Being There

My house is at the top of a ridge called Nanny Goat Hill. There is a fire sta­tion on Pre­ston street, below the ridge. This sta­tion serves the down­town, so it’s pretty often that I hear the trucks rac­ing past the house, sirens blar­ing. One set of trucks goes up Som­er­set Street, on top of Nanny Goat hill, and one set goes below. I like the sound of the trucks. The sirens are excit­ing and alert­ing, they remind me where I am.

Where I am is Chi­na­town, and it has been burn­ing down. It has been burn­ing my whole life, really, but these past cou­ple week were par­tic­u­larly incen­di­ary. A cou­ple weeks ago, I was walk­ing home from class and chanced upon the whole of Fire Sta­tion 11, plus some, arranged in a semi-circle around a smol­der­ing house on my block of Bronson.

My room­mate and I had been feel­ing a lit­tle groggy, but we chalked it up to fatigue. Then, one evening early last week, the smoke detec­tor went off in the base­ment. The ancient fur­nace had finally given up, and was spew­ing car­bon monox­ide. We spent the night on my father’s floor. The next day, my room­mate and I returned to our cold apart­ment, elec­tric heaters in tow. It was chilly, but we set­tled in with blan­kets and made the best of it. I crawled into my bed, tucked into the chin, and went to sleep.

Ten­ants look on as fire­fight­ers douse their porch

I was awoken by sirens, more real and present than usual. The flash­ing lights radi­ated through my half-drawn blinds, cast­ing alter­nat­ing bars of red and blue on the wall above my head. I jumped up, ran to the liv­ing room, and saw the flames lick­ing up the porch across the street. My neigh­bors were pour­ing out past the flames in their paja­mas and under­wear. One guy was in his box­ers. First I grabbed some clothes, and then I grabbed my camera.

There is a run­ning bet around here on which porch is going to col­lapse first. The place is not exactly a slum, but it has cer­tainly seen bet­ter days. It’s not the worst place on the street. One of my neigh­bors calls this “the garbage house”.  The kids like to party, but I didn’t expect it to catch fire. My neigh­bor says it was arson, that some­one set fire to the recy­cling, and that another place had been set alight last week. That is truly scary if it is true.

Thank you, fire fight­ers, for being so fast. It is too bad you can’t stop my neigh­bor­hood from burn­ing down.

Oh, one more thing: the land­lord of the garbage house wants to buy the house next door (to the right) and put up a shiny new condo.