Lou’s View – June 4, 2015

Guns Blazing

by Lou Bernard

Another one from the Clinton County Times.

You have to love the Clinton County Times. Based on Bellefonte Avenue, they had a pretty broad view of what was considered news. In the early 1900s, they ran all sorts of fun stories—I can generally get a great column by looking at random through the Times from 1900 to 1920 or so.

On May 29, 1903, they ran one from my neighborhood.

The Bennetts were a family who lived at 464 South Fairview Street. When Fairview Street was settled, the wealthy lived on the uphill side because it had the best view. Laborers and servant lived on the downhill side. So did the Bennetts, which was in character—Harry Bennett was a machinist for the paper company right down the street—He probably walked to work. He had four daughters and a son.

In 1903, his daughter Vera was about five years old.

One morning in May, she was playing in the house. She had a toy pistol, the kind that ran on caps that flare up. When the trigger is pulled, the hammer cracks down on the cap, making the popping sound.

Little Vera had decided to go it one better—She found some matches, and put them in the pistol, snapping them into flame with the hammer. A child was allowed to get her hands on a toy gun and matches—It was a different time. Safety hadn’t been invented yet.

In the past century, one thing has definitely not changed—Children and matches are not a good combination. Vera was popping the matches with her toy gun, and she chose to do this in maybe the worst possible place—Beside a dangling curtain.

This worked out about as well as you’d expect.

The Times reported,”Mr. Bennett’s little five year old daughter was amusing herself by cracking match heads in a toy pistol when a flame shot up from one of them and caught a lace curtain. The curtain burned quickly and other articles in the room were soon ablaze and the situation became alarming.”

The Clinton County Times had a cute way of phrasing these things.

Harry Bennett, the dad, had been napping for a while. Literally napping—He was asleep in the next room. He woke up when Vera called for him, which had to be an interesting grinding of mental gears—When he’d gone to sleep, his children were all happily playing in the next room, and suddenly everything was on fire.

Bennett was not one to panic—Or if he was, he didn’t do it for very long. He did what most people would do, when confronted with a fire in the house—He ran for water. He grabbed a bucket, and began to throw water on the fire. The paper reported that he had “The assistance of other members of the household,” which basically meant his family. It was a good thing they’d had five kids.

They got the fire out within a few minutes. The Times said that “Word was sent to the fire department,” which, in those days, probably did not consist of a quick call to 911. Someone notified the firemen—Probably on foot, by word of mouth—And the fire department came up after it was all over, to discover that they weren’t really necessary. With the way things tended to happen back then, it was fortunate when the fire department showed up during the same week as a fire.

Presumably, the pistol and the matches were taken away from Vera. These days, the incident would land you on three or four government watchlists, but back then she probably just got a stern talking-to.

The family grew up, and in 1990, Vera passed away—She was the last survivor of the family. She worked for the Kistler Tannery as an adult, which also burned down at one point, but I don’t guess that either Vera or toy guns were involved. She was also a state historian in New York as an adult, and maybe she’d be happy to know that she and her little toy gun made history once, too.