About ten years ago, my brother got his green card and came to Massachusetts where my parents and I live for the first time. One night, he returned home and found himself locked out of the house because he forgot the key. Worse, no one was home. It was winter and very cold out, so he collected some dry leaves at the door front and lit them up with his lighter. He thought he could get warm this way. All of a sudden, out of nowhere some guy hollered “Hey! Put out the fire!” My brother certainly was shocked and extinguished the fire right away. He looked around and tried to locate the person who yelled, but didn't find him.
Another time I was home alone and our next door neighbor showed up at the door telling me he saw smoke coming out of the small woods right behind our backyard. He said the guy living at the back saw it too and was about to call the fire department. “I pour a bucket of water on the spot and told him it's no big deal. Don't call the police,” my neighbor spoke with his not so good Chinese, “But, he insisted on calling and I tried very hard to convince him not to.” I was thinking, “Okay . . . What's that to do with me?” Then he warned me, “Tell your father not to smoke there. You know, this is not Taiwan. Tell him not to bring the bad habits here.” This coming from an immigrant himself, I didn't like what I just heard. I told him, “We don't know who did this. I'll tell my father WHEN we are sure he is the one.” A few moments after our not so friendly conversation, a fire engine came. As it turned out, our neighbor living in the back called the fire department after all because smoke was still billowing out of the spot.
I told my father what happened when he came home. He argued that there were kids doing stuff in the woods all the time. “It must be one of them smoking there this morning and didn't put out the cigarette butt completely,” my father said. Little did I know, on many occasions, our next door neighbor saw my dad smoking in the woods too. But, that's another story.
Fire alert
