Half Past Awesome

Station 2 Therapy In Session

I think I’m gonna become a marriage counselor. What with the national average hovering somewhere around 50% and the firefighter rate something like 97%, I’m in what some may consider a “target-rich” environment. Plus, despite being untrained, unlicensed and prone to making up statistics like percentages, I’ve been married more than once and have thus been upgraded from “amateur” to “semi-pro”.

The fire service is prone to an exceedingly high divorce rate and I think this has to do with several factors. When you spend 1/3 of your life away from your family and surrounded by some of the most audacious mo-fos around, it’s hard not to be affected, and harder still to separate life in the firehouse from life at home. As I’ve watched several marriages fall apart around me in the department, I began thinking what any good co-worker might: “I need to compile a list and thus find humor in the misery. It’s the brotherly thing to do.” Here are a couple of things I’ve picked up -

Uli’s Surefire Marriage Salvation Techniques For Firefighters

1. Spouses should not be called by the same name you address your brothers and sisters in the firehouse. Rare is it the marriage partner who finds the term “you one-dog, one-bone motherfu**er” endearing.
2. Your better half is not going to get through life’s trials any easier when you adopt the attitude that all could be solved “with a thicker skin”. It never works in your favor when you tell them to “tough it out”, “get over themselves” or “grow a pair, for chrissakes.”
3. Never, ever, and I mean EVER, take the advice of your crew-mates without a healthy dose of skepticism. There’s a good chance they’re rooting for your relationship to fail if for no other reason than to have something new to gossip about.
4. If you don’t want her/him to know about it, don’t tell a firefighter. Especially me.
5. By the same token, you can’t claim to your spouse that you don’t need professional counseling “because the boys at the station said……” . She will never accept this form of unlicensed therapy as legitimate.
6. Whatever situation you find yourself in within the parameters of marital issues, never try and relate them to any aspect of the fire service. Just because you’re scared shitless of losing her, don’t tell her it feels just like you’re being abandoned by your back-up man (or woman) while you’re on the nozzle. She can’t relate, and nor should she. This only works if your married to a firefighter and that’s another discussion for another day.
7. Drop the nonsense. Strangers on the street may be enthralled by the trucks and lights and sirens and too many viewings of firefighting-stripper calendars, but this is the person who has seen your hairy back, who’s willing to exaggerate your virtues to others and may well have bore your children. They deserve respect, not bullshit bravado. Save that stuff for the station kitchen where, while no one believes you, they’re willing to tolerate it, if for no other reason than they are assigned to that house and thereby stuck with you.
8. It’s hard to instill in your kids table manners if you allow yourself to fart at the table at home. This is an awesome defensive technique when being ganged-up upon at the dinner table at the station, but is a little harder to justify off-duty. And don’t even try to explain it. It just is what it is.
9. The realm of marriage is rarely subject to the laws of seniority. You can’t welch out of house chores in your own home by throwing out an “I’m promoted dammit! I got twenty years in this thing and I ain’t washing the dishes.” While you can earn the title “Grouchy Old Salt” in the firehouse and command a modicum of grudging respect, it just makes your spouse hate you that much more. Thin ice, my friends.
10. Finally, we need to remember that while the crew is forced to spend time with us, our spouse has chosen to of his/her own free will (unless you’ve entered into it like I did, using deceit, trickery and blackmail; it’s no big deal). This is not to be taken lightly and I’ve found the best remedy is to leave the firehouse and it’s culture right where it stands. When shift is over, it’s time to be grown up for 48 hours. That gives you plenty of time to drum up more heinous immaturity for the next shift.

Uli Siren Songs

I’ve always been terrible at chemistry. From Chem 101 taught by Doug “I am not a moose” Clark in high school to attempts at a firefighters grasp of Organic Chemistry, there’s never been an moment where the concepts have clicked beyond rote memorization. I am honestly baffled by the gall of local cooks who utilize street chemistry to batch up meth in mobile labs; as if the whole she-bang weren’t nutty enough, these Mensa rejects give it a go while rolling down the road in a beat up Dodge Predator-Model van. In a word….chemistry is terrible, mostly because I don’t get it. And even that’s not entirely true – but I’m getting ahead of myself. Indulge me for a minute, here.

First off the facts: our station, Firehouse Number 2, is home to one engine (pumper) company, one truck (ladder) company. We have three shifts, each comprised of two captains, two engineers and four firefighters on an ideal day. This brings us to a total of 24 guys living out of three refrigerators, two urinals, three showers (two for the captains, one for the other eighteen enlisted-types), and seven recliners. Citizens regularly ask “why is there always a firetruck at the grocery store? My tax dollars are paying for what kind of meal tonight?” I stand by my earlier statement of fact – 8 guys gotta eat every day. And, no, contrary to crotchety old men in grocery store parking lots all over the city, we pay for each and every meal out of our own pockets. And if you want to avoid merciless ridicule that can last for years, you better be able to feed all eight guys two meals, plus enough for coffee and some sort dessert for no more than $8/man. The pressure can kill a man, assuming the boys on the crew don’t get to him first.

