Father came home very late that night.

He had left for the meeting after the evening meal in an already foul mood and Mother said that he would be back late.  She knew that unless he finally convinced the others, he would return angry, his anger inflamed by pints of the watered down wine served at the pub where the meetings were held.  So she kept us up late into the evening hoping that the presence of his children would ease his frustration, but finally could wait no longer and all three of us went to bed.  She sent Mitzi to her room, but kept me with her in her bed. Worried, she wanted me near to deflect and soften his anger when he came home.

That evening in 1939 they were going to decide on the fuel powered fire pump for the village. The manual one, purchased after the big fire in 1882, was not powerful enough to get the water to the outlying buildings, which had been added to the village in the last century. It would not even serve the buildings near the center since it took much too long to get the pump to the cistern, hook up the hoses and manually pump the water to the fire.

The majority of the villagers living near the center of the village were arguing for the smaller pump, mounted on a platform to be carried by a group of firemen from the firehouse to the cistern.  To this group, cost was the professed reason but they were accused of duplicity by those living at the edges of the village. The charge was that they opted for the smaller and therefore cheaper pump, knowing that it would do for them.

Father, who sided with the minority and was their most vocal supporter, argued for a more powerful and therefore more expensive version. This infuriated the central villagers who accused him of breaking ranks, since his buildings, like theirs, were near the center just behind the church and the parsonage. Father's argument was that only a more powerful pump could deliver water to the most distant buildings. This heavier pump would have to be on a rubber wheeled cart which could quickly be rolled to the central cistern, the only real source of water.  Naturally, it cost more but according to his argument, the smaller pump would not serve the entire village and therefore was not a fair choice.

The meetings started in late fall after all the big farming chores were out of the way. Most of them ended in heated arguments. They were held in the Jaklitsch pub and went on for months, no doubt to the benefit of Franz Jaklitsch, the village leader and owner of the pub, since Father and all others consumed a lot of wine and returned home drunk after each meeting. My sister Mitzi and I would retrace his steps the following morning and count the number of rest stops his bottom impressed in the usually new snow on the way home.

But on that night, the final decision was to be made after another round of animated discussions.  Mother knew from her friends that he was losing the battle and that the prospect of convincing the opposition this evening was very small. He was going to be very late and angry and she wanted me near her to help calm his anger and divert it from being directed at her when he finally returned home.

She woke me when he was still fumbling with the front door. But instead of coming to the bedroom, he went into the kitchen slamming the door behind him. Then there was silence and after a while, a mighty crash that shook the walls.

“Go see what he did”, she ordered. When the kitchen door opened he expected Mother, but seeing me, his expression changed to a friendly grin. "Go get the shoe and then back to bed".

He had taken off his shoe and thrown it against the wall. He was relieving his frustration. I did as he asked and left the kitchen to report to anxious Mother.  Not long after that there was another crash. Again I was sent to the kitchen and again I was ordered to fetch the shoe. This time I was told to go to sleep and not come back.

How mother coped for the rest of the night I do not remember. But that was the evening when they had decided to buy the wrong pump. The only concession to the minority was a rubber wheeled cart for the smaller pump.

There were some meetings after that but he stayed away. His supporters came to his shop to talk about the coming vindication. Their moment came when the new pump arrived and was put to the test.

- - - -

The fire of August 2, 1882 destroyed fifteen houses and their adjacent barns and stables. It was started by lightning and there being no organized fire fighting and all the buildings being close together, the fire could not be stopped. Flying embers carried the flames from roof to roof; easy prey for any home, barn or stable covered with home made wooden shingles. All owners could do was to rescue the contents of the main house and the adjacent structures before the unstoppable and all consuming flames took hold. The fire stopped on its own accord only when the embers could no longer ignite the more distant structures.

What was left were the badly charred stone walls of the single story structure, upon which a new set of roof beams could be constructed. And, instead of wood shingles the new covering was reddish-brown terra cotta tile which had long been the roofing material in other parts of Slovenia.

