Small town event

I forgot about this when I was posting earlier.

There was (apparently) a fire a street or so over from me yesterday afternoon. I had been spending my one entirely-day-off-for-the-three-day-weekend day sitting on the couch knitting on Honeycomb and watching a couple of Poirot movies*. About quarter to four I realized I was feeling all meh and cramped up and I decided it would be a good idea, seeing as I still had several hours of free time that day, to do a workout, it would make me feel better, it would mean I wouldn't have to rise at the crack of dawn on Monday (my last day off for a while), I'd feel like I'd accomplished something, blah blah blah.

So I did the workout. (Woo, go me.**) And I went back out to the living room for a few moments before deciding whether to take a shower right then or later.

(*If I had a lot of money I wanted to spend all in one chunk, I think I'd buy up the entire David Suchet as Poirot oeuvre. I enjoy them THAT MUCH. They're such a fantastic escape, everything, as far as I can tell, is in-period - even down to the place settings on Poirot's breakfast table. And I like Poirot. I think a real person like him, knowing that person well, I would probably get aggravated with their fussiness after a while, but from a distance, Poirot is fun.)

(** Imagine me saying this in a Daria Morgendorfer voice.)


And I saw this weird...haze...out in the front yard. And I thought, "Wait, is it misting?" and I looked more closely and thought, "No, that's smoke." My first thought was that someone was cooking out but there was way too darn much smoke for that.

So I quickly put some "real" clothes (i.e., "acceptable to be seen out of doors"- not shorts and a sports bra) on and ran outside. One of the cops who lives next door was walking down the street (and lots of other people were, and other people were even getting in their cars and driving...) I called to her and asked her "Where's the fire at?" just as I looked over and saw the likely source - a block or two down, one street over (she verified my assumption and also said that it looked like they'd blocked that street off.)

I nodded, and went back in the house, and decided to postpone my shower just in case...who knows, just in case the person was storing hazardous waste in their house and we all had to be evacuated, and I wouldn't be all naked and with my hair wet when the firefighters knocked on the door.

But something surprised me, and I guess maybe this is a facet of small-town life I wasn't so aware of, or that I thought had gone by the wayside over time: lots and lots of people were walking down to look at the fire (a couple even asked the cop, while she was still outside, where it was). Some people were driving.

I admit I was surprised by that. I didn't want to go, for three reasons:

a. I didn't want to turn out to be part of a crowd that might get in the way of the firefighters doing their job.

b. It would make me sad to watch someone's home being destroyed, and I don't want to a voyeur to that.

and

c. My allergies are such that I prefer to stay out of smoke. (Also, who knows what could be released when insulation and such burns?)

I drove down the street this morning on the way in and didn't see any police tape up or anything, and no clear house-totally-destroyed. (There was one with some windows broken out and trash in the front yard that might have been the house, but then again, there are a couple unoccupied, poorly-kept-up houses in that block).

I watched the 5:30 pm semi-local news but there was nothing; I suppose the fire wasn't big enough to make the news. (And nothing in their online sites, or even on the online site of the local paper).

I hope if it was a fire, that maybe it was "someone burning garbage in the backyard and it got out of hand" rather than "family has been put out of their residence" thing.

(I will say - the police chaplain, who goes to my church and is a friend of mine, her house is on that street. And it was fine - I figured it was, as she's farther down than where it looked like the fire was - but I was still glad to see her house was OK.)