Consequently, interpersonal relationships within the firehouse are built upon factors that cause psychologists to have sleepless nights and mental breakdowns. We don’t worry about issues like “validation” and “empowerment”; we focus on such timely concepts as “when’s dinner gonna be ready, you filthy rat-bastard?” and “what’s that? Homophobic, you say? Well, you’re in luck, we all sleep naked. In one bunk.” Most fire department spouses interested in keeping a healthy marriage learn to ignore their lesser half every third day while they’re at the station occupying downtime by destroying any self-esteem they encounter in a co-worker. It’s a weird system, and, most importantly, it works.  We don’t trust sunshine that is blown up the backdoor. It keeps you grounded. Not coincidentally, that’s why we can never have any respect for Sean Penn (it’s sorta hard to take the guy who played Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times At Ridgemont High seriously, especially when he’s out trying to command “respect” because he’s an “actor” and is thereby qualified to know lots of things that you and I don’t.)

And every once in a while you’ll get a moment in time, when all the gears are clicking, the crew is busting each others chops in perfect succession and you can just feel it. Kind of like when you figure out, during some point in your senior year at high school, that you’re living in a moment, and that moment will be gone all too soon, but right now, it’s perfect. You want to hold on to that moment, because you’ve never laughed harder, felt more alive, more in sync than in that micro-second of time.

Last night, I was lucky enough to experience such a moment. As chance would have it, I was covering another engineer’s shift at the station, and we were enjoying some fresh-brewed coffee at 9:30pm, sitting in aforementioned recliners and waxing brilliant about such intellectual fare as UFC fights and martial arts in general. And at some point, while the Truck Captain was vividly recreating some fight scene, his limbs flailing in every direction, all of us laughing uproariously to the point of choking, it hit me. Five or six guys, one furniture fire barely worth mentioning recently quenched, splashing coffee around a firehouse day-room, more amused in this moment than they’ve been all day, and all feels right in that very moment.

That right there?

That’s chemistry.

It just took me a while to figure it out.

Uli Siren Songs

“What’s it like to be inside a burning house?” After more than a decade in the fire service, I’ve found that this is one of the top three questions people have when they find out what I do for a living.  Structure fires are a part of the job, and I suppose it’s a fair question; it just really doesn’t cross my mind much anymore. I guess the reason I like posting up about firehouse life more than life in a house fire is that it’s always funnier to BE a fireman than it is to be fighting fire. Plus, it’s damn well impossible to write about with any consistency since every fire is different. One has to be really careful in descriptions about situation “mitigation” because, as firefighters, one of our primary jobs is to drop the Bullshit Flag on our peers anytime their stories use words like “brave” or, the very worst of ALL descriptors we can use – “HERO”. In fact if ANY one of our co-workers uses this word in ANY way to describe him/herself, we are morally obligated to punch the offender right in the mouth, and refer to that person as a “delusional asshole” for the rest of their career.

So, to answer the question without seeming flippant or full of crap, I tell them the best description I’ve come up with: put a black garbage bag over your head, fill it with smoke and crank up the heat and you’ll get the basic idea. What Top Gun did for portraying all fighter pilots as short, ill-tempered young Scientologists, movies like Backdraft and Ladder 49 have done little to temper the fantasy of fighting fire with any sort of reality. A more accurate description could be found in Star Wars, where the protagonists are sloshing about in the trash compactor of a spaceship. Add some acrid smoke and a little more chaos and you’re pretty close. All the training in the world can’t prepare you for the dismal fact of crawling around blind, looking for a distant glow, or worse, a person. Much like CPR has been described by some medics as “the ritual flogging of the dead”, on the rare occasion that a person is pulled from a fire and survives, we’re as relieved and surprised as anyone.

That’s probably why we’ve developed such a macabre sense of humor; it’s a screwy coping mechanism for dealing with the improbable scenarios we encounter, and it can come across to outsiders as insular behavior. As much as I can try and understand what it was like for my brothers and friends who’ve gone and fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, the truth is that I’m only imagining the horror, the fear, the boredom. And that’s why those vets understand one another better than anyone else does, and I can appreciate that fact. In the same fashion, there’s something about bumbling through some meth freaks domicile on a snowy Christmas Eve, tripping over hose and dragging through trash and filth that allows us to bond with one another. You’re not thinking about the danger, you’re wondering what in the hell possesses these people to live like this. And, if you happen to be crawling towards the fire and encounter some bizarre sex toy, you’re expected to pass it back to the guy behind you and ask if he lost something out of his coat. That sort of behavior would make my mother die of a shame-induced aneurysm, but in our world, it’s unofficial standard operating procedure.

