In reality, Gould and Dixon "live" where they live only in a loose sense. They had a house in Apex, but it was blown apart a couple of weeks ago after a gas leak. Needless to say, they don't live there anymore. But they've rented a home in the same neighborhood and plan to stay there until the blown-apart house is rebuilt.

That rebuilt home is the place they'll be stuck in, at least for a decent while. It'll almost feel like a moral obligation.

Gould and Dixon moved into their new neighborhood just six months ago. Gould is a hot-air balloonist, and her multicolored balloon has for years been a fixture in the sky above Fuquay-Varina, where the couple used to live. They relocated to Apex in the spring, to be closer to Gould's job in Research Triangle Park. Their new house blew up in the middle of the night Sept. 21. A subsequent fire finished off whatever was left. Happily, no one was hurt.

(Apex, which calls itself "The Peak of Good Living," experienced a second explosion Thursday, when a chemical plant fire caused the evacuation of thousands of residents. A new town slogan might be in order: "The Peak of Pyrotechnical Living," maybe, or a simple "Where Things Go Boom.")

While hot air is a naturally occurring substance hereabouts -- Raleigh is, after all, where the legislature meets -- balloons need a portable source of it. That's why Gould kept a pair of propane tanks in her garage. Investigators think one of them might have leaked, but Gould doesn't believe it. Whatever the case, it was what happened the next day that Gould and Dixon will remember forever:

They finally met their new neighbors.

Remember, we live in modern times. In some ways, neighborliness is a fading concept. If you want to chat with somebody, you e-mail them, or instant-message them -- even if they're next door. It's possible to go years without knowing who lives three doors down. Six months in a new neighborhood? That's barely enough time for the Jehovah's Witnesses to find you.

But in other ways, neighborliness is alive and well. Sometimes it just takes an explosion to kick it into action.

"I had met a couple of my neighbors," Gould says. But after her house blew up, leaving her and Dixon without so much as a toothbrush, "I met the whole neighborhood," she says.

Gould met everybody when the whole neighborhood brought over a whole bunch of money.

Adults contributed funds. A group of young girls set up a refreshment stand and raised $257. Nine-year-old Nick Campoli sat at a folding table in his yard and collected $329 in a jar. All together, Gould and Dixon ended up with nearly $6,000 almost before the embers in the ruins of the home had cooled. It was a timely gift, because the insurance check hadn't cleared the bank yet "and we needed pajamas and socks and underwear," Gould says.

So what was her reaction to being presented with the money, Nick?

"She just started saying 'thank you' and stuff," he says.

Nick's memory is a little understated. Gould recalls it as "overwhelming." A group of people she and Dixon barely knew well enough to wave at as they drove by had unhesitatingly put together an emergency cash fund. "After what they've done for us, that's a great neighborhood," she says.

You don't cut and run from a place like that.

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