The Fire Hall Had a Bar, Too.

It burned.

When a man bites a dog, it's said, that's news. So too is it, when a three-story fire hall burns to the ground, especially when the trucks are still inside.

That's exactly what actually happened in my hometown, in 1964. If I hadn't had a sort of a stake in the place, my memory of the event, and the aftermath, wouldn't be so clear.

The bar of that fire hall is likely where the fire started. It was also the first bar I ever entered, as a small boy, to collect forty cents for a one-week subscription to the Harrisburg Evening News. 1964 was indeed, a long time ago. It surely was a simpler time, one I'd like to go back to.

So once a week, on a Saturday, I would carefully ascend three flights of rickety wooden steps, the stale beer smell of an ancient bar getting stronger as I went. At the head of the stairway was a landing with double doors. The ancient doors pushed in easily, and I'd walk up to the bar, newspaper bag slung over my shoulder, and announce, "I'm here to collect." The bartender always seemed amused by that, but he paid me and I left, picking my way across an unpainted, uneven, dry wooden floor. The cornerstone of that building was dated 1871.

I'll never forget the day after the fire, in part because the day of the fire was a day off for me. They used to drop off my newspaper bundle on the corner at the fire hall, but nobody could get close to the place, including the delivery truck.

But the day after was different; the oversized, tan bricks were huge and laying everywhere, the heap, still smoking. I dimly realized I'd lost a customer. The paper bundles were thereafter dropped at the Texaco station across the alley.

I didn't pay much attention to the news articles about the fire. I knew they would all be snarky, and I wasn't interested.

That bar was also the last bar I would enter, for many more years to come. But the years did pass, my friends and I found out that college bars were a good place to meet girls, and on life went.

After a short stint (perhaps, 3 years), I just worked all the time and had no time or reason to enter a bar. Until recently, that is. And really I'm not sure why I did, except that a cold beer sounded good and I was out and about, and I keep no beer at home. So, although the place wasn't familiar to me, in I went, at about 4 in the afternoon.

Of course, bars now come in many flavors, marked now by the decor. It used to be they were mostly all dimly-lit spaces, where a guy could either drink alone in peace, or drink with friends. Now, it seems, some are brightly-lit and spacious and ready for full-fledged parties, and they serve more than alcohol and burgers. But maybe that's just the way it is where I live. I don't frequent any of those, no, the Omar had just been there for about as long as I've been alive. Or longer.

Entering the place was like stepping into a past era. If the place had smelled better it might have been a welcome change, but the odoriferous atmosphere was one of those you just sorta get used to.

It would have been just the bartender and me, but the place had a barfly, an unkempt middle-aged man with a probable drinking problem. My problem seemed to be that he was still conscious. Lucid, even.

"Belly up ta tha bar, there, buddy!"

I quickly learned that the frothing glass of cold beer was gonna cost me more than a couple of bucks. This guy was a full-fledged conspiracy theorist, just brimming with false and questionable information. Worse, he wasn't upset about all of the plots. He was on the side of the plotters.

The nation needed 9/11, war in the Middle East was inevitable anyway, chemtrails are the shit, got to modify that weather and save the whole planet, and didn't I get that Trumpie was just givin' Islamists enough rope to hang 'em with? The final straw was covid. After all, anyone with any sense could figure out that we needed to depopulate. One world government just happened to be the way to go. And bugs were a really great and untapped source of protein.

For the record, the only thing he mentioned that I might agree with would be that covid and it's vaccines are part of an actual depopulation effort, that just happens to be what I think. The rest was pretty thick and I hadn't said a word. That was about to change.

But I wasn't gonna knock myself out, arguing. I swallowed the last of my Yeungling, wiped my mouth and then addressed the bartender.

"If you don't get this turkey outa here, the place will stay empty."

I left. If I'd been a younger man I'd have kicked up my heels as I passed through the door. Mr. Conspiracy followed me, shortly, barely keeping his feet because he was shoved.

The icing on the cake for a good short story might be that the Omar burned, later that night. However it's still standing, and still in a building about the vintage of the one that housed the fire hall. I have to say, it looks like someone cleaned the place up a bit.

The conspiracy theories, I'll leave to you.