Old Engram Bobs to the Surface

Years ago, my wife and I went to dinner with her father and his third wife, in L.A. I can't remember the name of the restaurant, but it was in the Hollywood Hills, actually on a hill. Spendy, dress-up kinda place, a large, old, house that had been converted, as I recall.


We were having dinner and I smelled smoke. Somebody burning something in the kitchen? 


For some reason, I decided I need to go look. I wound up outside, and realized that there was a little fire on the dry hillside, just below a house nearby. 


L.A., the land of fire, pestilence, earthquakes, landslides, and so on.


I hurried down to check it out. 


The fire was just adjacent to the house, and when I say small, I mean it was maybe as big as a living room, twenty feet by twenty feet or so, low, mostly dead grass and a couple of scraggly bushes.


As I looked, the window nearest the flames opened, and an old lady leaned out. She was holding a drinking glass. She poured it on the fire, then went back into the house, presumably to refill the glass.


I was passing amazed at this. Fortunately, the fire department arrived, the guys leaped off the truck, and managed to get the fire out in short order.


Over the years, when this memory popped up, I always wondered: What could she have been thinking?