> This is how hooked I am on this glorious sport. On Sunday,February 8,1998,I wanted to go play in a 500 added tournament SO bad I actually thought about quitting my job with no notice to do so,they would not have let me call in sick. I get a phone call to just come home,don't call or anything,just come home. The manager that took the call knew what was up,but just told me to go home. I come through the S curve right before my house,and see smoke rolling out of the house,and fire trucks all over the place. I look up the street and see my mom and both sisters running towards me,my dad wasn't home from work yet. The words I formed in my head at first were Oh My...but the next word was drowned out by "don't worry your cues are all right". My sister Dawn,who by being late for work was home to discover the fire,call 911 and get my sleeping mom out of the house,comes running up to me in a hysterical fit,which is strange for her because she was an EMT at the time,and tells me she's sorry that she couldn't get to my cues in time. I honestly don't remember a conscious decision to try and run into a burning house after my cues,but I clearly remember getting tackled by 2 firemen after getting all the way up to the front door. I unconsciously TRIED to run into a burning house after them. After the fire was completely out,the captain came up and explained that pretty much everything on that side of the house was destroyed with the exception of the bedroom with the closed door,which was my room. He asked if there were any animals in the house,or anything valuable that wasn't destroyed that we wanted brought out before they let us in ourselves. I told him about my cat Q-Bert,which was asleep on my bed when I left for work just 2 hours ago,and told him that inside the room where he was that there SHOULD be a white golf-bag looking thing,my white leather 3x6 Porper with autographs all over it. To my complete surprise,when he carried my cat out he had my cue case slung across his back. Other than smoke damage to the outside of the case,there was no difference in my cues,even though it got hot enough in that room that 500 cds melted into a basketball sized wad of plastic,and the buttons melted off the stereo. I was able to salvage maybe 10% of everything I owned,but that 10% contained 90% of everything I really cared about or could not replace,of course this pales in comparison to everyone getting out alive. Even after going through a tragedy like this,when I saw that my cues made it,I knew I'd be OK. I was hitting balls in 2 days. That's how hooked I am,Tommy D.
