Emmitt House

A little over a month ago, my 'hometown' lost one of our greatest historical landmarks. The Emmitt House was destroyed by fire on the coldest night of the year. I put all the pictures in a post the day after I took them, but couldn't actually type out the post because I'd get too emotional. So I saved it as a draft for when I could talk about it without being a hot mess. I get emotional pretty easy, ok!

When I first got a text from Molly that said "the Emmitt House blew up" I brushed it off. I thought for sure it was a facebook story blown out of proportion. But then I got on facebook and started seeing pictures of it completely engulfed in flames. :(

A little history of the Emmitt House is available here, but my best memories of the place are from when I was just a wee little thing. During the summers we would go to eat lunch at the Emmitt House as a special treat. We always thought we were so cool because the part we would sit in was like a little bar/lounge/pub area and I felt so grown up. ha. 

My brother always wanted to play pool, so while we waited on our food and after we were done eating, we'd 'play pool'. "Playing pool" consisted of us hitting the cue ball with the pool stick. Very rarely did we actually get quarters to play a real game. And even if we did, we didn't actually play by the rules because we didn't know them. Heck, I still don't know them. I played a few weeks ago and had to be reminded 20 times of what to do.

Anyway......my favorite thing to order was either the chicken fingers or the grilled cheese and we always asked for ranch dressing to dip our chicken fingers and fries in. At the time, we got weird looks from the waitresses (us Wickham kids dip our food in weird things, like chips and applesauce!!), but now it's pretty common for ranch to automatically come with those items as a dipping sauce. I think we started that trend.  

We also had a few nice dinners in the fancier part of the restaurant and even hosted a baby shower for Holly when she was pregnant with Emery in that room too. When I got older, I went to the bar a few times to listen to friends play music in the upstairs large room. 

The day after the fire, work was closed again for the Polar Vortex and I already had an appointment to get my hair cut back home, so Molly and I went home early to spend the day with our grandparents, then to see the Emmitt House. We got there just in the nick of time because they had started tearing it down already. Because it was so damaged and so close to the road it was a safety hazard. Molly and I stood across the street and cried and cried and cried as they tore it down. It was such neat place on the inside and I hated to see someplace with such special memories and soooo much history be torn down.

 Because it was so cold while it burned, so much of the water turned to ice. To stand in the middle of the street and look around, it was like you were looking at a movie set since just this one area looked like this. It was just one big sheet of ice over everything - neighboring buildings, awnings, street lights, sidewalks, cars. It was unreal. 

When we first got there we stood across the street by the library. They were tearing down the lounge area that we at at so frequently as kids. We eventually walked all the way around the block to see all of the sides.

The US 23 side. Holly's shower was in the room that has the door with the square awning. Molly and I both cried when they tore that part down.

This back side would have been the kitchen.

The equipment just barely tapped the walls and they fell over so easily. I understand that there was NO way to save this, but it was still so hard to watch.

When we got to Piketon, Molly laid on Mom's lap and cried and cried about it. :(

My brick covered in ice for the time being. It's now melted.

As the daughter and granddaughter of firemen, it's really important to thank the men and women who not only worked on this fire, but did so in below freezing temperatures. There were a lot of people at the scene the next day and even online talking about how the fire department shouldn't have let this happen because the station is only two blocks away. I think people forget that our township fire departments are VOLUNTEER fire departments. They don't sit in the station all day waiting for a call like the bigger departments and those you see on TV do. These men and women are in their homes, with their families and have to leave where they are (if they even can leave) and go to the station, then wait for enough men to take the trucks to the fire. It was also 2 degrees on the night of the fire. They water was turning to ice as soon as it hit the air. Do you know how hard it is to put out a fire with ice? Not easy. The weather conditions were not in the favor of the fire department that night, so I give them credit for containing it as much as they did, without letting it spread to any other buildings.

firemen with ice covered helmets.

What is left of the Emmitt House.