Half Past Awesome

(Last year I wrote a post to honor those in emergency services who’d lost their lives on Sept. 11th. There’s no need to sing the same song one year later, and yet there is, to a certain extent. You can read it here.)

Today marks nine years since 343 of the FDNY perished in the collapse of the Twin Towers.

Today means nine years have passed since those boys answered their last alarm.

Today means that enough time has passed wherein some may dismiss the awesome loss incurred that day.

But that’s a fools errand. And I say that without a trace of sarcasm.

To the families of those who lost those dear to them that day, I can offer this:

Their sacrifice, while needless and bloody and violent, was not in vain.

Theirs is not a silent testimony to acts of bravery; rather, they live on in our hearts and souls as heroes and fathers and sons who perished in the selfless act of executing their duty.

Today flags around our country will stand at half mast in your honor, and while that is of little consolation to the families you left behind, I hope they know how grateful the rest of us are.

Many talk a good game of bravado. Many athletes are held up as heroes, as are actors and others of dubious celebrity; but it is the everyman, as embodied by the police officer, the firefighter, the people flying coach who won’t let a coward box-knife his way into martyrdom, that deserves our thanks.

Your families miss you, without a doubt, and this fireman raises the glass with all due respect.

Thank you.

Ladder Truck Love

We worked two house fires last shift. The first was in an abandoned house that has been renovated into a homeless meth den in the recent past; the damage was limited to a scorching of some carpet. The second took place this morning around 5:30 am on the west side of town in the well-worn home of an elderly couple.

They both had only one thing in common: no one was home at either fire.

That’s not too surprising in the case of the first, since the actions of an attempted torching of the place necessitate a departure from the scene in order to avoid culpability. In the second fire, we were told that an elderly couple lived in the home and were unaccounted for, thereby prompting rescue/search tactics to be employed in a serious and aggressive manner. Nada. Or, more accurately, nadie. The house was a maze of rooms and things and junk and the various detritus of life; I really was expecting that we’d find either one of the occupants and most likely find them deceased. The toxic environment of a house fire is a rough ride, and when you’re dealing with the elderly, their ability to survive such situations is a shaky proposition at best. Our truck company was returned to service before I’d ever found out if the occupants had been located elsewhere. Like everyone else, I’ll probably find out on the news tonight.

But back to the common ground. We were granted access to two homes, one deplorable, filth and cigarette-butt laden, what I guessed was literally shit smeared on the walls and remnants of maggoty food and discarded beer cans. The other, cluttered and messy, but not nearly as neglected. Like uninvited guests, we make unspoken observations and judgments of the occupants of these smoky dwellings: how people were living by way of their footprints, what was important, how they kept their homes. And, of course, when you hit the meth-den, you wonder just how people can live exist like this. I read a quote somewhere that said that poverty all smells the same: like stale cigarettes and cat piss. This sounds like a crass generalization, but more often than not, it’s true. We had several toothless passerby offering their own list of suspects, and at one point a lady was questioned but insisted she had only been out to buy smokes and was worried if ——- was still in there. I don’t know what the fire marshal will make of the situation, but I know they’re good at what they do, and they’ll figure it out at some point. We worked our way through both fires, nothing exceptional about either one, save for the fact that like ghosts, the occupants were nowhere to be found. Both homes were snapshots of their tenants, framed by smoke and smell.

As for me, I’ll be left to wonder what makes people tick as I wander through their homes, executing the duties I’m assigned by the chiefs. I’ll see what they’ve left behind, what they never intended for anyone else to see, the family pictures and mementos, the trophies and overflowing ashtrays and piles of laundry and cat shit and dishes in the sink. And we’ll all do it day in and day out, keeping the conversations to ourselves, and the stenches that never leave your nostrils. When the bloggers and commentors and Monday-morning  haters of government all start yammering on about how their firefighters are nothing but overpaid slobs who have it easy, I’ll wonder about them too. Chances are, when they find themselves in a bad way, they won’t hesitate to call us in to serve them. And we will. Late at night, first thing in the morning, any time of day, they’ll call for us and we’ll answer. And we’ll work just the same, whether they’re living in a crack house on the north side, a McMansion on the south side or a melancholy old breakdown of  a house on the west side. The aspect the critics choose to ignore about the fire service is what makes it exceptional: it’s universal. Everyone gets the same treatment and effort. Even if you’re not even home.

