Susan McGrath Aguirre remembers playing hide-and-seek in the dark warehouse of her grandfather’s moving and storage company as a child, squeezing through the small spaces between large crates for the best hiding spot.
She remembers riding in a forklift with her siblings over the railroad tracks to a convenience store on the corner of Ninth Street and Sonora Avenue in Modesto to buy a soda and candy before heading back to McGrath Moving & Storage Inc.
During the summer days when they’d hang out with their dad, Terry McGrath, at the warehouse, the siblings also would place coins on the railroad tracks and wait for trains to come. It probably was more fun for the kids than it was for Terry, McGrath Aguirre recalled.
“We just did a lot of goofy things,” she said. “We had a lot of fun there.”
Those memories are held a little closer to the heart now, since McGrath Moving & Storage Inc. was destroyed in a commercial fire that ignited at a pallet yard on Janopaul Lane on Friday night.
The fire resulted in $1.2 million in damages and injured a firefighter, according to the Modesto Fire Department.