Southern Blvd Fire. South Bronx, 1980.

Firefighters put out a fire behind the Fedco supermarket on Southern Blvd in the summer of 1980.

I don’t remember a year when there wasn’t a fire in our neighborhood.  It could have been at an abandoned building most likely due to arson, some trash fire, or an accident at some occupied apartment.  We developed a hypervigilance of what was taking place around us.  For me, I could be awakened from a dead sleep by the throbbing of a fire engine outside our apartment building. It was never clear when we could be burned out of our apartment and the sounds of those engines even without the blaring of the horns were something to dread.