Like most emergencies, this one came as a surprise. I was trying to enjoy a cup of cold coffee while sitting out in the sun, unremarkably bitching about the heat to Chris & Kristen. The patio of this particular coffee establishment faces a busy road, one that delivers people to strip malls of every stripe in our fair city. We’re casually casting glances when I see motorcycle parts scattered all over the road and two people in helmets on their backs and chaos begins to rain down.

This is where it gets tricky.

Off duty from the fire department. Accident in front of your eyes. No gear, no medical gloves and lots of blood. No reason to not help. No way to ignore what’s right in front of you. No way to finish the cup of coffee in peace.

People, being basically good and decent, begin to offer help to the motorcycle riders. Someone has the presence of mind to demand that their helmets be left on, in case of spinal injuries. Some people mill about the scene, as though staring at it might help it go away. The little old lady who turned in front of the bike, the one responsible for all of it, is off and looking dazed and worried and this reinforces my stance that drivers licenses for seniors in a town as crowded as ours are a dicey proposition. Twice yesterday, while on my own motorcycle, I had elderly drivers pull out in front of me, causing a lockup of the brakes and a steady stream of freaky loud cursing.

But back to the matter at hand.

The driver of the bike is now starting to thrash about, somewhat violently, and before I reach him, he jerks his helmet right off his head, causing panic-prone bystanders to collectively, and loudly, register their disappointment in his actions. His passenger, wearing short shorts and flip flops, is feeling the effects of her legs sliding across hot asphalt at high speeds but is not causing much of a ruckus. Not like the driver.

No gloves. This sucks. One of the first rules in EMT school is “if it’s wet and it’s not yours, don’t touch”. The bridge of his nose and other points on his face are slathered in blood, and a lot of it. All right. Fine. And down go the hands to his head and cervical-spine precautions have begun. He doesn’t like this and want to fight it a little. This is totally normal, and I tell people around me to hold his limbs down as it is explained that what we need right now is cooperation. He’s mostly concerned with the state of his bike, which is mostly shredded and leaking enough fluids to qualify for Superfund status. Someone in the crowd decides to lie to him and tell him the bike is fine.

Some minutes pass; Engine 9 and Truck 6 arrive, take over patient care, give me a ribbing about working off-duty and help me shed the blood from my hands. Despite being on a different shift on a different side of town, the rules of the job remains the same. While it’s a dance of orchestrated chaos, there are roles we all play and everyone knows them. Mostly I’m concerned about the status of my coffee. I say this not out of a sense of callousness, but rather, a function of my addiction to the bean. The patients need care, and once that is established, we can focus on other, more pressing matters. Coffee is a pressing matter.

I return to the curb to find Chris & Kristen looking at me as though they’d just witnessed me working as a rodeo clown. In many ways, that’s an accurate descriptor. Since our friendship is based on factors outside of the world of the fire department, I guess it was somewhat odd for them to see my work environment. Ten years after climbing onto a ladder truck as a professional firefighter for the first time, you see these events not as cataclysmic life changers, which is how the patients will view them, but rather, as a typical job duty. To quote both retired engineer Mike Abbey and my psychotic Aunt Viper “This is what we do.”

What we do is take for granted that we’re the helpers. We help those who need it. No more, no less. The Wife sees someone who needs their hair whipped into shape and that’s what she does. My brother Buns finds those who need second hand computer parts at deep discount, and he helps them get said parts. The Dirtbag sees an empty lot and the need for a well-built home, and he gets down with his tools and his anger and builds the damn thing. When some 20 year old fool in a tee shirt wrecks his street bike into the hood of an old lady’s car at high speed, I hold his neck in place and avoid blood spatter.

