How Ed Did

It started out, as it always does, with little fanfare.

Another day on duty at the fire station, the usual foot traffic behind us, heading to or from the Brown Derby liquor store or the grocery store or the local AA club, located two doors down from the liquor store. The players change, but the plot never does. Many of our 911 calls center around the needs of the homeless, and they utilize the 911 system with a frightening efficiency. They know the ins & outs of how to get the fire department there right away, and as such, we often get to know them on a personal basis. We develop dysfunctional relationships with them, us being referred to as “hey fireMAN” and they by their nicknames or street monikers. Some are funny, many are violent, most are in a depressing state of being. Our people are a colorful, crazy lot, and as I tell each rookie who does a rotation with us, “don’t look down your nose at anybody. We miss two paychecks and we’re right there with them.”

SO, we have a new man about town in our ‘hood, he a peddler of ladies delights. While he’s never come right out and SAID that he’s a pimp, we can watch his moves from the station and it’s pretty clear he’s not selling vacuums door to door. The giveaway, however, is his telltale dollar-bill-sign hat that he usually wears, cocked at an angle. This gentleman is in his fifties, I’d guess, and working the hustle to make it. He’s always friendly and polite to us, often gets into shouting matches with unseen adversaries near the dumpster behind our firehouse. We’ve made runs on his lady friends, and he always seems irked when one of his employees is off the clock.

Our new friend made his way into the engine bay the other day and loudly proclaimed: “exCUSE me!?! Could I get some help here?” My hands were literally full at that moment, so the other engineer handled the situation. It went down something like this:

“How can I help you sir?”

“Well, I ain’t gonna lie; me an’ my ol’ lady, we been drinkin’ vodka again. Her knee is all kinds of messed up.”

“Oh, I see. Would you like me to get an ambulance headed this way?”

“I didn’t SAY that. I just said, we been drinkin’. She might need some he’p. With her knee.”

“Not a problem, I’ll just grab our medical equipment.”

“Hold on…..”

(-intended break here. THIS is where it got interesting. HE is in our engine bay, SHE is about fifty feet away in the alley. SHE is the injured one. WE have no problem heading to her and rendering assistance. But HE isn’t having any of that foolishness.  HE needs to demonstrate that he’s the top cock in the henhouse, and that shit ain’t happenin’. So, he turns and (with dramatic pause) hollers out -)

“WOMAN!!! BRIIIING yo’ ASSSS!”

At this point, my co-worker likely pissed himself. He couldn’t laugh; not only would this be unprofessional, it would be a direct assault on the pimp’s self esteem. This was HIS time. HIS woman. He was proving to us that HE and HE ALONE ran this show. She, of course, obliged and zombie-dragged herself up to us, where my partner offered what he could: little more than consolation for an unseen and undiagnosable ailment. How can you treat a problem that refuses to be recognized? You give emotional support, directions to the ER (totally unnecessary, in Dolla’ Bill’s eyes) and hope for the best, knowing that you’ll see each other soon enough, when the alcohol leads to further bad situations. We take it for what it’s worth, smiling all the while.

Plus, he gave us the phrase of the week, one which we flogged to death around the station; ordering people to the kitchen, ordering people on to the rigs, ordering one another to change the channels on the television. As was told to me by the same co-worker “ain’t no conscience in the pimp game, fool.”

Love them or hate them, the characters of Commercial Street are what color the fabric of our life in the firehouse. I’d rather work nowhere else in the city, for these are our people. They bring meaning to our jobs. They keep us all human. And they know that day or night (usually late at night) they can call us, and that we will, indeed, bring our asses.

Out Of The Abyss

My name is Uli.

I’m 37 years old, I have two sons, a bachelor’s degree in agricultural business and an overwhelming desire to fritter away any disposable income on Starbucks, smoothies and sushi.

Rarely content to stand still, I’m a professional firefighter, an amateur writer and cynical about humid weather, people who carry small dogs in purses and the downfall of culture as evidenced by what I see on the E! channel.

I also recently came to terms with another aspect of life:

I’m claustrophobic.

I never had issues with tight spaces until I had to get an MRI a few years back, wherein I recreated a scene from The Incredibles as seen here: Into The Tube, Chunky. I had pretty much the same thing happen, minus the launch into a space capsule part. Once squeezed into there, I realized I couldn’t raise my head and promptly freaked out. It wasn’t pleasant for me, nor the tech running the machine, and a few days later, with the help of some drugs, a towel over my face and earbuds lulling me into a peaceful state via the soothing tones of Bad Religion, we got through it. It was an ordeal, and it set the tone for idiotic anxiety, I suppose.

Flash forward several years: as the member of a ladder truck company for the fire department, I’m expected to assist the rescue companies in various forms of rescues – ropes, trench collapses and, unfortunately, confined space scenarios. Getting stuck in tight places….every firefighters dream gig. I knew our training class was this week, knew how much I’d probably break out into sweats and scream like a little child when wedged in, even made several jokes about who’s job it was going to be to inform my family that I’d died of a panic attack (impossible, really, but several calls we make revolve around people panicking themselves into a stupor). Then the day arrived, and, as I gazed down the 24″ diameter pipes and felt my hands twitch nervously, I buckled down and forced myself to stay calm….right up until I was on my knees in front of the tube and my fertile imagination ran away with me.

Finally, after much coaxing, I convinced myself I was being ridiculous and just crawled in the damn thing. I got tangled up in ropes, finished the task, and set some sort of speed record getting out, based on my desire to be done with the whole thing. I thought I was over the hump. I was wrong.

