The whole earth was burning up. Everybody thought the town was going to be burned out. The fire jumped the lake. You could see nothing but dense smoke. The sand was burned black. The wind was terrific. Fire creates wind, you know. The sky overhead was all afire. A piece of the roof of the Coopers' house blew off, burning, and went a quater of a mile through the air. It landed on a house and burned it up. Everybody thought the world was coming to an end, I guess. It looked like the heavens lit up. We were all scared to death. We were all praying pretty hard. After the fire jumped through the town one time, the wind shifted and it started to come back. They say that a fire can't go back over ground it has already crossed, but this one did. A neighbor and I stood on the steps of the store and watched. 'The town's going,' she said. 'Let's go for the lake.' I said, 'No, I'm going to stick.'