Firetown

Firetown is a fictional town in the Regents Walk comic series. While the majority of the comic's events take place in its much larger neighbor, Widow's Perch, Firetown has its fair share of stories and a small number of the school students commute from their homes there.

History
The town was originally part of the first McIvertown settlement (what came to be Widow's Perch), but need for resources forced a large northern part of the settlement north. First known and ill-fated as Taylor after the then newly elected president, Firetown eventually gained its new name due to how many times it nearly burned to the ground in its early days.

Throughout much of the 20th century, Firetown subsisted mostly off of Widow's Perch's industry and services and on the minimal business brought in by students who come from all over the county to attend its private school. By the late 1960's, it became known as the home of a hippie commune on into the 1970's. While this did not especially bring in business or viability to the town, it cemented its contradictory nature of being both a backwoods dying industry town and a peaceful, if not at times bizarre, hippie retreat.

After the commune's dissolution, things seemed to quiet down in Firetown. However, by the 1980s this small town began to become an epicenter for teenage parties and acts of delinquency, as its many abandoned buildings and tiny police force make it easy for holed up private school kids to get away with just about anything.

Infrastructure
Firetown is home to several of Widow's Perch's needed utilities, and these places keep about half of the town's working force employed. It is the location of the local recycling plant, landfill, and central school bus depot. It also has the largest water tower in the area, several pumping stations, and a sewage treatment plant. The town also has some unsightly, old power substations the help route electricity into Widow's Perch.

Firetown's historic city hall is located in the market district; the only part of town worth visiting to most.

Firetown Elementary
Despite its name, Firetown Elementary is located in northern Widow's Perch, just past the river. It once mostly served Firetown children, although many of that town's families still preferred Widow's Perch Elementary. In the 1970's, the school became Kenneth Lyons' first investment project, and he transformed the old, run-down building into a cozy new atmosphere. Although its rating is more or less the same as its fully public counterpart to the south, it is often seen as "that fancy school across the river" to kids who don't attend it.

St. Brigid of Ireland Private School
The pride and joy of Firetown, St. Brigid of Ireland Private School was founded by Sister Damasus in the early 1920s. Centrally located in Firetown, it provides jobs and business for many of the town's residents and keeps this rather small town lively with teens from Widow's Perch, Firetown and beyond. The school itself began as a strictly Catholic school devoted to serving the many Irish Catholics in the area, but nowadays has adapted to simply providing a better standard of learning and recognition for those who can afford it. Due to this, its students are often seen as snobby or too intellectual for their own good by outside students, yet many of the most rowdy acts of teenage scandal can find their origin here. Widow's Perch High's direct rival, their teams are known as Falconers, their greatest pride and joy being their lacrosse team.

Chief Joseph Junior High
An old and increasingly shrinking school, Chief Joseph Junior High still operates on the the junior high system, serving 7th-9th grade for the students of Firetown. Due to its age and small student body, it's right on the verge of being shut down for good and seldom does one drive by it and see an active campus. Its mascot is the Kingfisher.

Commune Grounds
In the late 1960's, Widow's Perch became home to a new group of people, although most of the locals considered them undesirable. An old, secluded farm on a Firetown hill surrounded by forest was purchased by a group of "anti-establishment radicals" and was turned into a commune within months. The only route into the grounds was a hard-to-find gravel road. After observant Perchers saw dozens of long-haired men and women with flowers in their hair come into town, suspicions rose as to what the out-of-place people were doing on the grounds.

Pastor Jacob Stone Senior soon rallied his flock and tried to convince the town that the group were made up of communist Satanists. Following the group's first street protest against the country's involvement with Vietnam, Pastor Stone led his parishioners and about a hundred other people to the grounds, and demanded to be let in. To their surprise, the people of the commune obliged and even showed them around their crude cabins, vegetable gardens, and bonfire site. The only thing that shocked the visitors at all were several cases of nudity on the grounds.

Though the two groups never saw eye-to-eye, they agreed to leave one another alone. The story became stranger when Pastor Stone suddenly and inexplicably quit the church to join the group himself, leaving his teenage son, Jacob Stone Jr., in the care of his aunt. The commune remained, isolated, until around 1978 when it dissolved almost overnight. Its grounds remain frozen in time with only a few remaining residents, and is the source of a few local urban legends. The people of the commune mostly stayed in the area and contributed to the attempt at making Widow's Perch an artist colony or opened up any variety of local businesses and restaurants between the two towns.

Other Locations
Despite the town's small size, it has a quaint and active downtown—even if many of its stores close before 5 P.M. There are bookstores that provide for the teachers and students of St. Brigid's, artsy antique shops and music stores for former commune members, and a small collection of exotic restaurants, featuring cuisine from India, China, the Philippines, and Russia.

Folk Lore
For the most part, the folk lore of Firetown mimics that of Widow's Perch, but the peculiar residents of Firetown have their own way of telling things, often adding more supernatural slants then there needs to be. However, the former commune grounds and the history there are much more toned down and factual than in Widow's Perch.

Much of the folk lore "unique" to Firetown centers around its history of fires and the origin of those fires. Some like to say Eugene McIver "crossed a gypsy" and the area of the town became cursed, some like to blame indigenous people who might want revenge on settlers, but many simply believe a reputation for a couple fires preceded the town and encouraged hooligans of all ilk to cause their own little bit of arson on a defenseless, wooden settlement.

Luceille Monroe/Sister Damasus (founder of St. Brigid)
Believed to be a former mistress of wealthy Ralph Lyons when she was young, Luceille later devoted her life to the Catholic Church and to representing the Irish community of Widow's Perch and its surrounding areas. She eventually left her entire past behind and became a nun, changing her name to Sister Damasus. Despite this, she had no issues with pressuring her former lover to provide funding for a Catholic school to serve the needs of the Irish in the community, to be called St. Brigid of Ireland Private High School. She is its founder and served it from the sidelines and as a teacher until her death in 1956. Those who remember her often describe her as a battle axe, but she is now recognized as a major benefactor of Firetown. Today, the school remains private, but has become far less rigid in structure and many of the students who attend have no Catholic background and attend for the better quality of the education there.

Nearby Towns
Widow's Perch

Salem (largest nearby city)