Most, except one of the destroyed houses, were rebuilt within a year or at least covered with a new roof and therefore habitable. But it was the first winter following the fire that brought discomfort not only for the victims but also for the relatives and neighbors who put them up.  Fortunately, the livestock was saved and the crops, vital for survival until next fall and essential for seeding the new growth in the spring had not yet been harvested and a future food shortage was thereby avoided.

The exception to the reconstruction was the house at Number 30 which was rebuilt into the first village school that opened in October 1884. It contained one large school room and a separate apartment for the teacher in the other half of the house.

It was this fire that convinced the villagers to appoint a fire chief, establish a fire brigade and purchase the manually operated pump, mounted on the platform of a horse drawn cart. This was also the time when they built the cistern, to collect and store an abundant supply of water for the pump. Unfortunately, none of this was put to the test until the succession of three fires in the 1930’s.

The fire on March 10, 1931 destroyed the barn and part of the main house of the fire chief Karl Schaffer only a short distance from the firehouse across the square. Total destruction of the house was prevented only because the firehouse was so near and the pump was put to work quickly after the big bell brought the firemen to the scene.

But it took two more fires, and five more years of urging by Schaffer to get the new pump and modernize the equipment in the firehouse which had been built together with the first village school. Both buildings as well as the cistern in the village bowl for storing the water for the pump, were completed in October 1884 and the fire brigade, formed after the big fire in 1882, took possession of the firehouse the following spring. The fire brigade, which included all able men in the village, was trained by Karl Schaffer, the first Fire Chief of Grčarice (Masern) and father of the present Karl, who took over when his father died.

- - - -

The meetings to do with the new pump started after the fire in the early fall of 1938 burned to the ground Katharina's small wooden house on the hill at the southeast end of the village. Katharina's fire was the third in seven years and I remember it well.  The second fire, two years before in the summer of 1936, partly destroyed the barn of Ferdinand Tscherne, at the southwest end of the village, equally remote from the center, as was Katharina's house.

Father attended the meetings of all tax paying landowners in the village. But regardless of how much land you owned if any, Franz Jaklitsch never turned away anyone who had money for wine.  Women were not allowed to attend.

The meetings filled the public room of the Jaklitsch tavern with the men smoking and drinking quantities of wine from quarter liter glass pitchers with a line scratched into the glass to show the quarter liter mark. There was no electricity in the village and the light from the single kerosene lamp in the center of the ceiling struggled through the thick smoke. The lamp was a marvel and the only one of its kind in the village. Its light came from a silk membrane kept glowing-white by kerosene vapor from the chamber of the lamp.  During the long meetings, the pressure had to be maintained with a built-in small hand pump which, if not carefully used, would fracture the delicate pear shaped membrane that could not be replaced very quickly.

In that case, standard wick burning kerosene lamps were brought to the tables.  In the dimmer light, the blotches of spilled wine and misdirected aims at the spittoons were no longer visible in the sawdust from the village sawmill covering the floor.

Young women hired for the occasion served the wine from two barrels in the adjacent room, which also contained the small dry goods store. The barrels were behind the counter and the wine in one of these was diluted and used only when the drinkers could no longer tell the difference.

Wine, tobacco and cigarettes were dispensed by Regina, the wife of Franz.  The ever-attentive Regina, always on the look out for empty pitchers and short cigarette stubs, carefully recorded replacements while her husband kept the heated meeting under reasonable control. He had considerable standing in the village in part because he was the most popular innkeeper of three by providing easy credit. But most of this standing was because, even in 1938, he was already chief of our branch of the "Kulturbund", the illegal association whose mission was to convert the ethnic Germans of Slovenia to the Nazi cause.  But more on that later.

The undisputed origin of the Schaffer fire was spontaneous combustion of freshly mowed grass left on the wooden floor of the barn. According to Schaffer, the grass had been left there by his much abused second wife Maria, whom he publicly blamed for the accident.

But according to Mother, who was very friendly with Maria, a Slovene born Miklitsch and who like Mother was a village outsider, the grass was left there by Schaffer himself only months after he purchased an insurance policy on the house and the adjacent structures including the barn.  The fire was deemed an accident by the insurer and the payment was sufficient to rebuild the barn and repair the parts of the damaged house. This included a new roof for the house and a complete refurbishment of the outside walls, and with these improvements the Schaffer house became the most attractive on the square in the village center.

