Friday, December 13, 2024

West Plains Native Rescued from Malibu Fire

 
by Pa Rock
West Plains Scribe

Renowned comedian and actor Dick Van Dyke was born ninety-nine years ago today in West Plains, Missouri, a small town to which his unmarried and pregnant mother-to-be had been banished to live with relatives until her baby was born. 
 
That’s the official story, the one that Van Dyke himself shared one evening on “The Tonight Show.”   Pearl Clutcher and the old dears from the Happy Daze Retirement Resort out behind the Senior Center  here in West Plains tell a different version.   Their accounting of that happy event is included in our new information booklets that were specially printed for this past year’s “Eclipse” celebration.  Pearl and the girls say that Mr. and Mrs. Van Dyke were living in West Plains nearly a century ago when their first child was born.  Mr. Van Dyke’s business suddenly hit the skids (some say he was a traveling salesman), and the young couple took their infant son and returned to Illinois to be closer to their extended families.
 
The actor’s own version is more interesting and far more likely to be true.  Girls were suddenly moving away to live with relatives forty years later when I was in high school, and probably still are today.  And when they returned a year or two later with an infant or small child, life resumed as if nothing happened.   Nobody gives a rip, except, of course, Pearl and the girls at the Happy Daze.
 
In addition to turning ninety-nine today, Dick Van Dyke has been in the news this week for another reason. The well-heeled entertainer has a home in the hills around the ritzy beach community of Malibu, California, and this week he and others were forced to flee their homes ahead of the advancing Franklin Fire.  (As of yesterday morning that fire was only 7 percent contained.)   Van Dyke had problems getting out and had to be rescued by his neighbors.
 
Dick Van Dyke said that he has been in the path of four previous wildfires and knew what to do and how to get away, but this time, he admitted, he was not prepared.  He said that he has a firehose that operates out of his swimming pool and shoots a 75-foot stream of water.  That is his primary protection against the wildfires.
 
 As the smoke started thickening a couple of days ago, he went to the pool to get the hose working and found that it was lying on the ground tangled - exactly the way mine is lying tangled today outside of my back door today.  Van Dyke said that he was lying on the ground trying to get the big hose untangled when he could suddenly see the flames coming over the hill.  He was crawling toward his car when three neighbors arrived and carried him to his car and then returned to the house where they also collected his wife, Arlene, and all but one of their pets.  After rescuing the family, the neighbors then went to the Van Dyke guest house which was on fire and put out that blaze.
 
Van Dyke credits his selfless neighbors with being heroes.  He said that he and Arlene – and presumably the rescued pets – spent the night at a hotel in Santa Monica, a place where he had been paid to entertain in 1948.  Damage was limited to their small guest house.
 
Also temporarily displaced by the Franklin Fire were a pair of two-time Golden Globe Award-winning actresses, Jane Seymour and entertainment legend Cher.  Cher has also received an Oscar for Best Actress.
 
(I will know I have “arrived” when I can afford to buy a house in Cher’s neighborhood!)
 
Happy 99th birthday, Dick Van Dyke.  When your big party starts to wind down, take the guests out to the pool and have them help get that hose untangled!
 

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