I had just finished the last chapters of The Library Book — which chronicles the 1986 Los Angeles Public Library fire, which reached temperatures of 2,000 degrees F. and glowed with a white-hot light — when I was awakened by a thud and a pop. 

The thud was a 90-foot maple, its trunk leaning for years and its roots weakened by this summer’s frequent rains, finally giving up the ghost and toppling over. Next-door neighbors felt their house shake when it hit the ground. (Luckily no houses were damaged and a car that appeared to have suffered severe damage got off easier than it would have originally appeared.)

The pop was the transformer the tree took out on the way down. By the time I joined the crowd of neighbors milling around in the rainy darkness with umbrellas and flashlights, the transformer had burst into flames and half the street had lost power.

The fire fighters had to wait on the power company, and everyone had to wait for the chainsaw crew, which arrived, oh, about 3 a.m. Trucks are still idling on our street. 

A tree falls, a transformer blows, a neighborhood awakens. It was an interesting night, to say the least.