Folks making their way back from Miller Park and the Brewers’ opening day fiasco asked us what was on fire. Fire? We had no idea. We walked down the block with our friends Tom and Barb and looked out over the Menomonee Valley. Yup, somethin’ was definitely smokin’. All we knew at the time is that it sure as hell was not the Brewers’ bats. (We learned later it was Miller Compressing, a scrap processor.)

We walked back to our friends’ house and walked home about an hour or so later. We didn’t really notice any sort of smell or smoke in the neighborhood. Ten minutes later, though, when we left the house to walk the dogs — oh, my. It was bad. Scary, unnerving bad. Cover your face with any sort of mask at hand bad. It’s still like that out there.