Karl Schaffer was a huge man with a rascally upturned thick mustache and an imposing presence. In his frequently drunken state from the wine of the Jaklitsch pub, at times during a workday and certainly on weekends, he not only terrorized his wife and two teenage sons from a prior marriage, but also anyone near him.

On the way home from the pub, drunk and stumbling, the boys of the village, myself included, would tease him from a safe distance and woe to those who were caught.  And some of us, the littler ones, were. The older boys would hold us until he came near then let us go at the last moment. When he caught one of us, his hand was heavy on the behind and hurt quite a bit. Another thrashing came afterwards from our parents for not leaving the man alone. We, of course, had said nothing but they heard it from the big boys who ran to tell.

He also took liberties with the ladies who had not learned to give him a wide berth when they saw him coming. Once home, he would beat his wife who, after escaping his grip, would come to Mother and stay until he slept off the wine.
    
But when sober, he projected a commanding presence and his volunteer firemen jumped to his booming orders during their frequent practice.  Their brass helmets with purple braiding and chain chinstraps, normally hanging on hooks below brass nameplates in the firehouse, were always polished to a gloss, as were the brass insignia on their uniform jackets. So was the brass enclosure and the other trimmings of the fire pump on top of the horse drawn carriage with its large, steel rimmed, red painted wooden wheels.  In action, the pump was operated, see-saw fashion, by four husky firemen, two on either end of the actuating bar and who were replaced with rested mates when they tired.

These practices were always a great show for all, especially for us kids.  On such events we were allowed into the firehouse and to climb on to the pump carriage with even the fire chief forgetting our former taunts.  After such practices, Schaffer and his closest buddies all went to the Jaklitsch pub to unwind and get drunk all over again.

According to Mother, on the day of the Schaffer fire, the Chief and his team performed magnificently. The fire alarm bell of the church, the largest of three, was rung, the trumpet was sounded and most of the firemen assembled quickly.  The burning barn was only 200 meters from the main water cistern and an equal distance downhill from the firehouse and with most firemen on hand, they quickly pulled the pump carriage into place. Since the barn could not be saved, they concentrated on keeping the fire under control to prevent it from spreading.

Father, Mother, my sister and my paternal grandmother were watching from our neighbor's back yard, which had a clear view of the adjacent Schaffer property.  Watching with them was our neighbor, Mathias Primosch, a bachelor who lived in the house of the brother who, like so many others in the village, had left for America in the early 1910's for the better life.  Later on in the 30's Mathias, known as Mattl, who in his perpetual solitude welcomed my frequent visits and had taken a liking to me, told me stories of his youth and of events in the village. And in 1941, after one of our many times together, a serious lapse of judgment on his part nearly caused my death.  But this is also part of another story.

Both Father and Matthias were of prime age for being volunteer firemen were it not for their physical handicap.  Father was 37 and Mathias was 51. Mathias had a perpetual sore in his lower left leg, which made him limp badly and walk only with the help of a cane. The sore started in his youth supposedly after wading in flood waters of the overflowing cistern which happened every spring as a result of the melting snow.
   
Father had only one leg, having had the right one amputated after a freak accident in 1918 at age 25.  He cut himself in the knee; the wound festered and the leg was amputated in the military hospital in Ljubljana. This happened at the end of WW I, after spending years in the trenches of the Northern Italian front where he had been a battlefield soldier in the Imperial Austrian Army.

As the firemen struggled to prevent the fire from spreading to the main house, they were forced to pay less attention to the ever more fiercely burning barn.  In no time the draft created by the fire carried glowing embers high into the sky only to let them drop on the various nearby roofs. Fortunately, most of them were now tiled except the roof of our barn, which was still covered with wooden shingles.  And since the roof was not pitched enough, some embers lay in place instead of rolling off. It rapidly became apparent that unless something was done quickly, our barn would also be burning soon.