The fact remains that for whatever reason we got into this line of work, we like to claim that we stay for the schedule, the benefits, the job security that comes with a never-ending list of people who get themselves into trouble, whatever. But the truth is that when the tones go off and we strap the black garbage bags over our heads, there’s nothing that beats the feeling of heading into chaos with people we can call our friends. At the very least, we’re looking for some piece of discarded trash to abuse one another with; if we’re lucky, we’ll get to do our jobs right and someones bad day is made just a little better.

Uli Siren Songs

This is the time of year when, as it gets cold and icy, residents of this fair city begin to utilize emergency services on a more frequent basis. Old people slip and fall. Methamphetamine cooks move their labs indoors to get out of the elements, then proceed to catch the house on fire during their forays into illegal chemistry. If you are one of the folks that decides to dial 911 for an emergency, I thought I might offer you a primer. The following is a list you may want to consult before you make that call.

DONT’S

• If you are going to take the time to report a house fire from your cell phone as you’re driving down the road, don’t be be the drive-by caller who then disappears. Show some intestinal fortitude. When we show up at 2 am ready to work only to find out you’ve called in an extravagant Christmas light display as a fire, I want to put a face to it. And then I want to laugh at/choke you, just a little.
• When you have not had a bowel movement in three days, please don’t wait until 3:15 am until calling 911. I’m sure it was hurting in the middle of the day, and really? There’s not a whole lot the fire department can do for your situation. Know when to go. Like, after the first two days.
• In the same vein, don’t chance a trip to the toilet if you’re over 600 lbs. and no one else is in the house. Chances are you’ll get stuck, and while we’re happy to serve, I hate to think of you all alone there, wedged between a wall and the stool for hours until discovered by your landlady.
• Please don’t get all indignant if I’ve been to your house several times for the smell of smoke and ask you if you’ve been cooking again. I’m not insulting your cooking skills, I’m insulting your ignorance. Know the difference.
• Don’t ask for a light for your smoke after you’ve called us for “shortness of breath” while hooked up to oxygen. The answer will always and forever be no.
• If you threaten your Old Lady with burning her house down, don’t act all surprised when you’re arrested for the actual act. Consequences, my friend.
• When we’re arriving at a working house fire, don’t wave your arms in the street like a raving lunatic, shouting and acting as though you’re having a seizure. I got it. I’m going to the house that has flames coming out of it. That’s where I’m going.
• Don’t use your charcoal-fired grill as a means of heating your home. Bonfires on the living room floor rarely work out, either.
• If you or a relative calls us because you’re jacked up on meth, or drunk, or both…..don’t get all huffy when I ask if you’re speeding. Save that one for the cops. It’s not like you called just to spend time with me, so let’s just dispense with the niceties. Stop bullshitting everyone in the room – there really aren’t bugs crawling all over your eyeballs, you’re just high.

Do’s

• Do keep the battery in your smoke detector. It sounds pretty bad when you tell us, as smoke and flames are rolling out of your house, that you took the battery out because “it kept beeping and shit when I’m watching my COPS”.
• You do need to know that if I find your kid covered in fleas when we respond to your house, I’ll be calling the Division of Family Services immediately upon my return to the station. This will be after I’ve asked you about the flea bites and your response is “I dunno. Must be the chicken poxes or somethin’ “
• If you decide to give birth in a liquor store, you do need to understand that this will become a piece of fire station lore and gossip. And you do need to know we’ll be describing it in vivid detail.
• As well, if we find you tied up in some sort of kinky bondage play gone wrong, we’ll respect your privacy and never murmur a word of the details outside of the firehouse. But that sort of story?  You do know that it becomes currency like gold around the station dining table, right?
• Do put on clothes, if at all possible. And no, belly-baring tank tops were most likely not designed with you in mind.
• If you own a vicious, baby-killing pit bull, please do tell us about it before we go into whatever section of your “house” you keep it chained up in. I don’t care how sweet you think the dog is; it hates us and the feeling is mutual.
• Do carefully consider your weapons of choice when you embark on a mission of revenge. Two baseball bats? Okay, that’s reasonable. Two weedeaters? That’s just funny, and apparently hurts like hell.
• When we enter your domicile, do give consideration to the fact that I’m not a total idiot. When you say “sorry, I was just fixin’ to clean up” and I see years of cat shit and trash accumulated on the floor, you’re merely insulting my keen sense of observation. Besides, you called us for emergency response. We expect to see you at your worst, so just let it be. But clean the cat box, will ya?
• When you call 911 and we arrive to find your house engulfed in flames and there is one of the No New Taxes signs planted in your yard (*note – that sales tax was to fund your fire dept.*), know that we do, indeed, appreciate the irony. I hope you do too, you turdblossom.

