The Sock Mill

 I'll never forget the night the old sock mill caught on fire. I never heard, or don't even know that anyone else did, how it started. All I do know is that when you live on a dead end street, news travels very quickly.
I wasn't yet asleep I don't think, but if I was I was wakened by the hubbub in the house; scurrying around, doors opening and closing, someone on the phone, sirens. I got up and heard Mother or Granny saying something about the old mill. Then they went outside.  Then I went outside. Mother told me to go back in, but I begged her to let me stay out and watch.
 I got to the front porch and everything was an unusual bright color. I saw neighbors on the street right in front of our house (remember, the mill was right across the track, we were three houses from the track). I went out into the street and Mother told me to stay back, I did, right behind her. Neighbors were coming down our way or up our way, and were all huddled in one spot just watching, wondering, chattering, hoping, praying I'm sure.
The flames were shooting so far up into the sky with sparks coming down everywhere. Mr. Kuhn, our friend and neighbor two houses up, next to the tracks, was propping a long ladder beside his house carrying a water hose with him. Everyone kept yelling, 'be careful, be careful', we were all afraid that he would slip and fall, he was not a young man.  He was spraying the roof of his house to keep the sparks from catching it on fire. He stayed up there most of the night spraying his roof.  Firemen were working laboriously. It was mass confusion and hysteria, but was unusual excitement for a small girl. My brother says he doesn't remember any of it.
 Nothing burns quite so fast as an old wood mill full of hosiery and socks, and it was a huge building. Watching it blaze and blaze was almost hypnotizing, so frightening and yet awesome; as fire can be. I was made to go back into the house to bed after some time, not where I wanted to be.
 The next morning when I went out to look, it was still smoldering but the fire was out. Mounds and mountains of soot and ash were where the mill once was. There was ash everywhere for some time after that. It had filtered and sifted it's way into every house anywhere nearby. And the rats!! I think every wharf rat in the world came across to our side of the tracks that night..running from the heat. Some of them were the size of raccoons. We fought them for years after that, in our yards, and in our houses. I always knew when Mother saw a rat..she'd let out a "whoop". She threw milk bottles at them, beat them with the broom and  put out poison. I don't think the rats truly ever left.
I don't believe many of the homes over on the mill side were damaged, but so many of the people there relied on the mill work for their livelihood, and I imagine hundreds of folks who worked there were devastated for awhile until they found more work... that was really considered the 'poor side' of the tracks.
After that, Smokey Hollow was, of course, never the same. A lot of the people who lived over there re-located to 'wherever'. My brother and I had quite a few friends that lived over there; we were all in the same elementary school together.