The next task was to crawl into the same tiny tube, then have your partner crawl in after you, “leap frog” over you, then you over them, to simulate having to crawl over a victim to prepare them for extrication. And that’s where I just gave out. I’d crawl in a foot or two, get near my partner’s legs, feel the pinch and rapidly back out. Two guys, two feet of diameter….this is an unholy exercise in ridiculosity, and I was firmly against it. Why? Because this right here is the view with ONE guy in there:

No thanks. I decided enough was enough.

And then a funny thing happened. Well, two things, really, from one source: that crazy, cultish, thing I love dearly, CrossFit.

1.) I’ve lost weight. Thanks to the vigorous workout schedule of CrossFit Springfield, I’ve dropped several layers of fat and belt loops, all while gaining some weird thing called muscle. Not a lot, mind you, but enough to escape the pipe without getting wedged in, despite the harness and helmet and with the help of nervous sweat greasing the walls. It felt really good to know that what once would have hindered me completely was becoming something less of an issue. Now I just had to scale the mental walls.

2.) I’m not one for coaches cliche’s. From “you can do it” to “you gotta give 110%” to “we leave it all out on the field”, I can never hear these sayings without picturing the coach in tight softball shorts angrily projecting his failed athletic career hopes upon us, the Goleta Valley Little League “Cubs”, who’s record stood at something like 0-16. I appreciate honesty, not politically expedient phrases meant to offend no one. I like curse words in my motivational speeches, lots of them. Speeches that go something like this one (here!), from the Washington Capitals hockey coach. However there is a sign in our gym, large and across an entire wall, that says “Learn To Never Quit”. I joke regularly that I’m gonna sneak into CrossFit in the dead of night and Sawzall off the part that says “never”, but in truth, I’ve taken that philosophy to heart. I wrote in a previous post (here) how our gym has taught me to keep pushing through the mental and physical boundaries I’ve set up for myself, but this thing, this claustrophobia, it is a hangup with no basis in rational thinking.

I thought about the virtues of quitting, of being able to avoid that which I don’t like. I thought of being the only person in the training drill that day who was going to have a big “did not finish” hanging over my head. I thought of how when firehouse kitchen table talk came up later on, and people were discussing who couldn’t pass muster, my name might come up. I didn’t want to be that guy. I didn’t want my crew to look at me with suspicion when shit goes downhill, as it does on emergency scenes. I didn’t want them to doubt me. I didn’t want to doubt me, either.

I was told it’s ok.”You don’t have to finish, everyone has their hangups”. I could see in the eyes of the instructor, my co-workers that no, it wasn’t ok. To be controlled by an irrational fear is to be controlled, something I loathe intensely. So, I grabbed the smallest person there (she’s the one in the first picture) and she obliged me, willing to go back into the tube with a half-crazed mental case, just to prove a point. I’ll spare you the details (screaming, et al) and just say that after some sheer stubborn willpower, it was done.

It was ugly, it took several embarrassing false starts, but, to quote an instructor that day, “you didn’t quit, you weren’t a pussy, you kept at it till you finished, and that’s what counts”.

I may finally have begun to learn what it means to learn to never quit. And while I’m sure being a claustrophobe is a lifelong state of mind, I’m grateful to have a place that’s taught me how to be physically and, more importantly, mentally prepared for adversity, however you may find it. When we have the second half of the drill on Friday, though, and we’re using 18″ diameter tubes, all this talk may be for naught; I can only hope that that same strength is in there somewhere.

In the meantime, I’ll keep on cussing at those voices in my head. Quitting is never a good option, especially to the stubborn among us. When backed up against a wall, or wedged in a piece of corrugated plastic, that’s when the triumph of will is put to the test. And, as the little league coach might say, it feels damn good to not back down.

The Aftermath

The image, like the flash of a lightning strike, is both instant and gone.

He stood there, stooped over, head in hands, looking over what remained of his possessions among a pile of rubble, a pile of what used to be his home. He stood alone, on the slab of a foundation, and I don’t know what he was looking at amongst the detritus. A family heirloom? A photograph of his parents? The last place he saw his wife? I’ll never know.

He was there alone in that moment, and as our fire engine rolled by on the way to another search, I caught a glimpse of him. I caught a glimpse of his personal toll, his destruction, his world collapsed. He looked sad and lonely and broken, an old man with little time left on this planet; his place, his history, his world, now destroyed like everyone else’s living in the path of that deadly torrent of wind and rain and fury.

I don’t know his name, I never will. I don’t know the name of the street, and it doesn’t matter, really. As a fire response unit assisting the victims of the tornado that touched down in Joplin, Missouri on May 22nd of this year, our job was to try and help locate victims and recover bodies of the deceased and whatever needs the command structure deemed prudent. The EF-5 tornado has claimed at least 132 lives as of this writing, and the final toll won’t be known for quite a while, if I had to guess.

There is no way to describe the scope of this furious outburst. I’ve been down there a few times now, and once you cross the line from normalcy to the path of the tornado, you feel as though you’ve stepped way out of the bounds of reality. Google “Joplin tornado” and see if the images can bring an idea of the chaos into comprehension for you; then know that the images aren’t even close to what it’s like to drive for miles with nothing but shredded homes, trees, lives as far as you can see. I cannot compare it to anything I’ve ever encountered. Overwhelming in it’s presentation, depressing in it’s effects, it is a stark and saddening reminder of the frail grip we have on control of our lives. We may hold dominion over all sorts of creatures great and small, but in the end we’re links in the chain ourselves, our position no more assured than that of any other. And that’s of little comfort to those who’s lives have been ripped apart in one angry swipe of furious winds.

Silently, with lights flashing so as to help us navigate the traffic snarls a little faster, our fire engine hastened from site to site whenever canine units got hits on the scent of human flesh, each an exercise in futile optimism. We scoured the high school, an empty and shredded cavern of what was supposed to be a safe haven from the troubles of this world, natural and otherwise. We fruitlessly searched several commercial establishments, trying to locate what may have been missed in the moments and first hours after the rage.

