Hot Times in the Town of Bradford
I
can remember two big fires we had in Bradford
when I was a little girl. I must have
been in the second or third grade.
Bradford had a Hotel located just behind the Hickman store. One summer day we spotted smoke boiling up
from somewhere "up town". As
usual when something untoward happens in a small town, the whole community runs
to see what is going on, and be of what service they can. Bradford didn't have a regular fire
department, nor running water as that was before our water tank was
constructed. Anyway, the hotel was in
full blaze and nothing could be done to save it.
At that time I had injured my
foot on an old rusty plow blade that was buried deep in the dirt with the point
sticking out of the ground in the school yard. An older girl, (I believe her name was Ulalia) carried me all the
way home, blood soaking the front of her dress. My Granny doctored and bandaged my foot but I couldn't walk on
it for a long time. When the hotel fire
started, all my family ran to see if they could be of help, forgetting I'd be
left alone. I sat in the front porch swing feeling very apprehensive.
We had a neighbor down
the way who had some cows and she had a bull that sometimes got out of the
pasture and of course Mrs. Williams' bull chose that time to escape. He was coming down the road just bawling
and slobbering and I just knew he would get me. I managed to get into the house and close the door, thinking he
would come charging through any minute. I was one happy girl when my family came back home.
I started school in a little
one-room cabin type building with Mrs. Wyatt as my teacher. The new school was opened while I was still
in first grade so we didn't get to keep it very long. It burned down just before Thanksgiving when I was in the fifth
grade. I remember my mom and dad
waking us kids one night saying the school was on fire. We went out onto the porch upstairs and
could see the flames shooting up into the sky. I remember I was so asleep I couldn't focus for a good while. I think some of us thought, “Oh boy, no
more school.” Our joy was short lived,
though, as classes were installed at the town hall, and some churches. The fifth and sixth grade went to the
Baptist church. The next year we went
to school in the gym, with a class in each corner of the gym. I don't think it was so very long that another
school was built, probably the one existing today....
My sister Nell was up for
Valedictorian of the senior class at that time. But the records were destroyed during the school fire and they had to make a choice based on
records from that time on. I believe
one of the Twyford boys was chosen.
And I think Nell was Salutatorian... vvv