And, in the back of my mind, while taking all of this moment, this role and this career for granted, there’s one thought that plays on an endless loop, keeping time like a locomotive in my consciousness: man, that coffee is going to taste good when I finally get it back in my hands.

In the art of panhandling, as in warfare, strategy and tactics decide the victor. When you panhandle in the name of someone else, the stigma surrounding begging fades into the background, and people seem more willing to part with their hard-earned dollars.

On a constant and consistent basis, I see the less fortunate among us at highway off-ramps, imploring drivers to help them get home, get some food, get some blessings from God. Often these poor souls seem to be at their wits end, sometimes they are smirking, and always there is an unspoken pressure when the light turns red and you’re stuck, staring at a person in need. Are they really in need? Are they scamming you for a shot of sweet alcoholic release? We wonder about it, and pray for our own release in the form of the green light, hoping our kids don’t ask us why we didn’t help that man. It’s a powerful tonic, guilt, and it’s chaser is often anger at the intrusion into our own personal space.

And so, once a year, I turn the tables.

I get dressed in my firefighting pants, throw on a department tee shirt and hold a rubber boot out for mall shoppers to help raise funds for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, commonly known as “Jerry’s Kids”. For a couple of days I get to look into the eyes of the shoppers, to wordlessly implore them to reach into their change trays and help the innocent victims of a terrible disease. Today, The Outlaw Trucker, The Pimp and I spent about four hours selling the imagery of firemen for The Kids.

It works like magic, but one has to be careful.

When you wear the gear, when you go out as a representative of the fire service, people aren’t throwing money in your boot because they think YOU look good. They throw it in because they like the idea of firefighters and what they represent; if we’re willing to say you oughta donate to this worthy cause, then it carries a certain cache with it. More importantly it carries a responsibility. We might see it as a chance to broil our backsides off in the sun and laugh and joke and shamelessly flirt, but deep down, we’re hoping you see it as worth your time and money. It’s a gamble, putting your image as a public servant out there for people to toss pennies at – but one look at how much money firefighters nationwide raise for this cause gives heart to those of us flailing around in the heat. It’s days like this that invoke intense pride in our chosen profession, when you realize that countless firefighters across the country, career and volunteer, union and unrepresented, are all working for such a worthwhile cause.

The most telling detail of the Boot Drive, and one that never fails to amaze me, is that those people whom you’d cross the street to avoid – the thugs, the beat-down, those with the appearance of nothing to give…..they are the ones who never fail to put what they can in the boot. And the people in the very finest automobiles? They’re the ones who roll up the windows and hurriedly pick up their cell phones so as to avoid eye contact. And that’s okay – people should only give if they feel it is worth their time.

Standing in the sun and begging for your loose change is certainly worth mine.

Shamelessly Lifted From Ineedcoffee.com

Today is A-shift on the fire department. That means nothing to you, and everything to me. Let me explain.

I work on an “A-B-C” shift schedule, meaning, as a B-shifter, I work 24 hours on duty, then have 48 hours of relative freedom. When I leave the station on the C shift morning, I’ve begun a two day sabbatical from civil service, one of the sweetest benefits of being a career fireman. But C shift is a day for catching up. You run home, throw down some Tylenol and coffee so that your kids’ voices don’t sound quite like angry wolverines mating, you kiss the spouse and take the honey-do list in hand, halfheartedly, with vague promises of productivity. You plug into your life and glare at the lawn to be mowed. If you’ve been up through the night on calls, you cat-nap in weird locations, like the shower.