There was, of course no chance of diverting the firemen and their water hoses from the burning Schaffer complex.  But calls for help from Father’s small group did divert others from the main attraction and they came with ladders and buckets. Father, whose lack of one leg was no hindrance to his agility, was soon on the roof with a broom, sweeping off glowing embers. With water from buckets that were handed to him from down the ladder, he doused areas about to start burning.  While he was struggling on one side of the roof, Mattl, in spite of his troubled leg, was busy on the other.
 
When after several hours, the fire finally subsided and the embers stopped flying, the two exhausted but victorious invalids came down from their rooftop battlefields.  Mattl made it down unscathed, but Father slipped on the ladder. He came tumbling down, breaking the fall by trying to cling to the rungs of ladder.  At the bottom he brought down Mother who tried to catch him. But apart from two broken ribs and badly bruised hands he and Mattl saved our barn and very likely, the spread of the fire to the main house and other neighbors on our side of the Schaffer disaster.
 
Similar heroics were performed on roofs of buildings on the other side of the fire chief’s barn; however, no building with a thatched or wood shingled roof was as near the fire as was Father’s barn.  And no one was hurt.

Schaffer’s fire smoldered and kept his firemen on guard for several days. But it took two more fires and four more years of the chief's urging before the assembly of villagers was persuaded to modernize the fire department and get a modern, fuel powered pump. And in this, as became apparent later, the village had made the wrong choice.

- - - -

The Tscherne fire, two years later in 1936, was started midday by a bolt of lightning during one of the summer storms that frequently came at great speed across the hills to the south. According to Tscherne, when lightning struck the barn, it came as a ball of fire through the shingled roof, spinning across the floor and out the wide open barn door, leaving fire in its wake. Fortunately, the heavy rain extinguished the burning shingles, while Tscherne and his sons managed with buckets of water from a nearby rain barrel to put out the catching fire left by the spinning ball on its way out of the barn.

Had it not been for the heavy rain and the presence of Tscherne and his sons, his barn and nearby house would have burned to the ground. The fire brigade of the village would have been unable to save either his barn or his house.

Katharina's house was the last of the three fires and the one I saw with my own eyes. The fire happened in the middle of the night and was already burning brightly when I was shaken awake by Mitzi, my eight years older sister, with whom I shared the bedroom and bed.

She too, had heard the bell and the trumpet, but was told by Mother to stay in her room.  When she shook me awake, the room seemed unusually bright and she said she wanted me to see the fire. She lifted me up because I was frightened and carried me to the window. The flames licking the sky were blinding my sleepy eyes, making me cry out and wriggle to get away.  But only for a short moment. This was a spectacle not to be missed by this seven-year old as an experience to embellish on when telling it to my playmates as soon as I had the chance.

We watched until Mother came in and sent us back to bed. She and Father had walked the short distance up to the village square to join others watching the firemen in action.  They, like the others, had been awakened by the church bell and the trumpet blown by Karl Schaffer, calling his men into action.  This included getting the heavy wagon with its pump and hoses to the village water reservoir, directly across from the window at the back of our house from which Mitzi and I were watching the fire. But by the time all of this came into our view, the roof of Katharina's house was beginning to cave in and the flying embers were like fireworks in the sky. In the lit surroundings of the house there were the moving figures of what must have been Katharina and Alois, her husband, her two young sons and neighbors. Schaffer and his firemen were still struggling with the much-rehearsed task of getting their equipment in place when the entire structure collapsed.

- - - -

The new pump arrived in late spring of 1939. Word came via a messenger on a bicycle that the pump was sitting on the platform at the railroad station in Gottschee city. Plans for the festive reception of the pump had been worked out in advance by Jaklitsch and Schaffer and were now expeditiously put into action.

Jaklitsch cycled to town to finalize the arrangements for taking possession of the pump. After he returned, he organized a wagon with a team of horses and driver that was to leave the village early on the following morning on the two hour journey to the station and return with the pump around noon.

Meanwhile, Schaffer labored all day in organizing the reception. Young women decorated the archway entrance to the village with flowers. It had been created from slender willows especially for this event.  Jaklitsch made sure that the wagon and horses were also suitably decorated. The lookouts, in the church steeple long before the expected arrival, were to ring the alarm bell at the first sighting of the wagon. The firemen, in full formal dress were to take up their assigned position on either side of the street entering the village and follow the wagon in parade step to the firehouse. There they were to unload the engine and both Jaklitsch and Schaffer were to give a short speech. Father Rozman, our village priest was to say a prayer, bless the pump and sprinkle it with holy water.

