floor during the night. By 9:00 AM in the morning the fire had created such a tremendous pressure that it blew the roof."
If faulty electrical was indeed the cause, maybe it was discovered during an insurance investigation or perhaps it was never confirmed, but something his dad William suspected and told Phil. As for the roof blowing, whether that really happened or it’s just a false memory of a young child is hard to say.
Phil and his parents “Stayed all winter at Grandfather Barr’s house while the burned house of Grandmother Laviolette was being repaired.” His grandparents lived close by on Myrtle Street. He never wrote whether Georgie went with them or stayed with extended family on Mitchell Street to oversee the extensive repairs on her home.