I haven’t told you about the fire. When the power came back on the other day I happened to be outside. There was pop and an explosion of sparks as the newly set line into the house blew out the ceramic anchor. The wire hung low into the bushes. The power worked, but obviously some of the repairs that had been done had failed. We had Kathy, the landlord, call Amren and a truck arrived Wednesday evening to fix the problem. I was teaching while this happened and Jes told me the story when I got home.

They began to work on restoring the anchoring and while they were working there was another explosion. This time – I want you to visualize this – the entire electric line from the pole in the alley to the edge of the house erupted in flame several inches in height: red flame atop black lines with smoke billowing and melting wires dripping plastic.

Jes’ camera had a dead battery. She told me that if she’d had film or battery power we could have sold images of the burning wire to both local and/or national newspapers. The Amren crew rushed back to the truck and put the fire out with extinguishers, but not before the burning wire dripped melted wire casing all over the back yard and all over Jes’ motorcycle, which was parked under the line. None of the Amren guys were hurt. The bike is fine. It just needs a good cleaning. The house is fine. No computers were lost in the power surge and fire. We have a new power line to the house and one more dramatic story from the St. Louis storm.