The bigger boys agreed to beat the lookout by waiting for the wagon way out of line of sight from the openings in the steeple.  We, the little ones were, as was usual, forbidden to join but were tagging along nevertheless, albeit at a safe distance.
  
All worked as planned except for a false alarm.  Another wagon was making its way toward the village and was mistaken by the big boys for the expected vehicle.  Their yelling galvanized the little ones who ran toward the village and the steeple lookout, not to be outdone, started ringing the bell. The firemen and the others of the reception party hurried into their assigned positions but their hustle became only another drill when the wrong wagon came into sight. After that, the steeple lookout was instructed by Schaffer to ring the bell only after the correct vehicle was positively identified by him personally.

Eventually, all came off without another hitch. The entire village had assembled for this momentous event, momentous if for no other reason than giving everyone an excuse to interrupt the daily routine in the fields and stables.  Of course, the schoolchildren were given the day off. After the reverend Father Rozman blessed the pump and sprinkled holy water, the pump was moved behind closed doors of the firehouse and the crowd dispersed.  The women went home but most of the men joined the firemen at the Jaklitsch inn to celebrate the arrival with wine at half price for the occasion.  Josef Primosch was invited by Jaklitsch to play his accordion. his reward was all the wine he could drink, which shortened his playing considerably since he got drunk very quickly even on the watered down stuff and fell asleep.  Schaffer used the time to instruct his firemen on the sequence of events for the coming Sunday after Mass when the new pump was to shine in a premier performance.

First, however, it needed to be checked over and tested out. This was scheduled for the following Saturday.

- - - -

Since early morning on that day, the firehouse was kept open with a fireman keeping a watchful eye on the new pump in the middle of the floor. The carriage with the old pump had been moved outside and we, the little ones, were no longer prevented from climbing all over it.
 
More firemen and others kept arriving, all waiting for Schaffer who was late sleeping off last night's wine.  Finally, the pump was moved outside the firehouse where its stainless steel parts gleamed in the morning sun and where the villagers were now crowding and pushing each other, all eager to inspect and admire the awesome machine. Everyone came except Father. He wanted nothing to do with it.

The first part of the test was to start the engine.  Schaffer made some adjustments and then ordered his firemen to turn the starting crank but the engine would not start. Crank it faster, crank it slower, turn up the choke, turn back the throttle yelled Schaffer, who finally sent for Jaklitsch who proved to be of no help. The firemen kept the crowd at a distance but being small I watched the progressively more animated scene up front from in between the legs of grown-ups.

Finally Jaklitsch said, "get Tschinkel". Schaffer agreed and spotting me among the legs, ordered with what to me seemed the sweetest of words; "get your father".

Out of breath I found him in his shop and proudly conveyed the chief’s request.  He asked some detailed questions but finally sent me back with a firm "No".

I reported to Schaffer who yelled some obscenities and they took up the cranking with renewed vigor, again without results.  Once more, he yelled at me: "get your father".  And again Father sent me back with the same "No".
 
"He does not want to come", I stammered, disillusioned that my father kept rejecting a lifetime opportunity to make his son truly proud. Jaklitsch conferred with Schaffer and finally announced "let’s get him ourselves". A small crowd followed the two of them.

I ran ahead to tell him they were coming. When the two of them entered his shop he told me and the others to wait outside and closed the door.

We heard fragments of a heated discussion including some pleading, boisterous from Schaffer but calmly persuasive from Jaklitsch. Father said very little. Finally, the door opened and Jaklitsch announced "he is coming".

I walked next to him, holding on to the longer of two crutches as always when I was with him.  But this time was different. He was called on to do what no one else in the village could and I was basking in the glory of my father.

I was allowed to be with him while he worked. It did not take him long. He looked at the manual, adjusted some knobs and gave instructions to Schaffer, while the surrounding crowd, except for some snide remarks from those not friendly to him, was quietly watching. When he finally ordered cranking, the engine responded after a few turns and finally revved to high speed, ejecting a cloud of black smoke. The crowd responded with cheers and I proudly looked around, gripping even more tightly his longer crutch.

