The spring of my senior year in high school [May 27, 1987], some big Sherwin-Williams paint factory or warehouse or some such caught fire and burned for days near here.On Night One, we were all gathered at my buddy Mike's folks' house, where, if my memory doesn't exaggerate, one could see the glow of this immense conflagration on the horizon in the dark. Mike's dad, sensibly enough, came barreling in the room where we were hunched over a four-track recorder and said "C'mon, boys! Let's go see a FIRE!"
The civil authorities were trying to shoo people away from the toxic fumes, and the area was being evacuated, but we burrowed further into oncoming traffic, trying to get close to the blaze. Did not get there that time!
HOWever, today we have a 3000 car junkyard fire going, so close to my home that we are supposed to stay indoors (when I woke up this morning, I smelled a certain acrid odor in the intense [unrelated] fog, but thought little of it, other than that it was like my favorite Stephen King story The Mist)! So, I should call Pops (as he is known) and tell him that, this time, I will drive us right up to the precipice!
Tomorrow: the night Mike's dad came home from work to find our bass player's strung-out scrimshaw-pale girlfriend lying on his front lawn with a ferret on a leash under a fanned-out newspaper! Well, that's the whole thing, actually.
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