Uli Siren Songs, Tales of Misery

I know I told you last night that I’d be posting about how I regained my status as a man, and I will, but not today. Today, on the eighth anniversary of the September 11th attacks on our country, I’d like to stop and pay tribute. Most of us can well remember where we were and what we were doing during those tragic moments; it’s the JFK assassination denominator of my generation – “where were you when the attacks occurred / when JFK was shot?”

I was a rookie fireman on duty at Old Fire Station 1 when the terrorists began their murderous rampage. Of all the moments that day, I most clearly remember standing behind one of the beat up old recliners leaning forward to see and hear what was happening on our crappy old television. I remember watching the long lines of firefighters heading up into the buildings and thinking to myself  “what a hellacious scene to be walking into”. And, as the towers came crashing down, in that very moment, I remember vividly thinking “all those brothers just died. I just watched them die. Right there”. I was left hollow for a moment, followed by overwhelming sorrow; enough sorrow to feel the tears come down my cheeks, sad at the thought of so many virtual strangers dying right in front of the nations eyes.

I use the word virtual, because there is a common link to firefighters around the world forged in tradition and brotherhood. So, although I personally know none of the twelve thousand-plus members of the FDNY, there is an occupational bond there that is so subtle as to be almost unnoticed by the outside world; the loss of 343 in one day is emotionally staggering, even from thousands of miles away. It’s like you just lost an entire clan of cousins who you don’t really know all that well, you just know you’re related. The sadness was tinged by the knowledge that those guys must have known they were walking into a death trap of a situation. I wasn’t there – I can’t say WHAT they knew; but even if they were aware of the enormity of the situation and the inevitable results, I doubt that any of them would have turned around.

When you accept the responsibility of being a firefighter (or a cop, or a member of the armed forces), you always know what you’re signing up to do. You accept the prospect of dangerous potential, the standards that you’ll be held to, the very trust that is placed in you by the public. You accept these duties because deep down you WANT to help, you WANT to be the guy people turn to when it hits the fan, you WANT to feel the thrill of adrenaline as you kick the door in and the smoke pours out. But what you DON”T want is to die. Nobody but martyrs and freaky zealots seek death in any of our actions. Like the chance of getting hit walking through a crosswalk, you just assume that there’s always a random possibility that it may be your last run when the bells strike. If you dwell on it more than that, you’ll go mad with anxiety over something that has a good chance of never happening. And so another shift is logged in the books.

Except that it wasn’t for these guys, and it wasn’t for the rest of the firefighting world, either. That so many innocent people had to die in New York, Pennsylvania and the Pentagon that day is not lost on anyone. But when I cried with the rest of our nation that day, I was lamenting the lives of so many of the brotherhood snatched away from their families and loved ones. That’s 343 dads, brothers, cousins, and neighbors wiped out by an insane act of cowardice. All these years later it’s no less overwhelming to tally the losses in my head. The tears are long gone, the anger replaced with a sense of routine structure /chaos and another eight years worth of shifts to show for it. But I’ve never forgotten the sadness I felt as so many of my kind perished one fall morning. I have the utmost respect for those true heroes who died on September 11th and even more so for the brave souls who had to report to the FDNY firehouses for the next shift.

Eight years to the day, and here I am again in a fire station. The call load is normal for us here on Truck 2, the guys are busting each others chops over meals, and outside of a History Channel Sept.11th marathon, it’s no different than any other day at the firehouse. That’s as it should be – we all have jobs to do and lives to live. Just the same, today the specter of that day lingers in my mind, in our collective consciousness, and I hope it always does; we should never forget the loss of life nor the spectacular sacrifices made that day. So, if you think of it, take a moment to remember those we’ve lost; that much respect they deserve.

Uli Siren Songs

The funniest scenarios I run into at the fire department always involve a member of the lunatic fringe; one way or another we end up interacting with them in the role of Crazy and me as an amused bystander. This is not to say that the nutjobs don’t have their fair share of emergency response needs; it just makes my day all the better when they decide to call 911 and bring us into their world.

But once in awhile, a relatively normal member of society engages us and then the tables get turned. I end up being the one looking unhinged while they end up looking at me with one eyebrow cocked up high. And this is exactly how yesterday’s shift began.

We were out in the street behind the station rolling out some hose for a training evolution with our rookie when a kindly looking older gentleman shuffled on up to me and asked if he could bend my ear a moment. “Well, of course!” I told him, thinking that chatting with one of our denizens sure beats lugging around 5″ hose. He was toting a folding metal shopping cart, on his way down to the stinky supermarket on the corner, a cutoff sock around his wrist to keep his watch from rubbing a raw spot (I guess?) and enough ear hair to fashion a Dickie turtleneck thingy; immediately I liked this guy.