He played with the speed, finally turned the engine off and nodded to Schaffer as if to tell him "it’s yours". Jaklitsch and Schaffer shook his hand and Schaffer insisted that he show him the starting procedure. After a few successful tries, Father said, "let’s go home".

I really wanted to stay, but willingly I went with him. After all he had just done what no other father could do. Back in the shop, he saw me fidgeting.  When he finally said, "you can go", I ran as fast as I could.

- - - -

The Saturday test was much more than just a rehearsal for the Sunday performance.  At the firehouse, surrounded at a respectable distance by villagers of all ages, Schaffer shaped his team by assigning new duties and changing existing ones.  He worked out a new signaling procedure using his trumpet together with hand signals, now that his booming voice had to compete with the roar of the engine.  He appointed a team responsible for engine operation and the handling of levers and valves controlling the pump. Another team was assigned to the pump cart and its brake, needed due to the almost frictionless rubber wheels. This was particularly important since most of the way from the firehouse to the cistern was downhill. The hose team was assigned pairs of younger men, capable of connecting and rolling out each needed hose reel at great speed.
 
When Schaffer was satisfied he gave the order to start live testing at the cistern.  The carriage team did well and the brake kept the downhill speed under control.  The big hose from the cistern to the pump was connected quickly as was a length of hose with the nozzle at the end. On Schaffer’s signal, the engine was started and on another signal, the lever engaging the pump was pulled.  The engine slowed a bit as it began pumping and all watched the water progressing down the hose toward the nozzle.  When it emerged, it surprised the two nozzle holders who had to struggle with its willful stream. The men had never experienced such force.

The roar of the engine and general commotion brought out much of the village and Schaffer proudly demonstrated the performance of his new equipment. The nozzle was directed straight up and it seemed the stream reached the height of the church steeple.  It was directed into the slope of the ground surrounding the cistern where it dug a deep hole the depth of which we little ones tried to measure with sticks the next day. The test was meant to establish the force of the stream to break down obstructions to get the water to where it was needed. All the onlookers were delighted in the overwhelmingly superior performance of the new pump.
  
Schaffer practiced with his team by shutting down and testing with some additional reels of hoses.  After that, he ordered a retreat to the firehouse and a full rehearsal of a fire drill starting at the beginning. His firemen, thrilled with their new power, performed with great enthusiasm. Schaffer was satisfied and certain of the success of tomorrow’s performance. So was Franz Jaklitsch and together that Saturday evening, without Father, they celebrated in advance with many quarter liter pitchers of wine the glory they would reap the following day after Mass.

- - - -

The church on the following morning was packed. This was markedly different from the usual Sunday service when the benches were only half filled and then mostly with womenfolk and their young.

But as was usual, the husbands, fathers and grown sons, even on this occasion, insisted on staying in the graveled courtyard in front of the main doors where with muffled voices they conducted important discussions. During Mass, they would pause only for the sermon, barely audible through the open doors, and when the sexton Michitsch announced the transformation of bread and wine into the Holy Host, by sounding the small bell. Three solemn single strokes, each about three seconds apart, followed after a short pause by another set of three strokes.

Then, they all would kneel on one knee and with bowed heads patiently wait for the moment where they could continue where they left off. Father, leaning on his crutches stood with bowed head.  It was too difficult to kneel on his only knee. Father Rozman could not break this habit of the men regardless of how hard he tried on those days when bad weather drove them all inside. He had to console himself with the knowledge that at least every able villager attended Mass whether this attendance was under the roof of the church or the open sky.
     
On this eventful Sunday, the male half of the village filled the courtyard while the women and their small charges filled every bench seat inside. The outsiders included the firemen in work uniforms who were bunching around Schaffer in his parade uniform with its ribbons and polished helmet, all eager to receive last minute instructions for the demonstration drill, which started immediately after the end of the Mass.
 