But I kept coming back to him in my mind. The old man there, on the foundation of his home. His eyes, in the moment that I caught them, glassy and confused and lost. What good are three firemen in a yellow truck going to do him? We can’t bring back his house, his life, maybe a loved one. We aren’t going to be able to rebuild a lifetime of memories with brick and framing and new windows. We can’t even stop to offer him solace as we’re in a hurry to get to the next call; it wouldn’t matter anyways, since people were lingering around each and every remnant of a home, each taking stock in their losses. Something about him really hit me hard, though. I wanted to stop the rig and throw an arm around the guy. I couldn’t rebuild his life in that day, nor any amount of time. I’m not from Joplin, I won’t be there months from now when he’s still trapped by the memories of that destruction, helpless against the storm. I don’t even know what he was looking at, or for. None of that matters, though….in that moment, he’s another broken human, maybe in need of comfort and solace, and I wanted to give that to him. It reminded me of why the fire service is such an incredible vocation. For the briefest of moments, we can help make a terrible situation just a little less terrible, we can connect with people who need help, need comfort, need a helping hand.

Maddeningly, we couldn’t help this man. As we sped off through the intersection, and I kept my eyes on him, my soul ached for him slightly. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry you have had to endure this, sir. There’s nothing I can offer you except a heart that’s willing to offer some solace, and even that’s limited – they’ve called us over there, and you’re over here, and I have to go. I’m sorry. Later on, back in Springfield, when no one is around and life is seemingly normal, I’ll wonder about you and be overwhelmed by sadness for your loss. I’ll hope someone has thrown that arm around you and comforted you and helped you to begin to pick up the pieces. I wish that someone was me, that we’d been able to stop right there for you. I’m just so sorry.

Rep Number 36 Goes Up / photo courtesy Christi Clark Photography

Three days ago, I participated in the CrossFit Springfield’s 2nd annual Guns & Hoses Team Competition a fund raising endeavor aimed at benefiting the Wistrom Family Foundation, a truly worthwhile cause aimed at helping children with cancer. ALMOST as important, though, was the chance for military service members, cops and firemen to compete against one another, a chaotic stew of testosterone and nerves and borderline projectile vomiting. At age 36 and years of bad choices behind me, the concept of competing in athletic endeavors (outside of ice hockey) holds little appeal; I’m too old, the NHL ain’t calling, I gotta work tomorrow, my kids have beaten the spirit out of me, the list of excuses goes on and on as to why I don’t take up the chance to compete in much of anything anymore, outside of an ongoing chess match with my liver.

So when I was approached by some younger firemen from Station 2 about putting together a team for this competition, my first instinct was to duck and cover and pretend I didn’t hear them. But there’s only so many hiding places in a firehouse. Eventually, I had to give them an answer, and after several rounds of me saying “really? What, you need a John Candy-type on your team?“, I relented and made them promise to give me a decent burial when I inevitably died on the competition floor. As the days ticked down to competition time, my nerves begin to fray and unravel at a record pace. I’m old, man, and there’s really no need to humiliate myself any further in a public forum, especially as I do it on a regular basis just fine.

And then it was time. This was the time where Rocky theme music was supposed to cue up in my mind, shadow boxing in the mirror as I took one final shower before the event, setting my mind right, right? No. Clearly, I’ve watched far too many movies, and the reality of the whole time leading up to the competition was absent of motivational music, save for the screaming torrents of Dropkick Murphy tunes cranking in the bathroom. It’s a quiet desperation of sorts, really. I’m not in the best shape in the gym, knowing that I’m a relatively weak link on the team, and about to risk some real injury, both to my body and what is left of my self esteem. That sets up a morose cloud of doubt lingering over your personal skies, but, then, what are ya gonna do? Backing out at this point is the equivalent of backing out of a house fire: that shit will follow you for the rest of time.

As the events were described and teams assigned heats, I began crawling out of my head with nervous energy. These guys were serious, Marine Corps guys strutting about, cops from different towns all giving the eye to one another, firemen nervously joking about needing an ambulance on standby (okay, that was me), and a general tension that always precedes competitions of strength and stamina. I just needed the thing to start, already. Get me in the game, and this sensation of dizzy nausea may pass. Too soon, the race had begun. I’d describe the various events, but if you’re not familiar with the CrossFit lingo it’s just gonna come across like the cult mumbo-jumbo that it is. The exercises consisted of lifting of heavy weights, swinging of other heavy things, jumping up and down and over, lunging with random heavy objects over your head and tossing heavy sandbags over tall bars. You know, stuff you might never, ever encounter in your life. Ever.

To sum it all up let me just say this: in all my life, in whatever endeavor I’ve ever undertaken, I’ve never been pushed so hard physically to the point of a breakdown. It was set up as a team effort, so to quit or give up was to force three other people into forfeiting all of their efforts. I can insert all types of trite, catchy athletic “dig deep”-style phrases here, and you know what? THEY WOULD ALL BE TRUE. To force yourself to continue when all logic and reason demands you give up defies the physical imperative of the body, and it becomes a war of wills. To confront that wall and slog through the marsh of oxygen deprivation robbing your body of rational thought is a scary, and emotionally draining experience. This competition demanded slamming into this wall repeatedly to the point of sheer exhaustion and near collapse.

It sucked. Plain and simple.