And then comes A-shift. That’s the morning when you set a sort of mental concertina wire around your bed, informing your rowdy children that their very lives are at risk, should they wake you with revelations such as the genius of SpongeBob or their desire to eat. A-shift mornings are a sacred time for me. I spend time in worship of the coffee maker, I commune with the internet and I offer sacrifice to the gods of chaos. Apparently, and according to Exodus 31:15, desecration of the Sabbath was originally punishable by death, a stance I can enthusiastically embrace.

As we rattle on down the path towards 40, and eventual death, this time away from our commitments to being responsible becomes more precious with each day. I could care less about Carpe-ing any sort of Diem and am more concerned with capturing the false sense of achievement that comes in a steaming cup of coffee. I embrace artificial stimulation, much like the hippies embraced Jerry Garcia as their prophet, as the ideal way to symbolize my Sabbath. Once in a while I try and get all high on working out with the lunatics at CrossFit, but this usually leads to a false sense of fitness and embarrassing moments of thinking I can wear clothes I really shouldn’t (why, helloooo, shoulder hair!). No, it’s best to just accept that my church is that elusive and sacred time, from about 3:00am to 8:13am, in my own bed, when I don’t worry about the bells ringing for another call to another alleged emergency.

So today begins the true day of rest. I woke up in my own home with the hymns that are my children screeching at high decibels, the Nicene Creed in the form of cursing under my breath at the ungodly hour, the body and the blood taking the form of a Thomas English Muffin and a cup of hot mud. And, like church services for the faithful, it will seem over all too quickly for a heathen like me. Life in this adult world does not tolerate too much rest. There is much to be done before I resume life in the firehouse, and if I don’t give heed to this glorious, glorious A-shift Sabbath, I’ll be left spiritually, literally, un-caffeinated.

The Original Huff-Daddy

Last night we got a call at the firehouse from our dispatch center. They wanted to let us know that a high-speed pursuit had recently ended, right in front of our station. Normally, I shake my fist at rubber-neckers, but when you have a situation in your front yard, that merits some observation.

The smell of brakes permeated the superheated, sticky, nasty, humid air and in the middle of it all were three cop cars surrounding a slightly dented Toyota Prius in our parking lot. Everyone was sweating and there was a howling mad woman cuffed on the ground, shrieking as though she was going through an exorcism. She angrily screamed at anyone while stringing together a list of colorful adjectives that would make a sailor awkward. I loved it.

The cops were standing there, debating their cop-like debates they have amongst themselves when I walked up to them and asked them how their evening was going. This was a tense moment that could’ve gone either way, since we firemen enjoy a precarious relationship with our brothers in blue, probably stemming from their raging jealousy of us. We like to tell jokes like “what do cops and firefighters have in common? They both want to be firefighters.” They respond with loving terms of endearment like “F- you, you f-ing lazy firemen”. Then we all have a good laugh, and they go back to being resented my most of the community while little old ladies and children continue to love us.

But I digress.

The police officers in question could see I was the designated smart-ass of the group, so they came up good-naturedly and gave me the low-down. It helped that I offered them a soda first, as a gesture of our benevolence as firefighters. One of them approached us and said “don’t underestimate those damn Priuses. We’ve been chasing her all around the Northside for a while now. Those little things can move!” I’ve edited that statement, but you get the gist. Apparently, the driver was hopped up from huffing paint and went on a little Tour de North Springfield at high speeds. I’m just glad no one got hurt as a result of her impersonation of an urban TrashCar racer, but it got me to thinking.

Here was this half-baked crazy lady, hauling ass and slinging rubber around Northtown, eluding the long arm of the law while piloting a Toyota Prius, a car that’s better known for making the statement that you’re a sensitive environmentalist rather than a crazy outlaw paint snorter. There’s the old saying that goes something like “it’s the crappy carpenter who blames his tools.” I’ve been known to make a pitch for buying more shop tools by telling The Wife that I can go no further with my labors of love until I buy some better tools, and more of them. Rarely does this marketing technique work in my favor, and I end up blaming the poor quality of my creations on lacking the this and the that, which would make the end results that much better.

