You Can't Go Home Again

Is there anybody left out there who still doesn't think the Tomlins are dodging hostile thunderbolts from somewhere on high? Well, get a load of this.

The photo above was shot yesterday outside our former Manhattan home at East 56th and Lexington. An underground transformer overheated and exploded, blowing its cast iron manhole cover into the air.

Under normal circumstances, they say if New Yorkers notice these flipping disks at all they only interrupt their sidewalk conversations long enough to call heads or tails.

But in this case there were flames, and they were hot enough to ignite a minivan parked at the curb. The minivan burned long enough to spark a second explosion in its gas tank, which set off some construction scaffolding overhead.

The blaze gutted the corner salon where I used to get my hair trimmed, along with the 2nd and 3rd floor condos above it, and blackened the 16-story building facade all the way to the roof.

Elizabeth's best buddy Parker fled the building in the arms of his daddy. His mommy was just ahead of them. They all plunged around a wall of fire and smoke across the building entrance and spent the night in a hotel.

Our dear friend and next door neighbor Mignon wisely chose not to trust the elevators and wasn't prepared to trust her knees either for 14 flights of stairs. On the doorman's advice she stayed where she was and monitored the situation on the news channels.

One of the elevators did fail, trapping a less prudent resident between floors for the better part of an hour. Smoke rolled into the basement, forcing another to barricade herself in the laundry room until FDNY cleared the air.

Well, we're sorry our former neighbors were frightened and inconvenienced. But I'm quite sure that once again this was all about us and our recent string of mini-calamities and brushes with disaster. We were just there LAST WEEK! I almost got a haircut!