I was awakened the other night by a scary urban sensory experience: I smelled smoke, the unmistakable smell of a building burning. It was 3 o'clock in the dark morning; I bolted from bed and was soon checking out my shadowy house from furnace to roof. Then I went out on the front porch and surveyed the scene. I could see nothing - and strangely, I smelled less smoke outdoors than inside.

When my neighbors appeared, too, I realized this was no imagined false alarm. We had all been awakened by the same terrifying odor.

After we all realized there was nothing amiss in Charles Village - little did I know that my father was simultaneously out on the front porch of the family house on Guilford Avenue, going through the same fire-detection ritual - I began to wonder:

If my house isn't burning, and the rest of St. Paul Street seems OK, what is the smoke's origin? And where are the fire engines?

At 3 a.m., there is no place to call for an answer. All the media sources I know have shut down for a rest. Was I crazy? Or was some smell wafting all the way down from York County, Pa.?

I went back to bed and forgot about the whole thing, at least until the clock radio went off and I heard a report. It was not a news story about a fire. No. It was a traffic warning to stay away from West Cold Spring Lane, which was tied up with fire equipment.

Later in the morning I heard that some businesses, including a Subway sandwich shop, had indeed burned. This is about two miles from my windows, but I can see how the smoke would have been carried by light winds blowing from the northwest. My house would be in a direct line to catch these fumes. Also, it's June, the windows are wide open and I haven't turned on any air conditioning yet.

That said, I began to think of another June fire, curiously, also on Cold Spring Lane. It was the fire that gave me, then a 5-year-old, a lifelong respect for the ferocious power of out-of-control flames.

It was June 25, 1955, a sunny morning, when a strong smell of smoke descended over Charles Village. Before long, the sound of the fire apparatus was everywhere. You could hear the engines' wail nearby, but eerily, in the distance, too. You got the impression that every available piece of fire-fighting equipment had been called out and told to go somewhere. But where? Then as now, I was bitten by the fire curiosity bug.

I was at home with my mother, her mother and her aunt. In 1955 Baltimore, there was no noontime news show to switch on. Television, radio and the various editions of the evening newspapers covered these events, but the lead time was considerable. The fire would be out before the media would have gotten the story out - or to your hands.

Great Aunt Cora had a hunch the fire was to the north. She opened her big third-floor window and backed her torso out to gain a crow's nest view of North Baltimore. She grasped a window frame to hoist herself out, where she spied a billowing cloud of black smoke.

Her guess was Loyola College at Charles Street and Cold Spring.

Within minutes, we were all in a taxicab. I remember my mother's terse instructions to the driver: Follow that fire engine.

To the eyes of a 5-year-old, the fire we witnessed was like doomsday. The sprawling Victorian house where the Jesuit priests lived on the Loyola campus was burning furiously. And to this day, I will never forget that smell, the one that awakens you from a sound sleep and says: Get out now.