Last Saturday morning, we awoke to a strange smell in our bedroom. The more we inhaled it, the more convinced we became that it had an electrical burning tinge to it. We hesitated to call our fire department for a seemingly small thing, but we did - better safe than sorry, as they say. Immediately, we heard a siren go off and, in a matter of minutes, two fire engines and three fire department cars arrived. About a half dozen firefighters entered the house, fully equipped, down to fire detection equipment and axes, checked all the outlets and decided that the problem was our television set. They put the offending TV out on our porch because, they said, if we had put it in the garbage area for pickup the village of Manorhaven might have fined us...

When we apologized for causing them all this trouble, they assured us that we had done the right thing because that was how fires started - by a simple acrid smell. We thanked them and our lucky stars because it wasn't anything worse and because we have such a great fire department in Port.

Jim Panos