Haul out the stick-burner
My neighbor, Heather Emery, complained last night that I haven't written anything about our neighborhood Shipoke in Harrisburg, Pa., in awhile. That's true, although as I pointed out, a lot of that past writing was about floods or near-floods, and we thankfully haven't had any of those recently.
A tradition has developed in Shipoke over the past couple of years to have fires in the street on nights when it's not too cold and not too hot. Like last night, for instance. After watching the city fireworks from Riverfront Park at the end of Conoy Street, a bunch of us headed for Showers Street and Nick Woods hauled out his portable fireplace. We now call it a "stick-burner," because someone stuck a note through Nick's door asking if he was interested in selling his "stick-burner" for $10. Nah.
Nick set up the stick-burner in the middle of Showers Street, which runs between Tuscarora and Conoy. It is narrow, has no on-street parking, and gets almost no through traffic late at night. He lit a fire and people hauled out chairs and drinks--white wine, beer, champagne, and Irish whiskey--and sat around for about three hours discussing everything from the 2004 flood to home renovations to Harrisburg Academy to our jobs. All the adjoining neighbors who were home came out, so there was no need to worry about keeping anyone up with our chatter.
Most of us shared the experience of having gone through the September 2004 flood, which left Shipoke under several feet of water. It wasn't as bad as the 1996 flood, but any flood that fills your basement and then rises onto the first floor is a hassle and a mess. But there was plenty of humor, too, even if it didn't seem that funny at the time. I related the story of the gradually descending level in my bottle of Maker's Mark--the crew cleaning our our basement was apparently helping themselves when we weren't around. Funny thing that. My wife heard them comparing the various midstate county work-release programs one day.
Everyone left around midnight, but we'll do it again soon. Fall is the prime time for street fires in Shipoke. It's that kind of place.