The Spirit of 1906 by George Washington Brooks
page 11 of 36 (30%)
page 11 of 36 (30%)
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fighting would check the march of the flames.
About this time the question dawned upon myself and neighbors as to what we should do with the more precious of our personal belongings. Mr. Joseph Weisbein, a friendly neighbor, since dead, and myself evolved a scheme to bury our belongings in the garden at the rear of my house. We assembled four trunks, packed these with silverware and wearing apparel, and some of the hardest physical work I have ever done was in burying these trunks, digging the hole with a worn out shovel and a broken spade. Then, with the help of our Chinese cook, I brought out of the cellar a baby's buggy which had lain forgotten and unused for several years. We loaded it with bedding and other things and trundled it down the hill to Lobos Park near the bay shore. Trip after trip we made before we decided that we had all that was necessary or, rather, absolutely needful for a camp existence. The next question was shelter. After prowling around the partially quake-wrecked gas works, I found some pieces of timber out of which I constructed a sort of framework for a large A tent. I borrowed a hatchet from another refugee, a stranger in adversity. The disaster had broken down the barriers of formality and we all lent a willing hand each to the other. I secured some spare rope and got up my framework. This was covered to windward with some Indian blankets sewn together by those we were trying to make comfortable. Under that hastily erected rude shelter nineteen people slept on mattresses that night. I did not have the good fortune to sleep. Sleep would not come to "knit up the ravelled sleeve of care," and through the long hours I watched the intermittent flashes, heard the noises and in the darkness went through the added suffering of overstrained nerves. A neighbor, J. F. D. Curtis, since dead, but at that time and for years after the manager of the "Providence Washington Insurance Company," |
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