Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Where There's Smoke

During a recent Iowa trip to see Mom, we were out for a walk at 7:00 in the morning. I stopped during the walk because I had caught a whiff of white pine smoke, which can mean fire in an old house in much of the Mid-West. We looked at every house around us, but saw no smoke, and couldn't catch another smell of it either. We decided it was probably someone's backyard fireplace, since there was construction nearby with lots of old white pine scrap.
During our 5:00 PM walk, the fire trucks ran. A house was on fire six blocks from where I had smelled it ten hours earlier. A neighbor had spotted smoke leaking out of the house. No one was home, but three dogs died inside.

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