Each time I reached down to grab that bar for another lift, when my back and legs and arms and lungs screamed for sweet release, my teammates, the people who’d come to cheer people on and the sheer force of will were driving forces compelling me to continue. I wish I could say that I was mentally strong enough to conjure up images in my mind of continuing in honor of some hero, or a sick kid or that bully in third grade who pretty much ruined my grade school experience, but I’d be lying. At some point there was no more room for thought, no more room for cliched imagery to motivate. Nothing was left but that most basic of drivers: instinct. The voices in the background were muffled, eyesight was clouded by sweat and chalk, and it was a lonely place to be left. Instinct to finish what I’d started was the only push left. Ridiculous faces and ridiculous amounts of sweat and stupid grunts all in the name of instinct.

Countless hours (or, like, two) later we staggered across the finish line, somewhere in the bottom of the rankings of the ten teams that entered. That didn’t matter. Three friends and I finished. We went to the bottom of our wells of will and extracted every last bit. I’m so proud of them, so proud of us for laying our guts and souls out there on the floor. I’m thankful to the coaches and staff and volunteers from CrossFit Springfield who offered their free time to guide us through the pain. I’m grateful for ThunderChicken who had the dubious honor of being my assigned coach, dutifully counting out the reps, vocally shoving me further and further out of my comfort zone, just like he has since the first day I set foot in the box. These people showed us, showed me, what was possible if you push yourself over the edge.

It’s a hell of a place to find yourself, at the bottom of that tank.

It’s quite another to crawl back out of it.

March 25, 2011

Now, the constraints of my employment mandate that placement of aforementioned tattoo was of the highest priority. In common terms, no neck tatts or anything on my forearms (unless I want to wear nothing but a neck brace and long sleeves for the rest of my career). And as far as the neck  rules go? I’m good with that. We’ve got a guy on our hockey team with neck ink who, coincidentally enough, takes his fake tooth out before each game, making him even more menacing looking. I’m twice his size yet the neck work and toothless grin say one thing and one thing only: you don’t mess with me. I oblige him. Avoiding the forearms wasn’t too troubling, either, since I have basically spaghetti noodles for arms, a source of middling shame.

So, to the thigh we went. I see this as a form of insurance. Never in my life, ever, do I want to consider Speedo-style, European man bikinis a viable option for bathing in public. It doesn’t matter if I’m on a beach full of Jaques on the Mediterranean coast, I’ll be the guy in regular shorts, sans gold chains, cigarette and most importantly man-kini. Insurance for me, insurance that you need not ever catch me in a pair of plum smugglers in public.

The design? A Maltese Cross, the symbol of fire departments the world over, with a Celtic weave in it and the Gaelic term for “brotherhood” inscribed, as a nod to the traditions and history of the fire service. Also, the year I entered the career as a paid professional, since it was a year of fantastic, and great, change. The artwork took several rough drafts on my desk and many a Guinness for me to finally come to terms with, but I’m glad, since most decisions like that are best left to several rounds with your creative conscience. When the moment finally came to step up and get the work done, I’d done my homework and decided that Ethen at Hearts Of Fire here in Springfield really had a style that I liked and respected. His work graces many of my friends here, and it wasn’t a tough decision at all.

On that fateful night, I finally took the painful plunge. Like all procedures I’ve gotten, we started out with me getting clammy and sweaty and unimpressing the hell out of Ethen. I suspect he had no desire to lug my ass off the ground once I’d passed out completely. I couldn’t blame him, but since it felt like a thousand bees were busy stinging the ever loving shit out of my thigh, I just sat there, bobbed and weaved for a few minutes; after promising that looking like a corpse was my usual modus operandi, he proceeded. We swapped stories, gruesome fire tales for crazy inking situations, his hands working fast and with purpose. I wish I could have detached and appreciated how he’d taken my drawing and was committing it to my body, a weird marriage of organic art and permanence. I was too busy focusing on the wall, on The Wife who’d surprised me by dropping in the studio to witness the crying & carnage. One of my best friends stopped by as well, so as to mock me, silently at first, and then later back at Patton Alley Pub, somewhat more loudly.

Two hours doesn’t normally pass so slowly, but in this case it did. The work he did was incredible, in terms of the accuracy and skill. As the days have passed, I’ve remained very happy, indeed, about my choice in getting my first tattoo. You can’t crash a tattoo into a tree and kill yourself, and yet it serves as a reminder of a moment in time, or in my case, a life in a certain career. It will always be there, and for that I’m grateful. Unfortunately for my bank account and skin, I’ve also succumbed to the addiction. Like coffee, bacon and reckless behavior, I think I’ve just added to my list of great loves.

Thanks, Ethen.

"It was THIS big"

Yesterday was another one in the books at the firehouse. I was working as captain on the Engine Company, which translates roughly into “they had no else qualified”. We made an interesting call or two around our district, visited Lyle and his manager down at Big Momma’s coffee, observed the comings and goings of our regional homeless shopping cart pushers. All in all the day was looking to stay on an upbeat note, outside of the people having emergencies dire enough to merit a call to 911.

As we rolled east on Commercial Street towards the next medical call, I was struck by the wail of the wind-up siren as the sonic assault reverberated off of the tall buildings. Between the air horns and the Federal Q “Meatgrinder” siren, there is no mistaking the cacophony headed your way. Pedestrians cover their ears sometimes, kids pull against their mothers protective restraint towards us, waving like maniacs and grinning from ear to ear. Drivers on cell phones sometimes act oblivious to the lights and sirens, and then swerve wildly upon realizing there’s 30 tons of fire apparatus trying to get their attention. We can’t hear just how loud it gets since we’re wearing headsets, protecting our ears and allowing us to converse in hushed tones as opposed to screaming at one another over the symphony of insanity.

Back to the now, and as we head out, the wailing continuing it’s lilting song of warning, I’m keenly aware that the very howling that alerts everyone else to an emergency brings me a calm, the likes of which I cannot describe. Rather than getting amped into panic, the sirens soothe me, they remind me of why we’re here, away from our loved ones, spending time with people who don’t necessarily want to spend time with us. More importantly, I think I love the Q since it represents the symptom of a bigger issue: I’m addicted to the chaos.

