Persons attempting to find a "text" in this [story] will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a "subtext" in it will be banished; persons attempting to explain, interpret, explicate, analyze, deconstruct, or otherwise "understand" it will be exiled to a desert island in the company only of other explainers.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR - Wendell Berry's introduction to Jayber Crow.
This article was posted to Jayber on 8 July 2004 by to the following categories: Feature, Stories.
An audio version of this article is also available.
The house next door to us exploded. It's not very often I get to write that! Mandy and I woke up very early this morning to a loud blast that blew out the windows on one side of our house, knocked pictures off the wall, smashed our fence, and burned our yard.
After we woke up and saw that the neighborhood was glowing orange from the resulting fire, I immediately called 911 and looked out one of the windows on the side of our house to find that the house next door was enfulfed in flames--all two stories of it! It only took the fire a couple of minutes before all walls of the house completely burned down. The only thing left standing ended up being the chimney.
Mandy and I got out of the house quickly in case it was natural gas, and on the off-chance that each house on the block was going to start blowing up like popcorn. Out on the street, people starting gathering. Some even woke up after hearing the loud boom from almost a mile away. Fortunately, no one was injured as the family that lived in the house was out of town. Thank God.
In case you're interested, here's some more photos of all the excitement.