Wednesday, December 9, 2009

The Burn Pit

“Talks from the Stalks”

The Sanford Herald will be publishing weekly “Talks from the Stalks.” This column will feature Sanford and Seminole County residents from multicultural and socio economic backgrounds and their real life stories. Most “folk stories” have been retold by “folks” so they are often enhanced and filtered through the teller and the listener and reflect many different aspects of even a single incident or event.
Sanford, once the Celery Capital of the world, will be home to “Celery Soup, where homegrown stories live on!” a live stage performance. Past and present residents are lining up to share their memories which will be penned into folk performances and brought to life by volunteers from the community.

Hundreds of memories and stories are being gathered and we are looking for stories from past and present residents. Our first performance is scheduled for October 2010

These performances will be presented and preserved for future generations. The following story is told by Marlene Baggs Hoenig.

In the early days of Sanford, the city’s residents and businesses burned their own trash. Down at my mom and dad’s produce stand we burned discarded boxes and other items in what we called The Burn Pit. It was a deep hole behind the market. Flames in the pit would shoot high in the sky, and sometimes we would throw firecrackers into the fire. One afternoon my daddy told me a great story about The Burn Pit;,
“I was at the produce market and in struts this rookie police officer. He had seen a little smoke in the back by the burn pit. I didn’t know this fella and there were only about twenty Sanford Police officers at the time, so I knew he must have been new. He started off by telling me I had a dangerous fire going in the back. I told him there was just a little drizzle of smoke.

He probably thought where there’s smoke, there’s fire, but he insisted that I had a dangerous fire. I argued with him but he didn’t want to hear it. He got out his ticket book (it looked brand new) and wrote me a ticket for having a dangerous fire. Then he told me I’d better put it out.

So, I called the fire Chief and told him I had just got a ticket from some rookie for having a dangerous fire. Chief, I said, I don’t think it is dangerous cause there is just a little bit of smoke drizzling up, but with an added inflection of concern I said, ‘You know Chief, where there’s smoke, there’s fire, so you might want to come and check it out’.

Daddy says he wasn’t responsible for what happened next. It was like a scene on television, smoke, lights, sirens and the roar of fire engines coming lickety split, pulling up under the big tree at Baggs Market arriving only to find smoke and no fire. Fire engines surrounded the market, the pit and my dad. He recalls talking to one of the firemen as he sheepishly recounts;

“I told you, it wasn’t dangerous, you have to put on your glasses to see any smoke.” As they watered the smokeless pit, you might hear a small hiss from way down deep if you could imagine real hard.

My dad said he went to go run an errand and when he returned, he couldn’t believe his eyes. On his desk was another ticket! This time for a false alarm! He called the police department. He asked the dispatcher, to explain which one of the tickets he was supposed to pay? He had one for the dangerous fire and another for calling in a false alarm. The dispatcher said, “Hold on Elmer, we’ll be right there.” A few minutes later, another policeman arrived. The policeman looked at the tickets and told Elmer to tear them up so that’s what he did.

If you have an interesting story, piece of folklore from Sanford/Seminole County about people, places or things that might be of interest please contact Creative Sanford, Inc. at 407-407-314-6750.

Email us atCreativeSanford@live.com. Visit our website http://celerysoupsanford.com.

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