Free 26 Fairmount Avenue by Tomie dePaola

Chapter One

    I didn’t always live in the house at 26 Fairmount Avenue. We moved there when I was five years old. I know that because in 1938, when I was still four, a big hurricane hit Meriden, Connecticut, where we lived. We had just started to build our first and only house, when people told my mom and dad that the house was twisting and turning on its foundation, just like Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz. A real hurricane had never reached all the way up to New England before, so nobody was ready for it.

    We were living in an apartment on Columbus Avenue. We all lived on one floor. Another family lived upstairs, and we lived downstairs.
    It had been raining for days and days, and some of the rivers were overflowing. There was a really weird brook near our backyard. It was called Harbor Brook. It wound all the way through Meriden, and factories dumped stuff in it. It was different colors on different days. We were told NOT TO GO NEAR IT. Right before the hurricane, the water was so high and murky that I was hardly allowed to look at it, much less go near it. “Come away from there, Tomie,” my mom would call.
    Right after lunch on the day of the hurricane, my mom was talking on the telephone when my dad came home early from the barbershop, where he worked. My brother, Buddy, who was eight, was at school. (His real name was Joe Jr., after my father.) Dad and Mom talked in the kitchen. Then Mom said to me, “Get your coat on, Tomie. We have to go pick up Buddy and some of the neighborhood children. There’s a big storm coming, and they’re letting everyone out early.”
    We got in the car and drove to the school in the rain. A long line of cars and teachers with kids were waiting in front of the building. I looked up and saw something I’ve never ever forgotten.
    A boy was standing at the top of the steps, holding an umbrella. All of a sudden a gust of wind blew, a really strong gust, and the boy went up, up, up in the air and floated down the stairs just like Mary Poppins.
    It was scary driving home to Columbus Avenue, the car filled with kids— Buddy, Carol Crane (my best friend on Columbus Avenue, who looked just like the child movie star Shirley Temple, only Carol had red hair and Shirley Temple was blonde), the Adams twins, the Fournier brothers, and a few others—all talking and screaming. Branches fell off the trees, leaves swirled around the car. A sign flew off Tomasetti’s grocery store and just missed us. But we made it to our apartment. Mom let us out, and we ran inside. Carol’s mother, Mrs. Crane, was already there, and she was really scared.

    Mrs. Crane was scared of storms, especially thunderstorms. If there was one clap of thunder, Mrs. Crane would be knocking on our door and calling my mother. “Floss, Floss!” (That was my mother’s nickname, for Florence. My mother liked being called Floss, but she liked Flossie even better!) My mom would open the door, and Mrs. Crane would rush in, pushing Carol in front of her. Nothing would 4 do except for my mom to get the bottle of Holy Water she’d gotten from Saint Joseph’s Church and sprinkle some of it on Mrs. Crane, who wasn’t even Catholic. I guess she thought that Catholic Holy Water was better than nothing, and it must have worked because Mrs. Crane never got struck by lightning.

    On the day of the hurricane, my mom calmed Mrs. Crane down and promised she’d get the Holy Water, while my dad parked the car where there were no trees. First Mom lit some candles because the electricity was out. Then she took the Holy Water and sprinkled some on Mrs. Crane. Everyone else wanted to be sprinkled, too.

    Mr. and Mrs. Morin and their daughter, Althea, who lived in the apartment upstairs, came down. I guess they thought, with all the voices and everything, that it was a party.
    We crowded around the windows and listened to the wind howl and watched it blow stuff all over the