Why I Am Afraid of Fire - Joan Brady

For Wolo: 

(Baron Wolff Erhardt Anton George Trutzchler von Falkenstein) 1902 – 1989

I have always been afraid of fire. When I was a child I would scream and run from the room whenever candles were lit. I hate fireplaces, wood burning, the smell, the heat, the flames. Always have. Always will.

It all started when I was four...or was I five? I do know it was summer 1940’s, North Beach, San Francisco...back when we lived at the top of telegraph hill, and WW II was still happening, and we could look down at the docks from 

where we were and see the gray ships packed in close together...and the air-raids...and children all wore metal identification tags around their necks.... just in case.

But this is about fire...and the fire that happened across the street...the one that burned up Wolo’s studio. He was a cartoonist who worked for one of the local newspapers...and he was a puppeteer, and he wrote children’s books...but a lot of people didn’t talk to him because he was German and...as my mother explained...he was “one of those men who like men and that’s not a very nice thing and we don’t talk about it...maybe when you’re older.”

But he was a friend of my uncle who was a journalist, and who liked people, and who had a ‘special friend’ named Barbara who was also a friend of Wolo’s...so, as far as my uncle was concerned,  he was okay...and my mother...she loved my uncle/ her brother...and didn’t like to say ‘no’ to him...even when he came and asked to “borrow” me because Wolo had a new book he was sending to his publisher, and he needed a child to try it out on, and he liked me...and, “yes,” my uncle would say, “ I will stay there with her”...and my mother, she did try asking my father to say “no” but my father said...”if I wanted to go she should let me, and that she shouldn’t interfere.”

And so my uncle would take me across the street to Wolo’s...and I remember a long wood paneled room with puppets lined up in a case against one wall...so many puppets...and there were drawings/illustrations (always animals) tacked up on the walls (Wolo’s books never had human beings in them)...and Wolo would read to me, and sometimes he would pretend that one of the puppets was reading to me...I liked that best...and my uncle would sit there and listen...and for that time...and for only that time...for me...there was no war...and there was only magic.

But then one early morning...when the sky was still dark...Wolo’s building caught fire...right beneath where his studio was...and people ran out into the street.... 

and I woke up and I stood outside...and I watched the building burn...and burn...and then Wolo was gone.... and some said it was arson...but there was a war on, so not many questions were asked...and then there were the stories I heard about him (had to eavesdrop on the adults to hear them...I did that a lot...they thought I was too young to understand)...but what my mother said was he was “not right in the head” because of the liking men thing, and that she had heard he did “sexually inappropriate puppet shows at those parties he goes to...and, besides that, he was German...and what the hell was he doing here anyway...” and my uncle...he talked about how Wolo had left Berlin for Hollywood in 1922...and was doing OK...especially after he designed this puppet...Mortimer Snerd...for this Edgar Bergen guy...and how Wolo’s father was a Baron...

but he was also a Nazi...and that Wolo had been put on an “undesirables list “ ...and that he would be killed if he went back.

But...also...because he was also a member of some of the groups that believed everyone should have food on the table, and a warm place to sleep at night, and health care, and stuff like that...no matter how little money they had...our government sent men to Wolo’s door...and they told him he was going to be deported because he danced under a red star...and so he fled to San Francisco...and lived underground...and wrote children’s books to stay busy... but then...after the war started...they forgot about him because they were busy with other things...so he started to become visible again...and to publish his children’s books...and to work as a cartoonist...and he rode around North Beach on his blue motor scooter with animals painted on it...and some people talked to him, and some people didn’t.

After his studio burned down, I never saw Wolo again...but I did still see his scooter parked in North Beach...here and there...for oh so many years...and I did hear...when the fire happened there were people who came and ran into the flames, and saved the puppets and the art and Quigly...the dog that belonged to Barbara...who was my uncle’s ‘special friend’ (“I’ll explain when you’re older,” my mother would say)...and no one was killed... although all the ‘stuff’, stuff was lost...but art isn’t stuff...it’s another kind of thing...and North Beach was a place where people looked out for each other in once-upon-a time-times...but I still remember the screaming and the flames and the dark and ...and waiting for the fire department to come...and how....ever since then....I have always been afraid of fire.

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