When the tones hit the station, the engine and ladder truck are fired up in the bay and the lights turned on, the whole game is changed. Driving laws alter, if only slightly. Citizens can’t complain to the newspaper that we’re “just sitting around”. We never know what’s on the end of the call, whether it’s going to be pretty boring (usually is) or, like last night, unhinged pandemonium, stabbings and blood and terror. We’re jumping into the fray, be it a house on fire or a multiple car pile-up in an intersection. And it’s a rush.

I’d be lying if I said otherwise. We, too, become junkies, looking for that rush in the form of a busy firehouse. Most guys WANT to be headed to calls, they WANT to help, and soon, too soon, they sort of NEED to make calls to remind themselves why they’re in this gig. No one becomes a firefighter for the high pay. Some people say it’s because the schedule is so open, and I’ll admit, that’s a big draw for me as well; it allows me the time to be a better dad, to spin tall tales such as this. But mostly, I’m hooked.

Hooked on the chaos. Hooked on the unknown. Hooked, addicted, in love, call-it-whatever, to the rush. The surge in the emotional and physical inconsistencies keeps me coming back for more, year after year. Nothing compares to it, not my years as a volunteer fireman, not my work in the oil fields of Alaska’s North Slope nor the freedom afforded me by a ride down the backroads on the motorcycle.

We’re all hopelessly in love with it, somehow. Even when the calls are bad, they’re calls. When the politicians talk out of both sides of their mouths, that’s frustrating, but nothing unusual, and that’s not worth losing the love, either.

Next time you hear the wailing chorus of horns and sirens and lights on a fire engine, take a look up in the cab. Chances are, one of the guys up there is grinning like a goofy bastard, like your dog might as he hangs his head out the window. Someone up there is working the siren, a beautiful song in their ears.  The call may be serious, but the ride? Totally worth it.

E-2 By Night

Funny how it’s all intertwined, how it all works.

Two days ago, I was driving my oldest to the doctors office to deal with an ear infection/strep throat. As I looked in the mirror while he was wailing and crying, I found myself fighting back my own tears. Say what you will, when it’s my own child, one of the very few people on this earth that I love unconditionally, and he’s hurting and there’s nothing I can do about it? It claws at my soul. His pain is mine. I can’t make it better, despite the pleading look in his eyes, begging me to make it better for him, tears rolling freely down his cheeks. He wants his Dad to make it stop; I’m hauling ass down the highway furious at no one in particular, holding his hand while my heart is breaking.

One day ago, we had the fire department awards ceremony; at the event, the unfortunate tragedy involving three children perishing in a house fire was mentioned, which triggered another cascade of memories for those involved, directly or otherwise. The issue came up later at a post-ceremony watering hole, and when asked about if I’d ever dealt with that kind of situation, it reminded me of my worst shift in 11 years here, one in which a child died in a house fire; I’d located him and had to bring him downstairs past the grieving family members. The Wife was pregnant at the time, and it hit me in a way that has never left. People die, accidents happen, but when it’s the young, the innocent among us, the tragedy is exponential in its damage emotionally. It never gets better, no matter the years on the job. Kids affect us all, from green rookies to the toughest old grouchy bastards.

So this morning, when we’d already worked one car wreck within minutes of coming on-duty, and the tones rang out for another accident, I shrugged on the gear and told the boys it looked to be another one of those days. Our captain is off-shift, putting me in his seat, which means more paperwork, less shenanigans. The comments came through that it was a vehicle versus bicycle, with the victim being the ten year old cyclist. Instantly, the situation turns far more serious. Less chatter in the cab, more mental focus, as we learn that police are on scene, which does not bode well; unlike hysterical-but-well-intentioned citizens, when the cops are on scene and roads are blocked, it can’t be good.

We arrive to lots of people yelling, chaos, mass pandelerium, as it were. We find our patient, a ten year old boy, in the ditch, the rear of his bike folded up, and he’s screaming and crying, thrashing in pain. An off-duty medic is there giving us her assessment, and the edge in her voice indicates her worry. More people arrive, the ambulance, finally. We’re trying to stabilize this child, who was riding to school when hit by a van. Our emotions are all over the map, but now is not the time. I’m mad at the grandmother in the muumuu, who, while declaring she’s the legal guardian, didn’t force the kid to wear a helmet. I’m mad at the van driver, although I don’t know who’s fault it is. I’m mad at the kid for not wearing a helmet, as the damage to his head is leaving blood on our gloved hands. But most of all, we’re focused. Now is not the time. Later, I keep telling myself. Now, he needs our help. He’s crying, his pain transmitting loud and clear, and radiating through all of us around him.

One of the firemen and I load up in the ambulance to assist the medic for the seemingly endless journey to the hospital. Muffled radio traffic and wailing sirens permeate the background as we focus on our little man. One moment he’s screaming, and when his eyes crack open, as I hold the oxygen to his face, they plead with me. He wants me, us, someone, anyone, to take away the pain. C’mon, kid, scream your lungs out. It’s ok, I’m here. We’re here. I’ll take screaming, because screaming means you’re still with us.