Our little speed demon didn’t need a Big Block Oldsmobile 400 cubic inch engine, capable of delivering 360 horsepower and 440 foot-lbs of torque to hold her own against our local police cruisers. She did it in a car with the same engine used to power sewing machines and boat trolling motors. She used what she had to get her job done. And, while it came to an abrupt end in front of our firehouse with relatively little fanfare, it impressed me nonetheless.

Obviously, I need to spend some more time on working with the tools I have, rather than trying to bankrupt my family by purchasing more of  what I don’t really need. As I survey the chaos that is my shop, I’m really pretty good with that which I have. I have more than enough paint in the supply cabinet, and I’m relieved for a moment that I don’t live on Springfield’s Northside. Because when that lady makes bail? She’s gonna be looking for more fuel for her next high speed rally. The Prius can only take her so far.

Busted

I’m sitting here, right now, in this very moment, at a Panera Bread Co. coffeehouse staring at another firefighter. I noticed him when he tossed a crumpled napkin in my face and recklessly close to my coffee. I was wasting time on the computer, waiting for something funny to wander into my mindset, something that would make a good post. Something ironic. Something to which I could offer a scathing review. A tale of amusement from the firehouse.

But never, ever, in the presence of a fireman. Not in a hundred years.

And here, in this unlikely corner of an unlikely strip mall, my worlds collided when he called out:

“Whatcha doing? Are you bloggggggging, Uli?”

Deep sigh on my part.

Shit.

I write out ideas, and have noodled out a post in the station on occasion, but those turdblossoms at firehouse #2 are used to my dropping in the ear buds and tuning them out for protracted periods. They’ve become closet fans, never outright admitting they read any of this, but quick to point out if there was some sort of error in my last post. It pains them to give any credit, and this is a trait of a good fireman, so I understand completely.

But I keep the whole enterprise away from view of most of the department, because to advertise you have a blog to firemen is akin to advertising that you watch High School Musical or like vampire “literature”, or scrapbook as a hobby. It just isn’t done. Firefighters relate to one another through the time-honored mediums of insult and shit-talking one another. You can’t tell your best friend how much he means to you, but you can walk up to him in the engine bay and open-handed slap him in the face and he’ll get the idea. It is a world of bizarre tradition and ritual where you must constantly assert your heterosexuality through the act of grabbing ass with other men. It makes no sense to outsiders and is the bane of the Human Resources department, who would just as soon interact with sock puppets as opposed to firefighters. They really, really don’t want to go into a firehouse, because we’re the dirty inbreds of city employment, and it’s best to just call 911 if you really want to see us.

So yeah, blogging is kind of a dirty word. I don’t blog. I post essays. I write stories. I waste copious amounts of time trying to think of something funny to say, but I don’t ever blog for the love of Clint Eastwood and all things manly.

Here I sat and here I was, busted as sin.

This was a fulcrum moment.

To deny is your first instinct. But this particular fireman can smell weakness three miles away, and drops the “bullshit” flag as fast as anyone in the department. And he lives to torture. You say you’re homophobic? Prepare for an onslaught of nudity in your face, in your locker, in the bunkroom. Don’t have money to pay for a meal at the station? That’s fine, he’ll let you eat….if you eat some cockroaches first. But there are two things that distinguish him: you can’t bullshit a bullshitter if you want his respect, and if you’re ever trapped in a burning building he’s the one you want crawling in to get you. Like a junkyard pitbull, he never lets go, he never gives up, and it makes him one hell of a fireman. It also makes him drive co-workers to tears of humiliation and shame. My lucky day, indeed.

And so, after ten years of working alongside him, through several threats and wrestling matches and insults and terror, I realized I’d been had. I could try and insist I was looking at something respectable, like porn, in a public place, but he’d seen it in my face. He caught me dead to rights, as though he’d walked in on me with knitting needles in hand and doilies in my lap.

