(Do you have nipples, but no idea what’s going on in this story? Start here.)

Day Six, Shepherd Canyon: Sunday, 23 July 2017 — Part II

Returning to Fire Station No. 24 twenty-three years later, it hasn’t changed at all. It looks like a life-sized model of a child’s vintage-style firehouse, from the future. Hasbro, circa 2086.

I wasn’t quite sure how to get into the parking lot, so I drove up Shepherd Canyon a ways, safe and sane behind the wheel. Unlike my jaunt down this road all those years ago.

When I turned around to head back toward the fire station, I took a look at that now notorious embankment.

I remember the sense, back in 1994, that if I braked it would result in destruction. I saw back then that the embankment got steeper ahead; it would launch the car up, either to the left across the road or into the trees above, then back down onto its roof. Time was running out.

I don’t know where I got the presence of mind; I was only 21 at the time — but I took my foot from the accelerator and — locking my arms — firmly eased the car to the left, down onto the road. The firetruck charged past us on our left, sudden and deafening. I braked, gently, for the curve ahead. Everything was fine.

It was as I drove past that very spot today that I remembered saying to Scott, “Hey, have you ever seen the old storybook firehouse?”

I was braking to turn into the parking lot of Fire Station No. 24 when it struck me:

If storms do blow we build a pyre
Inside our vintage firehouse

I was so shocked at the revelation that I sat there like an idiot, my left-turn signal blinking, until some asstongue in a Lexus honked at me. I turned off my blinker and headed for one of the most beautiful buildings I’ve ever seen in my life:

The Old Montclair Firehouse.