And then he isn’t. His vitals are there, still solid, he’s getting oxygen, but he goes out cold, unresponsive. No tell-tale fogging of the O2 mask. This is terror. I can’t take this. C’mon, kid. We’re almost there. A little pressure here, some steady murmuring, and in an instant, he’s screaming again, clutching my hand, begging me with those eyes. The medic is working her best, my crew-mate is holding his hands to the sides to keep the thrashing to a minimum as the tangled mass of wires, intravenous lines, blood and asphalt envelop his body that is not built to be hit by a van. This kid is only slightly older than my oldest. This could be him on this cot, with God-knows-what happening in the skull at this very moment. C’mon, kid. I need you to pull through this. I don’t know you, I don’t know your family nor your situation. Maybe you’re a bully, maybe you steal from little old ladies. That’s not the point. You’re young. You’re not some strung out tweaker that we’ve run on a thousand times, driven to kill yourself in a meth-fueled frenzy. You’re ten, for fuck’s sake. My heart won’t take this lightly.

And he’s out again. Something’s going on in that head, there’s damage, and I don’t know what it is. I’m shouting his name out now. C’mon kid. Open that eye again, let me see your eyes. A muffled moan, and he cracks it open. He hears me. He screams again. Ok, keep screaming, keep thrashing, I’ve got you. Grab my hand, tear the thing off for all I care at this point. You’re someone’s kid, you’re my kid, you’re our kid, even if for only a couple of minutes. You need to hang on, little man. I need you to.

Eventually, we get to the hospital. Screaming as we wheeled him into a waiting ER room, I finally let go of that hand, let go of the oxygen mask. A team of seemingly 30 people were waiting in there to take over, the true professionals. I gotta let you go here. His eye looks at me one more time, and he doesn’t break contact. We did what we could, kiddo. Tomorrow morning, I’ll leave this firehouse and hurry home, and crush my kids in a hug, never wanting to let go. Emotionally drained and taxed from the adrenaline surge, we head out of the room to wait for a ride back to the station, strangers in dirty bunker gear, intruding on a world of hospital scrubs and salvation. I’ll learn later on that the boys on the Engine worked a heart attack victim who didn’t make it. We’ll fight some fire at a car crushing plant, go to a house fire that doesn’t amount to much. But all day long, I’ll think of you. When I see those eyes in my mind, you’re right there. And I’m right there with you. I hope you pull through kid, cause I’m pulling for you. We all are.

C’mon, kid.

Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye

My first cognizant thought about firemen was in Mrs. Jefferson’s kindergarten class, circa 1979. The memories are blurry, but there nonetheless: a huge red truck arrived at Vieja Valley elementary school, two guys riding on the back, mustaches thick, voices deep and gravelly. They laid out their breathing apparatus on the floor of our classroom, sternly lectured us about playing with matches, kindly demonstrated Stop Drop and Roll, and then took us out to their rig – a gleaming, screaming red pumper, complete with 3/4 hip boots rolled down on the tailboard, axes and nozzles and ladders and all. I vaguely remember the captain standing off to the side, having a smoke in the parking lot while his crew gave us the tour.

These guys were mythical figures, even then. My own father wore a coat and tie, headed off to an office and did who knows what all day long. What I was sure of was that there was an abundance of women with an abundance of makeup who worked with him, and collectively, they spent their time smoking cigarettes and answering phones. I had no idea whatsoever what went down in that office. But these men were different. They were big strapping guys who, in my eyes, probably carried their axes at all times, to the grocery store, to their homes, to the movies, ever ready for an emergency to strike whereby an axe might come in handy. They laughed with us, they were loud and boisterous, and Mrs. Jefferson seemed to tolerate their gruff mannerisms with a gleam in her eyes, just delighted to have something hold our wild attention spans if only for a moment. They told us of their lives in the fire station, sleeping near the trucks, eating together, ready night and day for the next big call. They rode on the backs of trucks, they wore cool helmets and they saved lives on a seemingly daily basis. I don’t know if they could see it in our faces, but every last one of us would have traded our souls to be taken by these guys on their truck, under their collective care, immune to the mundane lives we’d led up until that day. To this day, that was the best career recruitment seminar I’d ever attended, and I was five. Those guys knew EXACTLY what they were doing, smooth as silk and laughing the whole time.

God almighty, I wanted to be a fireman.

More than anything in the world, I wanted to be a fireman.

And, as is typical of the things that we want at that age, the burning fury with which I wanted to join their ranks lasted a short while. A couple of years passed, and it was decided in my mind that I should really be an F-14 Tomcat pilot in the Navy, a desire that was inflamed to obsessive proportions by the movie Top Gun. I only loved that movie for the flying scenes as I found it somewhat disconcerting that Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis would spend a good portion of their time licking one another. That was just weird to a twelve year old me. I never realized the dream of flying in the Navy, nor did I have to endure a tongue cleaning by Kelly McGillis, so it all works out in the end, I guess.

My next run-in with the fire department came in high school. My friend Kwame Jackson’s dad was a fireman for Santa Barbara City FD, and he was one bad mother. He was huge and strong, looked as though he took crap off of no one, yet was gruff and funny all at once. He could visit Kwame in the middle of the week (mind you, this was boarding school, so we were essentially in a teen isolation unit), in the middle of the day (who had THOSE kind of hours?) and looked like a genuine man of action. He was usually wearing a standard blue fire department tee shirt, and he wore it well and with what seemed like pride. He gave off the air of a man who worked for a living, one who belonged to an exclusive club that didn’t honor suits and ties and high-minded parlance. The man was a walking bad-ass, and commanded my respect the moment he showed up in our dormitory. My enduring memory? Don’t piss a fireman off, they look like they don’t suffer fools lightly.

And so passed several years. College, mindless employment, all that.  A short stint doing some time as a sub to a sub contractor that worked on wildfires campaigns. One day a co-worker asked, since I loved running heavy equipment on fires, would I be interested in the local volunteer department. They had around 18 members, always happy for more. Their last structure fire had been, like, three years previous, and they were still pretty stoked about it. Mostly, they gathered around the station and smoked cigarettes and joshed one another and belonged to a club, one defined by handlebar mustaches, pagers and blue ball caps.