He says to me “So…I know this isn’t on your agenda, but do you know of any way to get squirrels out of my attic? I mean those little bastards have really done a number on my insulation, the wiring, and God knows what else. What would you do, sir?” I have to say….I was taken slightly aback. I’ve never been consulted on pest control issues, and I was flattered he valued my opinion, which may stem from the fact that it looks like rodents have taken up residence in my hair. Nonetheless. After mulling over the idea for a nanosecond, I told him that he ought to call a pest control company, that I thought I saw a truck the other day that said “Critter Control” or something like that on it’s side, and that’d be a good place to begin. Apparently, this wasn’t the answer my new friend was looking for; he said, “No, my son-in-law, he’s got a pest control business, and I can’t call him.” I CAN’T CALL HIM. What in THE HELL? My friend began to look agitated and went on to list the multitude sins these squirrels had committed against his home. No further mention of the son-in-law.

At this point, the station captain is starting to look over at us and no doubt worrying that the man’s angry gesturing is a result of something I’ve said or done. Again, I am asked what I would do by my elderly inquisitor, and after yet another moment of mulling, I told him he could call the Animal Control and see if they could point him in the right direction. No. That was not what he was looking for, either. I’m beginning to guess that he wanted me to solve the problem as an agent of the Fire Department. As in “drive the ladder truck over to his house and engage in hostilities with the squatting squirrels”. The fact that he kept staring at my shoulders when he talked to me was starting to un-nerve me a little as well; what, you can’t look me in the eye as you dismiss every single bit of wisdom I am doling out here on the street?

So, having run out of reasonable options for dealing with his pests, I answered as best I could when he asked how the FD could help get rid of his squirrels. I looked him dead in the eye (which meant stooping a little) and saying “Sir, if you want us to flood the squirrels out, your house is going to have to catch on fire first.” I then gave him a smile to indicate that I was kidding around, that I wasn’t serious about him torching his own home. His eyes wandered up towards mine and then he said…..

“Well, would I get a free smoke detector if it did?”

Utterly priceless.

Uli Siren Songs

Everyone needs inspiration. Bones is inspired by cleanliness and germ-eradication. The Heathens are inspired by Transformers, The Dirtbag is inspired by architectural innovation, Fury The Landscaper is inspired by a Subway sandwich done right and I’d venture that RoJo is inspired by the recent birth of his son. Artists get inspiration from pastoral landscapes and runaway flights of fancy within the reaches of their imagination. Some folks on the northside are inspired by a good meth rush, which in turn inspires them to stay up all night and peel insulation off of copper wiring so they’ll have a way to fund their next inspiration. Our kids inspire us to be better parents, our spouses inspire us to get off of our asses and do something with the day, and I would argue that coffee can provide some of the greatest inspiration of all.

But, like all creative types, I need to constantly hit my mental “refresh” button in order to feed the flow of ideas that come spilling out of my mind. Often times, this comes in the form of the neighbors, Truck 2 antics at the fire station, The Heathens or the myriad folks who play supporting roles in the comedy that is my life. I believe with all I’ve got that you can find all the material you might need right in front of your nose, if only you take the time to open your eyes and see the ridiculosity for what it is. But.

But…..once in awhile a change of scenery is in order, if for no other reason than to throw your chaos into perspective and give you an appreciation for little things like, say, the Amish out on the state highway. Sometimes I achieve this with a trip to the Northwest to visit The Dirtbag, I’ve found it on a road trip to a music festival in Steamboat Springs, Co and it’s been had floating down a river on a lazy summer day with a motley crew of amigos. The common denominator is that travel is the impetus for my inspiration. I may not be as worldly as I’d hoped to be by this age, but in my limited travels, I find it to be a crack cocaine of sorts: I always want more and more, there’s always more to see, more to experience, more to drink in and enjoy.

The corollary benefit to me traveling around more is that it also provides much more material to write about, and thereby gives you moments of levity (in the form of this site) from time to time. The reason I bring this up? I am in deep negotiations with The Wife as to the purchase of a dual sport motorcycle, which would give me access to a whole new range of material and inspiration. You may argue that you can hit the road in your truck just as easily, and it would be hard to counter that, but there is something about traveling by bike to small town festivals, redneck jamborees and different little hamlets around here that really appeals to the wanderer in me. To take a dusty county backroad with an amigo or two just to witness all that is offered for my visual consumption would border on a spiritual experience for an old heathen. You know, like my own version of  Zen And the Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance kind of thing.

