denver is burning

We had a dumpster fire yesterday. There was the familiar knock at the back door -- the next-door neighbor boy, who is smitten with my two older, glamazon daughters. He stood there, dumbstruck. His mother walked up behind him. "Come outside!" she said, with animation and a sly smile on her face. "Bring the girls! You've got a great view!"
I had no idea what she was talking about, but I do know that she loves summer more than most children and has a mile-wide streak of mischief. So I grabbed my daughters and ran out the back gate, into our alley.
"Dumpster fire!" our neighbor said, and she jumped up and down, smiling and clapping her hands. “Isn’t this exciting? This is the most exciting thing that’s happened in our neighborhood all week!”
It was on fire, all right. The smoldering plastic hurt our lungs and drove the rest of the family inside. I stayed and watched. The flames crawled up the wooden pole and threatened the power and phone lines. Before they could do any damage, a fire truck raced down The Nicest Alley In Denver (as everyone here calls it – it’s lit, and I’ve never once seen a rat) and put the thing out. The extinguishers blew brown, dirty smoke through the air and made the neighbor boy cough and gag. The firefighters took long sticks and poked through the Dumpster, trying to figure out what had been burning, and kept squirting stuff inside. Finally, they left. The pole is still black. The heat from the fire burned the outer coating off the Dumpster, so now it’s just a charred box. I’ll give it to my neighbor: It’s probably the most exciting thing that’s happened in the neighborhood all week.