Schaffer blew his shining trumpet and the firemen ran the 100 yards to the firehouse, up the slight hill from the church. The church emptied quickly and everyone rushed to find the best spot between the firehouse and the cistern from which to view the performance about to commence.

- - - -

Schaffer and Jaklitsch had agreed on a three-stage demonstration to best impress the viewers, including the remaining skeptics. The first stage was from the pump at the cistern to the opposite end of the square furthest from the pump.  This would show that all the houses surrounding the center were within easy reach of the new pump. The second stage was to move the pump from the cistern to the drinking well at the other end of the square. The hose direction was toward the Tscherne property and his barn, which he and his sons had saved from destruction with their quick response and help from the massive rain. The third stage was to return the pump to the cistern and run the hoses in the opposite direction toward what was Katharina's house, the most distant place away from the center. In each stage, Schaffer was to take note on how many hoses were needed to reach each property in the village.

- - - -

At the start of phase one, the pump was at the cistern in no time, the big suction hose dropped into the large reservoir, the coiled hoses reeled out by pairs of firemen and connected together along the way. Schaffer blew his trumpet and the engine started effortlessly with a roar that was lustily taken up by the crowd.  The firemen, encouraged by members of their families at each step along the way, performed superbly to Schaffer’s signals.

At first, there was only a whistling sound as the air was pushed out through the nozzle pointed upward by two firemen in the end of the square. After a few squirts, the full stream emerged and traveled way into the sky, as high as the cross on top of the steeple.  It was obvious that after a re-laying of hoses, even the most distant houses around the square could be reached by the impressive stream. Their owners beamed and cheered with satisfaction, but I heard Father, standing separate with his family and some of his supporters, say "just wait".
 
Then Schaffer blew the trumpet, the engine was shut off and new hoses were connected in a succession of trumpet blasts to reach houses beyond the square in the direction of the Tscherne barn.  The crowd followed Schaffer and the nozzle as did Mitzi and myself. With each addition, however, the force of the stream diminished and eventually, came to a sad trickle long before the hoses reached the Tscherne property and barn.  I ran to tell Father who had not moved from his spot.

Then Schaffer signaled the start of the second phase. The fire pump was wheeled from the cistern to the drinking well at the other end of the village square cutting the distance toward Tscherne in half.  The pump was connected and more hoses were added toward the village end. On another signal from Schaffer, the pump was started again and very soon a stream, as strong as the one in the middle of the square emerged from the nozzle.
 
Schaffer and Jaklitsch beamed but only for a short while.  The stream suddenly dwindled and after a few more squirts stopped altogether.  Very soon thereafter a fireman came running, shouting on the way "the well is empty, the well is empty".
 
Schaffer shouted obscenities including "damn Tschinkel" as if Father were responsible for the lack of water.  Jaklitsch remained silent and avoided the stare from Tscherne and other neighbors who were again on their own. As I ran to report to Father I heard murmurs from the crowd  "Tschinkel was right".
 
- - - -

It really had been pretty obvious that the stored water in the drinking well would not last very long and would not replenish as quickly as it was sucked away by the powerful pump. The well was in a cavity behind a fifteen-foot rock wall with an opening at hip height just large enough to reach inside with a pot with which to scoop out the water into a bucket outside. The cavity was large but shallow, at most two feet deep. Nearly always full, it was prevented from overflowing by a small v shaped trough which led the water into a large wooden basin outside below the opening. The slow runoff, which had cooled many thirsty lips, was nearly always constant indicating that the inflow to the well was about the same as the outflow into the trough; obviously inadequate for the pump after the stored water was used up. 

The well was a gathering place for the women who came to get the pure drinking water and gossip.  They carried the water home on their heads in wooden buckets, using rolled up kerchiefs, formed into a doughnut as a cushion to ease the pressure and pain. For some, home was quite a distance, in some cases nearly a kilometer.  Young girls were not allowed to fetch water in this manner, the reason being that their backs were not yet strong enough.  The real reason however was that their ears were still too young to hear the intimate gossip of the older matrons.
  