And while she may have safety statistics, economic limitations and virtual practicality on her side of the argument, I’ll be utilizing divine inspiration as the cornerstone of my reasons to buy a motorcycle. I am also going to be relying heavily on needing to keep posts on this site fresh and funny, that you the reader have high expectations of low humor and that in order to accomplish this, I’ll need two wheels, a motor and a weekend here or there. I can’t let you down, and I won’t.  It’s going to prove a tough fight, my friends, and her ability to be all “rational” and “level-headed” is going to work against me  in ways I can’t even anticipate. Although it shouldn’t be necessary, I’ll even resort to guerrilla tactics such as…..well, I can’t say here, because she’s been known to read this once in a while. But trust me, it’ll involve behavior I am not used to, such as reining in some of my erratic ways. Hopefully the result will be a newly found sense of inspiration and a 650cc motor.

After all, who can argue against Zen and small town tractor pulls?

Uli Amigos, Siren Songs, Tales of Misery, Wandering Ponderings Bones, Dirtbag, Fury The Landscaper, RoJo, the Heathens, The Wife

In order to mark my return to the firehouse after a few weeks off, I thought I’d go whole hog and work out before shift, too. This was a dumb decision. I go to stationary cycling classes (er, spin) regularly, ride to work once in a while, play some ice hockey and even go so far as to attend yoga/pilates classes once or twice a week (don’t laugh too hard till you try it. Burns like acid).  But if I really, truly want to get rid of the junk hanging off the waist, it’s got to be running, a sport I loathe with utter contempt. It’s hard on the knees, I sound like a gagging water buffalo when doing it and it looks as though I might be in the throes of a grand mal seizure when I attempt it. Nonetheless, it is the one tried and true method of getting rid of the Guinness and baconic residue.

So I gave in to my co-worker JoBoo’s demands and joined him in an attempt to “run” three miles before work. THREE MILES. Might as well have been the Battan Death March at that rate. I thought I might share my experiences as they related to what was cranking out of the ipod. The mileage/time sequence may be off, since I could barely jog, much less keep track, but you’ll get the idea.

Mile One-ish
Song: Nuthin’ But A G Thang by Dr. Dre
Turns out this is a good one for me to keep pace to. And by “pace” I mean it’s the kind of slow that you might commit a drive-by shooting to. Which is EXACTLY like the kind of crime I feel like committing within the first fifty feet of the run. Holy S#*t why in the world did I tell JoBoo I’d do this? This is stupid. I am already hurting. I want nothing more than to quit. My lungs agree that this is a good idea and demand I stop immediately. I don’t comply.

Mile 1.2-ish
Song: The Lightning Storm by Flogging Molly
The song title is what I am hoping against hope will happen right over my head at this very moment, thereby electrocuting me and making me forget the pain in my feet and inner chest cavity. As an interesting aside, I think a homeless guy just pushed a shopping cart right by us, we’re going so slow. JoBoo doesn’t look affected in the least by this torture, making my desire to stab him reach a feverish level. I want so badly to kill him, but don’t have the energy to complete the task.

Mile 2-something
Song:  Too Much Sex (Too Little Jesus) by The Drive By Truckers
This song is totally irrelevant to the situation at hand, but I like how lost the protagonist is in the tune (spiritually speaking), because I, too, feel lost. Lost in the sense that I lost a lung somewhere around a half mile ago, and this has forced the first “walking” foray of the trip so far. I vow to only walk 1/2 a block, but in reality I would jump onto the the bumper of a bus right now and hitch a ride back to the firehouse if I could.

Mile 2-and a something-ish
Song: Gold Digger by Kanye West
Since I don’t know if what I am doing technically qualifies as “running”, I assume I am experiencing a “shuffler’s high” right now, since I am having all sorts of mental revelations. It strikes me that this song has ABSOLUTELY no chance of becoming a reality in my life, since I am worth approximately nothing financially; this fact makes me grin like a lopsided baboon as I grunt my way up the street. Also, I almost fall on my face as I try and play Tetris with the brick patterns in the sidewalk, a slightly less funny fact. JoBoo is nowhere to be seen when this happens, and it’s too bad. Perhaps he would have died of an asthma attack laughing at me, which would serve him right.

Mile 3.000001
Song: Damn It Feels Good To Be A Gangsta by The Geto Boys
Why do I love this song in this moment? Perhaps it’s because of these lyrics:
“Real gangsta-a$$ ni##as don’t talk much/
All ya hear is the black from the gun blast/
And real gangsta-a$$ ni##as don’t run for s#*t/
cause real gangsta-a$$ ni##as can’t run fast”
I can relate on every level. I can’t talk, because I must save that energy for all of the gasping and dry heaving that is taking place at this juncture. There is no gun blast, but if someone shot me in this moment I would be in their debt for what was left of my eternity. And it is VERY true that I can’t run “for shit” nor “fast” because what I am doing is ridiculous and anything BUT running.

Mile 3.0009
Song: Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm by the Crash Test Dummies
The only good thing about this song and how it might relate is that I could no longer speak real words, and so the chorus made sense. And then I realized I don’t really like this song at all, and this is another reason I want to fall in front of the city bus that has just passed so close to my staggering corpse.

