Not every anecdote requires a preface warning that “There was alcohol involved.” Yet this is High Journalism, dear readers and neighbors, and so, for the sake of clarity, there is no room to doubt: there was alcohol involved.
And a fire also entered the scene.
My memory of most of these events, which unfolded when I was in elementary school, remains unusually clear and richly detailed, to the point that I sometimes suspect I am filling in certain elements in a literary or cinematic fashion. Still, the dates are fuzzy: these moments would have occurred in the very late 1970s or the very early 1980s, not earlier than 1978 and not later than 1982.