By contrast, the cistern at the bottom of the 300-foot wide bowl, the low point of the village, itself in a valley of surrounding high hills, contained an inexhaustible supply of water. The water gravitated to this place from the hills through the porous limestone underground, characteristic of the Karst region of Slovenia, only to reemerge from several holes at the bottom of the bowl. For centuries this bowl stored the water, its size depending on the severity of the rain or the amount of snow melting in the surrounding hills.
 
After the big fire in 1882, the municipality provided funds to build a concrete structure around the exit holes in the ground, which allowed the containment of a large amount of water in one central area. When that large container overflowed, the water spilled into the surrounding depression cutting off access to the cistern.  But this happened mostly in springtime when the water from the melting snow came rushing in.

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There was nothing more to be done at the Tscherne end of the village and Schaffer ordered that the pump be moved back to the cistern.  The hoses were rolled up and reeled out again from the cistern toward Katharina's house according to the established plan of phase three. This the firemen did with less than the initial enthusiasm since they knew that the distance from the cistern to Katharina's house was greater than the distance from the cistern to the Tscherne barn. Some of the crowd dispersed and even Father and his friends stopped their grumbling and went home. He did not insist that I come along but told me to come back with the details of what was to transpire next.

Schaffer ordered his men through the prearranged steps of that part of the plan.  As additional hoses were connected he made his notes for future reference and as was anticipated, the powerful stream turned to a trickle way before the end of the village and a long distance from the ruins of Katharina's house.

But Schaffer had an ace up his sleeve.  The house of Katharina's in-laws near that end of the village had a large and deep well, which they and some of their neighbors used for drinking water. The pump was moved to this well over the protest of the owner who sensed that his well, like the drinking well at the other end of the village, would also be emptied in no time. Sure enough, Shaffer's ace turned out to be another joker and very soon after the pump was turned on, the initial burst from the nozzle turned to a spurt and then stopped altogether. 

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There was no celebration at the Jaklitsch inn that Sunday night.
 
The events of the day had proven Father right, but many of the villagers on both sides of the pump issue would only grudgingly, if at all, acknowledge his vindication. Only Jaklitsch, arguably the most astute man in the village, offered his congratulations and as a result, their already very friendly relationship improved even more.
 
Most of those who had wanted the larger pump blamed Father for not more effectively arguing their cause. Only his small circle of supporters and friends, among them the sexton Michitsch, the invalid neighbor Mattl, his good friend Johann Krisch, a few of the firemen and some buddies from either end of the village came to his carpenter shop to congratulate him and themselves for their foresight. I moved among them basking in the glory of my father and becoming ever more certain that he was the smartest man in the world.

There were no more fires and the pump was never used, at least not during the next two years until the winter of 1941/42, when this 600 year old village was abandoned by most of its residents for a promised brighter future in another land.  Only the fire pump and a few families of mixed marriage at each end of the village, loyal to their heritage and successfully resisting the enormous pressure of Franz Jaklitsch, stayed.
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The pump was, however, used in September of 1943 when the “Plava Garda” (Royalist Chetniks) was making its final stand in Grčarice (Masern).  The cannon bombardment of the Tito Partisans who had encircled the village, set the Jaklitsch inn, the Rudolf Tschinkel house and the church on fire. The Garda had used these buildings, as well as the prince Auersperg hunting lodge, as defensive positions in their ultimate battle for survival.

The small pump obviously was not up to putting out all the simultaneously burning fires.  But it did save the Jaklitsch house from collapse. Much of the inside was burned out but not the beams that held up the roof, thereby preventing its total destruction.

The fire also destroyed a large part of the Rudolf Tschinkel tavern on the square.  It fully destroyed the adjacent house that was Ivanka’s general store and of course, the church. Both burned to the ground leaving only charred walls. The Auersperg lodge, the command post of the Garda did not catch fire and survived.

No attempt was made to save the church. The victorious Partisans had no desire, nor intent, to preserve this symbol of their ideological adversary, the Roman Catholic Church. And so the bells came tumbling down as their supporting beams, weakened by the flames, gave way. Their impotence was captured for posterity by Slavko Felician from nearby Rakitnica who took the photograph on 9/9/1943.  They had served the village well but now, with their purpose for being at an end, they were silently awaiting their ultimate fate of being melted down in a not too distant future.

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