Mile 3.1
I die just a little bit in front of the firehouse, a casualty of ridiculous fitness. Time? 34 minutes and change. JoBoo laughs as I grasp at his barely sweating form mouthing “oxygen, please, for the love of God, oxygen!!” As soon as I regain consciousness, I vow to kill him.

Uli Less Lardass, Siren Songs JoBoo

Saturday night, and no better time for a conundrum. Normally I really enjoy a good argument with myself, because I always win. But this morning I had a “jump the shark” experience on my way home from the firehouse which has led me to this point. Let’s fill in some blanks: I normally stop at a drive thru coffee shop on the way home from work, because there’s a fair to middling chance that I’ve been up and down through the night running typically bogus calls. This is an aggravation, but lessened by the promise of wrapping my hands around four dollars of liquid heat and caffeine. From time to time the boys from different stations will meet-up post-shift, actually go inside and tell a few tall ones over a cup or three of mud, thereby pissing off the hipster baristas. Apparently, they would rather ignore other people wearing square eyeglasses and ironic trucker hats and avoid us like the plague. No big.

So, while whipping through the drive-thru at a high rate of speed, I order a drink for myself, and one for The Wife, because I need to keep her caffeinated lest we all suffer. I also happen to be on the phone with The Lyrical Jackass, who is telling me his latest feats of Lotharian prowess. As I am entranced by the tale he’s weaving, I absent-mindedly mumble my order into the squawk-box only to have LJ burst into laughter and yell “WHAT did you just order?” I told him grande something or other for Her. Only too late did I realize I had pronounced it not “grahn-dey” but “grand-day” coffee. As in “Gimme one of them thar grand-day coffees Sissy, I got me a mess o’ work waitin’ on me down at the Kwik Kash Payday Loan joint.” Oh, Lordy. What have I done? What HAVE I done?

To quote the Jackass, when the inbred Arkansas hillbilly has to correct my pronunciation of things, it’s time to ask the hard questions. What just happened? When did it begin happening? And more precisely, WHY, in the name of Dale Earnhardt, rest his soul, did it happen? Am I but a few steps away from considering fried chicken in brown gravy with cashews and onions “Chinese” food? Is it too late, or will I soon start considering Bass Pro to be some sort of Mecca and Jim Bakker a “pretty good guy” who just got a bum deal? These are, indeed, troubling times.

As I worry the Maker’s Mark out of my evening cocktail here on the front porch and the fireflies do their visual fornication-invitation dance all around me, I thought it prudent to list the pros and cons of life here in these Ozarks. I kept the list short, as mandated by my attention span.

Pros

1. Cheap housing. And I don’t just mean the vinyl siding, either. I bought my first home for the price of a decent luxury car, a fact my family in California considers a minor miracle. That may well be because it is common fact that on the West Coast, one must be willing to shell out darn near a million bones to purchase a 900 square foot crack den in a decidedly shady neighborhood.
2. Seasons. We have two weeks of awesome weather in the spring (minus the tornadoes), six months of unbearable heat and humidity followed by two weeks of incredibly idyllic fall colors, wrapped up with five  more months of winter weather with winds icy enough to freeze bone marrow, little snow and A LOT of ice and slush. Seasons.
3. The folks. With the exception of those who’ve made my List, the people of the Ozarks tend to be genuine, real folks. They work hard, they seem to care for their neighbors (there are exceptions, of course. Like when you got a good meth deal about to be busted by that no-good nosy neighbor. I’ve heard that one on a call. True story. Almost like Scooby-Doo), and will do things out of sheer sense of good will that would baffle residents of the coasts.
4. Bacon. Still a food group out here.

Cons

1. No ocean. No mountains. I mean real mountains. It is decidedly difficult to come out to the middle of the middle of the middle without much to see above 1000′ except for blue skies. We ARE, however, tidal wave free for the last six million years. Go us!
2. Holy Rolling. It’s infectious and apparently gets in the blood. This past three months alone, I’ve had more than a few people trying to save my soul and recruit me for Jesus Christ Supercenter Of The Ozarks (aka Six Flags Over Jesus). It would seem that my chaotic lifestyle presents something of a challenge to which they are drawn, in a rescue-me-kinda way. Plus, when I say that the only difference between a cult and religion is about 1000 years, that gets ‘em all stirred up. Damn me. Straight to hell, apparently.
3. Just the Good Ol’ Boys. Whether we’re talking city politics (police and fire pension, anyone?), neighbors who utilize the N-word with an alarming frequency (try explaining THAT ignorance to your six year old) or the fact that some would consider the ONE billboard in town that’s in Spanish to be a herald of the Mexican invasion, it gets old. We need to grow out of 1956, folks.
4. Meth. It is a problem, and apparently we can’t make enough of it out here. I mean, besides the whole losing teeth thing, there are some heinous consequences to the whole lifestyle. I know; we see ‘em more than just occasionally.

