THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 7, 1996 TAG: 9601040488
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER
LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines
I never see a copy of ``Robinson Crusoe'' that I don't recall the burning of the Monticello Hotel, then Norfolk's most elegant hostelry, on Jan. 1, 1918.
I had received a children's edition of Daniel Defoe's account of the shipwrecked English mariner a few days earlier as a Christmas present. From then on, my father read me a chapter or two from the book before bedtime, finally reaching the last episode on New Year's Eve 1917.
That year my father skipped the reading for that evening so that we could enjoy the annual noisemaking that always broke loose at midnight.
Ordinarily I was in bed long before the witching hour, but that regimen was always relaxed on New Year's Eve so that my family could join in the revelry by tooting on tin horns or beating on the bottoms of pans with basting spoons. Once 1918 had been welcomed in, my father sent me to bed, promising to take me to the Colonial Theater in Norfolk the next day to see ``The Birth of a Nation'' - D.W. Griffith's epic of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Jan. 1, 1918, dawned bright and clear with the thermometer registering nine below zero. But that, and the fact that we had learned from the morning paper that the Monticello Hotel was going up in flames, didn't damper our enthusiasm for the proposed junket. In fact, my father had reacted to the news like an old engine horse to the brass fire gong. So, with the added inducement of seeing a spectacular blaze, we bundled up and set out from Berkley to Norfolk.
The Elizabeth River was frozen solid - the first time since 1857 - with paths cut through the choppy ice for the ferries to navigate, and the bitter cold forced us to remain inside until the old side-wheeler had pulled into the Commercial Place dock.
At that point, we ran head-on into excitement as Home Guards and marines were patrolling downtown Norfolk streets to keep an eye on anyone who looked like a firebug. Making our way northward up Atlantic Street against a high wind, we finally turned into City Hall Avenue where we were greeted by the amazing spectacle of the outer walls of the hotel festooned with ice while the inside was a raging inferno. Buttonholing a Marine, my father learned that the fire had started early that morning in the old Granby Theater and had quickly spread to the Monticello. By the time we arrived, the hotel and many nearby buildings were in flames, while lifelines had been stretched a block square around the burning structures.
I vividly recall seeing desperate firefighters training their hoses on the hotel from the roof of the old Norfolk Armory. But their efforts were useless; the water froze the minute it hit the building. Meanwhile, smoke hung like a pall over the downtown area and thousands of people, muffled up to the ears, had braved the cold to watch the conflagration.
Since we were then fighting World War I, rumors were buzzing about that German spies had set off the big blaze and were planning even more devilment. These statements were later proven groundless.
The fire was so exciting that all thoughts of seeing the Griffith film were forgotten. And it was not until later that we discovered the Colonial Theater was out of bounds behind the lifelines. By then we were good and hungry, but because of the excitement we had difficulty finding a restaurant that was open. We discovered one but another problem presented itself.
I was so small that my chin just cleared the edge of the table. So a kindly waiter put a couple of old city directories in my chair in order that I could see what was going on. Eating out was a novel experience to me, so I made up my mind to get as much out of the occasion as possible.
``And what will you have, young man?'' the waiter asked, his pencil poised over his order pad.
``A fried chicken,'' I demanded. And let it be said to my father's credit he let me order it, even though I couldn't eat all of it, as a compensation for not having the pleasure of reliving the Civil War vicariously on the temporarily darkened silver screen of the Colonial.
Once we reached home again, the completion of Robinson Crusoe was deferred until another evening. My father and I had had enough excitement that New Year's Day of 1918 to last us a good long time. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
FILE
Fire hoses coated the Monticello Hotel with ice.
by CNB