Immediately, I wanted in.

I went through a local academy, and lost myself in the lingo and lore that is the fire service. I was wearing gear that was painfully ancient, but I didn’t know it at the time. I was so goddamn proud when they gave me my first set of hand-me-down gear that I took it home and wore it around the house like an idiot, just to see how it really felt to really be a fireman. They accepted me on their team, and I was thrilled beyond belief. I think I made about six calls in about six months with them.

I moved to Alaska and immediately sought out a department to join. The Central Matanuska-Susitna Fire Dept., based in Wasilla allowed me to join their ranks, and off I rambled through another volunteer academy. It was a great group, those people, and they were run professionally, even if everyone was only paid-per-call. No one slept in the firehouses, there were no full-time firefighters, so it was always a race to the station when a call came in, hoping against hope that you’d make it onto the rig and arrive there like a REAL fireman, not in my own regular-guy pickup. It wasn’t enough. I needed more. Like the me of 1979, I began to focus like a maniacal 5 year old sociopath on being a career fireman.

The mania paid off.

I joined the Springfield Fire Department in June of 2000, after sweating it out for a year and an initial rejection. Someone didn’t pass muster in the background check, and I was given the call. THE CALL.

Ten years and ten bajillion runs later, there is nothing that compares to working fires if a man has to work for a living. I get tired of all the political bull, but then, who doesn’t? I like to bitch and moan, and like to think I can do that with the best of them. I wonder if I’ve made the right choices in my life, like we all do, and I worry about my kids, like we all do.

But every once in a while, we get the call to go to a school. We slip into our uniforms, and although we can no longer ride the tailboards of the rigs and the captains don’t choke down smokes while we give our presentation, the wonder and exhilaration still lives large in eyes of a kindergartner.  We show them our axes and saws and hoses and ladders, we knowingly slip in inside jokes to get a chuckle out of our colleagues, we flirt with the teachers, who seem to share the universal delight of teachers the world over when someone holds the attention of their charges. We let them grab the gear and watch the lights and hear the tell-tale wail of our siren, we sternly warn them of the dangers of matches. The banter, the trucks, the ability to connect with kids (since we’re obscenely immature as a group), it all adds up to training hours for the bean counters downtown, but more importantly it adds up to connection for us and little kids.

Because somewhere, in that group of wild-eyed youth, there’s gonna be a seed planted. One kid or two will start thinking about the life of a firefighter. Twenty years later, they may stumble back across that notion, and the life-cycle will begin again. They’ll remember the thrill of seeing the guys in their gear, the meaningless swagger and the sense of calm that overtakes people young and old when that truck shows up. These are the people who make it all better. These are the people who’ve turned their backs on the corporate world, the world of suits and ties and financial markets and business development gurus and simply love a job that is chaotic and simple all at once.

I should know. I was one of those kids.

I still am.

Springfield Firefighters At Work / (Photo courtesy of The SPRINGFIELD (MO) NEWS-LEADER )

The door had been kicked in and the telltale hose was snaking through the front door. Slushy, gray smoke was lazily belching out of the windows, the eaves, the siding; it was oozing from every orifice and, quite frankly, was scaring the living shit out of me. This was not how I’d pictured it in the academy, or on the half-dozen already-burnt-to-the-ground house fires I’d worked in Alaska. This was the dead of night. This was real. This was now. The muffled voices were screaming at me to get my rookie ass into the house. We weren’t going to be first in, but I was more than ready to soil myself at what lie ahead.

My first shift, my very first shift in the station and we catch a working house fire. What were the odds? Better than I’d banked on, I guess. I figured on easing into firehouse life, following my senior firemen around for a while, picking up on tricks of the trade. The only tricks I picked up that day were how to raise the flag and how to clean the toilets. To get toned out of bed in the middle of the night, slide the pole and head to working house fire was not scheduled in my mind. It’s a chaotic stew of emotions, excitement, fear, secret thrill and total terror as you walk up to the truck. The other four guys on Ladder Truck 1 were less than impressed with having their sleep interrupted and I was bouncing off the station walls.

Back to the front porch, pike pole in my hand and bug-eyed with adrenaline soaked panic.

If you want to ratchet up your panic levels, try having your senses stolen. I admire those who have persevered after losing their sight or their hearing or their minds. When asked by kids what it’s like to enter a house that’s on fire, I often tell them “think less ‘Backdraft’ and more along the lines of putting a black garbage bag over your head and making it several hundred degrees in there”.

We made entry and immediately the assault on order was in full swing; garbled voices shouting incoherently, the loud drone of the positive pressure fan from the porch canceling out any audio comprehension. You’re in a strangers home, the unexpected guest, and you don’t know the layout, the reason for multiple full cat litter boxes that occupy the entryway. Less than gently, you’re being shoved by the guy behind you, everyone eager to get a piece of some unknown action. And so, scrambling over random broken appliances and, oddly enough, a motorcycle in the living room, the inky blackness of the home gives way to amber glow of the fire in the back room. The hose jockeys from Engine 2 are toiling away at choking and drowning the flames, less than happy to see Truckies enter their domain, each feeling possessive of the chaos, unwilling to share in the fight.

Fire has a funny way of behaving like mice and cockroaches do: when you see some, it’s indicative of a much larger, and unseen, problem. Fire thrives in hidden areas, in the walls, up in the attics and behind the siding. So as not to lose any more face, I immediately copy my co-workers from the Truck and viciously begin tearing into the walls with my pike pole, not really sure of my technique, but relieved to have a sense of purpose in this un-orchestrated dance of destruction. Apparently, I was swinging the tool as though I was chopping wood, much to the amusement of the boys, who took great pains to mock me, then to correct the actions; lath & plaster demand short choppy motions, not melodramatic swings that were, as a side note, hitting the milk jugs suspended from the ceiling. Later, it was found out that these gallon jugs were filled with gasoline as a tool in some strange arsonistic behavior.

