I am guessing that I was about seven years old, living on Cherry Grove in Annapolis. For those familiar with the area, our house was on the right side of the street as you drive away from Germantown Elementary, the scene of my memorable bike wreck, the one which is another story for another time. Except that the bike wreck was probably not that much of a big deal, and was simply a big deal at the time, taking up an unoccupied part of my brain, and exercising squatter’s rights ever since.
Anyhow, behind our house, where the public library is now, there was this spacious, open field. One time I was playing with a neighborhood friend, a kid named Eddie Hammer. We were at his house a few doors down, playing out in his back yard. Out in that field, the one that was behind both his house and mine, there were these older kids, playing, as it turned out, with matches. Well, they then succeeded in setting the field on fire, and then took off in a manner that indicated they believed they had done something bad. Eddie and I ran out there, tore some branches off some nearby trees, and began trying to fight the fire. Within a very short time, some firemen showed up, and put the fire out.
So Eddie and I just stood around for sometime afterwards, waiting for our accolades and medals, I think, but for some reason the firemen just avoided us and ignored us completely. So there we were, disappointed to see our chance to be recognized as Annapolitan heroes just slipping away from us. Sometime later, and I am pretty sure it was a number of years later, I realized that the firemen thought we were the evil players-with-matches and had started the fire our very own selves, and they were being really, really nice to us. Suppose I should thank them.