My block in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood is an arsonist’s enclave. At least it feels that way. In the eleven years I have lived here, there have been four house fires. Not dumpster fires, though one started that way. Not minor flare-ups. Rather, conflagrations that fully took out two houses, a couple two flats, and three garages.
During two of these incidents I was minutes from breaking out a garden hose to water down my shingles as embers like fireflies flitted dangerously close to my own roofline.
The fire that claimed the garages was started by an old lady who set her neighbor’s recycling bin on fire over a minor personal dispute. The fire that claimed two houses and a two flat was caused by an exploded propane tank. The other two fires remain mysterious.
Maybe it was some other kind of retribution that kindled those blazes. I was told one of the burnt building’s landlords was once the key Chicago distributor for a Mexican drug cartel. Not just any cartel, but one of the cartels featured prominently in Narcos on Netflix. Because my bravery has limits, I will not tell you which specific cartel.
It's a busy block, near multiple breweries, restaurants, and a movie theatre. In addition to fires, there have been EMS and various police presences. Like most city-dwellers I am immune to sirens.
About a year and a half ago, smack in the middle of the pandemic, my family took our annual pumpkin picking excursion to Didier Farms in Buffalo Grove. On the way back, as we exited the freeway, a convoy of firetrucks roared toward our house.
Here we go again. Hopefully, our place wasn’t burning. The firetrucks gathered around in a semi-circle near the alley by our garage. As we rolled by, I peeked into a thin gap between the trucks to see firefighters sprinkling some kind of dusty sorbent over bloody matter.
There was no blaze.
A young woman had thrown herself from the fifth story of the brutalist-style cement parking garage a few thousand feet from our home.