The entire event of extinguishing the fire took place in a short time, a short time that seemed to take forever in my mind. More than a decade later, I’ve returned to that same district, only now I’m the driver of the former Truck 1 (now re-assigned as Truck 2), my fellow open cab-firemen having all promoted as well to positions as captains and fire marshals and rescue specialists. The captain I had then has since retired, and that house, the scene of my first fire, has long since been abandoned. That entire decade plus, though, has taken less time to pass before my eyes than it did to put out my first fire. I was nervous, young, desperate to make my bones with my new crew. No one wants to be labeled a slack-ass from the get-go; to be a smart-ass is one thing, and will be tolerated, but to be a sandbag on a fire is the most detrimental of reputations you can have in this business.

House fires still abound in our district, they still stink in the same ways and there are occasional times where the adrenaline can still be ratcheted up a few notches, such as when we hear that people are trapped inside the dwelling. But now it’s my turn to watch the rookies stumble to get the right tools off the truck, to be amused by watching their eyes get big as dinner plates through their masks, their gear clean and shiny and new. We’ll badger them about their Truck work and, if they’re pulling their weight, we’ll tease them mercilessly in the most juvenile of ways when they stand on the porch, wild-eyed at the thought of the chaos in front of them. If they’re sandbaggers, we often just ignore them around the station, knowing that all the humiliation in the world won’t mend their lazy bones; that’s something they’ll have to face on their own.

It’s the only business that I really know well. It’s immature interpersonal relationships and the messy science of mitigating emergencies. It’s the strange marriage of governmental bureaucracy and moments of crazy risk. People with whom we have nothing in common, calling us to give them a hand, and, standing among the smoke and meth-head’s meager possessions, it feels like home.

"I Am Dead To You"

I needed perspective. And perspective, it was given.

Last night I ran my iPod through a wash cycle at the firehouse. Much to my amazement and indignation, iPods don’t usually make the trip through the cycles of a washing machine very gracefully. The fury, slow to build at first, began to boil over within minutes. Stupidity, lack of attention to detail, general idiocy and a keen sense of self loathing all began to manifest until I began to seriously consider smashing my head into the station’s bench vise to atone for my sins. It didn’t help when I called home to confess my deeds of neglect and The Wife was not surprised in the least. She threw out terms like “typical” and “we can’t have anything nice” and punctuated her distaste with long exasperated sighs. I briefly considered sleeping in front of the rear axle of Engine 2, so that when they made the inevitable medical call in the middle of the night, purgatory through pain could be complete.

The ride home on my motorcycle this morning was a good chance to re-hash my wanton neglect. A rageful melancholy was consuming me, right up until a rogue grasshopper clocked me in the jaw (which, in case you’re wondering, feels as though you’re being slapped in the face with a condor). This was a jarring experience, to say the least, and reminded me of a call we made last night.

We’d just returned from a Public Education event on the south side of town. It was the first annual Epically Awesome Barbecue event at local hotspot The Metropolitan Grill with a portion of proceeds going to the police and fire departments as well as the Breast Cancer Foundation of The Ozarks, to name a few. It seemed to be well-attended, a good mingling with people who generally stick to that side of town. We were grateful to be included in the whole affair. But a common statement/question was thrown out there several times: “I bet you guys get to see alllll kinds of weird/strange/terrible stuff. What’s that like?” And, on our side of town? There’s never a shortage of crazy adventure.

Thirty minutes after leaving our friendly and comfortable south side hosts, we were responding to two assault victims in our own north side district. One patient was only three years older than I am, yet the result of a lifetime of bad choices, bad drugs, bad men revealed a woman broken and battered, toothless and disheveled. She and a girlfriend were moving stuff out of her house and an ongoing argument with her man led up to him attacking one of them with a brick and breaking a shovel handle over the back of the other. No one deserves abuse, but those that would harm women and children are especially vile and don’t deserve any grace from my perspective. These people, those that we serve on this side of town, they’re the ones who’ve hit the bottom. It’s not my responsibility how they got there, but it is our job to help them when they need us. Through her toothless ranting and screeching and most-likely inevitable return to that situation was a broken person beside that broken shovel handle. Weeping and wailing with soiled pants and a busted elbow, she was crying for help.

But life is not a cartoon, nor a rom-com movie with Julia Roberts and a happy ending; it’s not even a story of redemption, at least not for her. She’s hurt, she’s pissed that she’s pissed herself, she’s mad at the cops for not catching the guy right away (which they did within the hour) and she’s mad at us for not understanding her mushmouthed screaming. I cannot invest emotionally in each patient because to do that would equal a complete draining of any feeling I had left. We can offer her care and a moment of comfort and safety, a brief respite from the hellacious world of her own making. She was most likely high as a kite when we saw her (who can endure a shovel snapping across your back and still have the energy to carry on like that while sober?) and there’s a better than fair chance she’ll move back in with her abuser when released from the hospital.It’s a tragic and vicious cycle, and all we can do is respond to the worst of the situations and work towards making them a little better. A broken shovel, a broken iPod and a broken woman. Truly there are problems much greater than the extravagance of portable music on demand.

I’m pretty sure she’d be happy just to have a washing machine, much less a piece of electronics that, for some reason, cannot survive a spin cycle.

So, as I collected smashed grasshopper parts off my cheek and turned onto the road home, ready to face the exasperated jury of my wife and sons, the importance of an iPod and its demise came into a little better perspective.

I hope she finds the courage to change her situation.

And I hope The Wife doesn’t kill me out of frustration.