Reality Intrudes

There's no time for writing with Christmas just around the corner.

Someone (that would be me) has to finish up the baking and whip up an appetizer for the cousin's Christmas Eve dinner party.

One hundred years ago, several families stopped their holiday preparations and instead organized the funerals of loved ones. It's been exactly one hundred years since a massive fire at Chicago's Union Stockyards took the lives of twenty-one fire fighters.

Back then, the Morris Company's pig house was infused with the grease from countless butchered hogs, plenty of fuel for a hot fire. Just as the various brigades arrived to fight the fire, a wall collapsed and crushed men who were doing their very dangerous job.

How did it happen that the same tragedy could occur on the same day, one hundred years later?

On the south side of Chicago, an abandoned warehouse went up in flames and the fire department responded.

The firemen knew that most such fires were begun by the homeless, trying to stay warm. Noticing an unsecured door, they figured it was another such case. Whoever started the fire might be trapped inside, and the men in the turn-out coats were rescuers, after all.

The structure was unstable and the roof came in, killing two and injuring several more.

One hundred years ago, twenty-seven families of Chicago firefighters put Christmas aside so that they could mourn their dead. This year, two families will relive that experience of last century.

And all over Chicago, civilians watch the fire trucks go by and wonder if the people on the bright red engine wonder if they're going to go home at the end of their shift.