It’s a hell of a thing, multiple choice.

Uli Siren Songs, Tales of Misery, Wandering Ponderings The Wife

Around 2:30 this morning,  a single car detached garage decided to catch on fire. The hows and the whys are the kinds of questions our fearless Fire Marshals are paid to answer; I am paid to keep the situation from escalating from “fire” to “raging inferno”. Along with Engine Co.2, the boys from Ladder Truck 2 LOVE a good house fire. Hell, that’s half the reason we want to work on the north side of Springburg. The other half is dealing with the mad-dog antics that many of our esteemed clientele engage in on a regular basis. I’m talking about our urban outdoorsmen who pass out in the alleys, brawl each other with the drunken vigor of fighting sloths and light their shopping carts on fire on a regular basis. It is in this kind of environment that we found ourselves facing a bread-and-butter burner.

We roll up and immediately hop out of the Truck to help the Engine boys put the liquid refreshment on the blazing garage. Not too big a thing, really. As we were working around the structure, I noticed that the garage wasn’t exactly being used as a place to store vehicles, but rather, to store the homeless in their off time. All the trappings necessary for a life on the streets were being consumed by fire as evidenced by the piss-stained couch going up in the center of it all. There was a random bale of hay, cardboard tables, endless alcoholic beverage containers, enough makeshift ashtrays filled up to have put one of the Marlboro Man’s kids through college and the ubiquitous nasty mattress, all turning to glowing embers before our eyes.

Just as the nozzle man was making his entry, I heard this weird high pitched cackle. What the bejeezus? I turned around to find a crazy-eyed wild man sitting on top of a doghouse, wearing a shirt as a kilt, and little else. I start to holler at him, through my air mask, so of course, we look like a pair of idiots yelling at each other. At least the news cameras were out on the street. When I got near enough to him to yank my mask and ask what in THE HELL he was doing, he just kept giggling and informed me that “I better get in there and get Granny.” WHAT? IS THERE SOMEONE IN THERE MISTER? “Yeah, Granny went in there to look for Elvis and say goodbye to God.” AGAIN, WHAT? AS IN WHAT THE F–K ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? The two firefighters continued to toss water at the situation and I informed them that there might be someone else in there. Great.

The boys knocked down the fire in short order and I drug kilt-dude out to the street and had him repeat his story to the head honchos on-scene, because this? is totally unbelievable if you didn’t witness it. He continued to rant and rave like a lunatic about Granny (who was across the street, by the way. On the sidewalk. In a lawn chair. At 2:30am) and Elvis,  then shuffled down the street until the cops caught up with him and hauled him off to the pokey (where, I was told, he ripped off his kilt/shirt combo at the booking desk and basked in his nude glory; that’ll make him most popular in lockup). By this time, we were waiting on the Marshal to arrive and do his thing, so we took the time to check over the scene, and let me tell you one thing: this place is going on the Top 15 list of nastiest residences in our entire town.

Picture this: cobwebs hanging from ceiling to about 5ft. high on the walls, all colored brown from dirt and wayward cigarette smoke. A toilet falling through the floor with water running in it continually. Five gallon buckets throughout the house in case you didn’t feel like making the trip to aforementioned leaning stool of nastiness (a well utilized option, I might add). Several years worth of cigarette butts crammed into every available container strewn about. Rotting food scattered to every corner of the joint. Computer screens and monitors in various locations with a wireless router sitting on an overturned shopping cart in the erstwhile “living” room. Trash up to your knees throughout smelling like, well, old decaying trash. The smell. Oh, the smell. God, for the smell. I’d rather take up residence in the burned out garage than try to live in this environment.

And you want to know what was in the middle of all of this nasty, filth ridden squalor? A working smoke detector. Despite living in conditions that could be likened to a 900 square foot dumpster, these folks had the sense of mind to at LEAST have a smoke alarm in their sweet abode. When you compare that to the number of people I see on my side of town not wearing (and not making their kids wear) seat belts, it almost lends some sanity to the situation. Never mind that Granny’s son was screaming at her rudely about how if someone didn’t let him back in the house he was gonna “whip (my) d–k out and take a big giant piss right here, right now” (true statement). Never mind that we were secretly hoping the police would drop a taser shot on him for being such a turd as to yell at his Granny, calling her EVERY rude name I can think of, none of which I can print. I can only hope they eventually arrest him, if for nothing more than being a disrespectful asshole; no one should talk to their granny like that.

Certainly not one savvy enough to have both a functioning smoke detector and a relationship with Elvis.

Uli Siren Songs, Tales of Misery