A couple of weeks ago my Monday morning took a very different turn from my regular schedule. I found myself spending most of my morning, and the better part of an afternoon, standing on a street corner across from one of our business locations, 1st Street Studio, helplessly watching smoke pour out of the front door.
Our studio at 14 1st Street SE in downtown Paris has been in operation for roughly five years and we have had numerous events and productions within the four walls. Our higher profile businesses; 104.3 The River, Trumpet Radio 98.9, myparistexas.com website and newspaper, are the things most people know us for in the area.
But the “studio” was one of those quiet things in the background that was extra special to me.
We have hosted the Boys and Girls Club Auction for the last four years at the studio and each year with record success. My daughter had her wedding reception there and we had our “father-daughter” dance on that dance floor. We have shot segments for a couple of nationally distributed television programs there too. It was a special place and a lot of hard work had gone into it. It was a place I could go hide in sometimes and just play with the cameras and electronic “toys” I enjoy so much.
And now, as I stood there watching the smoke and water pouring out of the building, I felt helpless and angry. The fire began in an adjacent building but, we got a lot of smoke and water damage. Smoke and water do not mix well with expensive electronics and pretty much everything was ruined.
As I stood watching years of hard work and money literally go up in smoke, I was suddenly approached by four members of the Paris Fire Department who asked me through muffled respirators, “Is there anything inside we can try to save for you?” My mind tried to snap into focus but I couldn’t remember a thing that was in that building I had spent countless hours in.
My wife quickly blurted out, “Posters! Your collectible movie posters!” A fireman disappeared into the smoke and quickly returned holding several hundred dollars of rare framed film posters. “Cameras”, she said to another and two more passed through the heavy black smoke to emerge with a couple of floor cameras complete with tripods.
At last, I brought myself to say to the remaining fireman, “Just grab whatever looks important from my office!” He passed the threshold of the smoky door and returned a couple of minutes later and handed me a large box full of pictures, drawings, and Sunday School craft items my kids had done over the years. Some were in frames and some had just been tacked to the wall in the office.
He handed the box to me, through the muffle of the breathing respirator, I heard him clearly say, “You can’t replace these.”
I felt a lump grow in my throat standing there holding that box and thinking, how true his words were. They were just paper memories, but they meant something to me, and they could not be replaced.
As I stood there next to thousands of dollars of ruined camera gear, you would have thought from how I felt in that moment that the firefighter had handed me a box with a million dollars cash in it.
The fireman performed flawlessly, the fire was soon extinguished and, thank God, no one was injured during the blaze.
And the simple truth contained in that box that the fireman handed me on a downtown corner in Paris, Texas…put God and family first because all the rest is just stuff.
James Wyatt
President 1st Street Media
