Urban Campground

There were three booms and everything went quiet. The fan stopped. I heard a bunch of neighbors talking in the street. A few sirens were heard. The power was out. The apartment houses were hot after a 90 degree day. It was breezy outside and the sun hadn't set. The kids next door filled their plastic pool and jumped in. I had a feeling this was going to be a big one."Maybe it's the whole northeast!" I said. We heard more sirens and the sky got dark. "This is just like camping" my husband said lighting the little red oil lamp and hanging it on the umbrella in the picnic table. "But its quieter." The family at the corner lit a bonfire on their lawn and I heard the wife shouting about cheese and butter from the porch. The husband was mumbling something about ice at the Li'l General. They were already in active cave-man alert. We watched people light up the parking lot with their car headlights. There were interesting shadows on the tenements when people walked through the beams of light. In the dark areas peoples faces were lit up by the blue light of their cell phones. We sat in our Henri Rousseau jungle yard under the lit umbrella with Lily the lion guarding us. We shared an ice cream sandwich. "Look! a firefly," my husband said. "A tooth fairy, I said. "In this neighborhood it's the toothless fairy."