The Chocolate Trail was a bit different this year for McCarthy’s Red Stag Pub and Whiskey Bar. Owner Neville Gardner – also owner of Donegal Square – explained the pub is temporarily closed due to a small fire that broke out during the early morning of Feb. 3.

Gardner and pub staff members were outside the pub offering Kerrygold Butter Toffee for chocolate trail sampling.

There was also soup. “We turned the produce we had left into soup to give out, and are asking for donations for our wait staff,” Gardner said. Any soup left over will be donated to Bethlehem Emergency Sheltering at Christ United Church of Christ at 75 E. Market St.

Gardner recalled they did the same thing when McCarthy’s was shut down the day before St. Patrick’s Day because of the Covid lockdowns in 2020. “We gave out potato soup to anyone who wanted it. People couldn’t come in but at least they could get something good from it.”

“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When life gives you potatoes, make potato soup!”

“The staff is cleaning and putting the place back together,” Gardner said, adding the hope is to reopen within the next two weeks.

Gardner said the fire broke out in a small utility room next to the kitchen around 4 a.m. Something was left near the furnace, and the fire began in a container of rags. The heat melted part of an overhead water line which broke and extinguished the small fire.

“It’s a miracle the whole building didn’t burn down,” Gardner said, adding no one was in the building at the time of the fire, which was out by the time the fire department arrived.

Gardner said there really isn’t any explanation for the fire and how it basically put itself out, except perhaps, the spirit of Liesel Beckel (1754-1831), who had lived in the house and nursed the Marquis de Lafayette back the health after he suffered a leg wound at the Battle of Brandywine in 1777. Liesel nursed General Lafayette from Sept. 17 to Oct. 18, 1777 as he convalesced at what was then the George Frederick Beckel house. She became the village nurse.

“The Marquis was only 19,” Gardner said. “After he left, Liesel died of a broken heart.”

Gardner said there have been many unexplained happenings over the years, which he attributes to Liesel.

Participating businesses in the Chocolate Trail posted signs asking for donations to support the McCarthy’s staff, with 100 percent of proceeds going directly to their team.