“I KNEW IT! You’re writing your little bloggy thingy aren’t you, you filthy little bastard?”

As I shrugged my shoulders and threw back the last of the 54th cup of bottomless coffee, I went with the only tactic I could employ:

“Well, I won’t tell anyone you caught me in a coffee shop. Your secret’s safe, dude.”

To which his wife piped up:

“Oh, we love this place. They have the best desserts. We come here all the time.”

Check and mate.

Drink The Lemonade. It Pairs Well With Rabbit.

Top 5 Reasons I Suspect There’s Something In The Water Lately

1.) Suspicious fire in the middle of the day. Firemen go predictably nuts when they happen upon gay porn stash in house, immediately accusing each other of “looking at it too long”. I can’t talk about the fire in too much depth, but I did experience massive hunger-induced panicky hallucinations while waiting for the Fire Marshals to methodically examine the scene. I accused them of spending too much time examining the magazine collection of the homeowner.

2.) Skull-viewing. While working a car wreck, we tended to an un-seatbelted passenger who had “spidered” the windshield with her forehead, tearing it open during the process of ramming a telephone pole. She was exhibiting mild concern over her hysterically screeching unbelted daughter/driver and paid no mind to the fact that we were looking at her exposed skull. I’m reaching here, but I’d bet a paycheck that it hurt like hell the next day, and that’s my semi-professional opinion. Although slightly confused, she was aided in answering our questions by the bearded grandma who was riding in the backseat and who WAS wearing a seatbelt. Outside of being royally pissed and barefoot with nasty toenails I could take an angle grinder to, she was just peachy.

3.) Gangster Chaos At The Courthouse. Another car wreck, this time at the seat of all local law enforcement, the county courthouse. A carload of thugs with gold toofs and gangtastic tatts on their faces pulled some stunts out on the road, then pulled into the courthouse parking lot and proceeded to slightly nudge a sheriffs personal motorcycle. Although there wasn’t any real injury among them, the high drama and yelling and wailing ensured the arrival of two ambulances and everyone looking around in a confused manner and pointing fingers. My favorite quote? “Don’t you take my name down, mister. Uh-Uh. Don’t you do it.” My guess? Warrants. Where’s Dog The Bounty Hunter when you need him?

4.) Rabbit Sacrifice. Today, while working on the dubious garden project, one of the shop cats I call Darth Macho proceeded to eat an entire baby rabbit right in front of me. Disemboweled, destroyed and devoured. Legs, fur and guts…gone. He enjoyed this entire feast while staring at me with a look that said “That’s right, you silly bastard, and you’re next.” I mean it was downright creepy the looks he was shooting me. He is called Macho for a reason.

5.) Don’t Drink The Lemonade. The Wife has been making some crazy delicious lemonade lately, thanks to the fresh lemons we procured from Rojo and his family while we were in Cali. Seriously, it’s like crack, it’s so addictive. She swears it’s the sweet lemons and 2 pounds of sugar per batch, while I’m prone to believe she’s lacing it with arsenic and making it wildly addictive so that I’ll consume up to a gallon per hour. She wound up the evening by slapping me in the face while saying “You show me some damn respect. I made you lemonade.” I suspect she’s pissed I’m not dead yet.

Last night I hung up my firefighting gear for the foreseeable future. And by “foreseeable future” I mean “the next two weeks” since I have the attention span of a fly and two weeks into the future may as well be two decades. The family is heading out of Missouri, as mentioned in this post, the nerve-wracking, make-me-sweat-like-a-whore-in-church experience known as emceeing the Blogaronis is over, and Hotwire has been put in charge of maintaining the compound while we drive like mad bastards to my home state. All is good on the horizon.

Sometimes it feels like a royal pain in the a-double snakes to be a government employee – the bureaucracy, the constant cycle of loathing/admiration/hating/envy that the citizens feel towards public safety (pension problems, anyone?), the feeling of being a cog in a blue shirt, replaceable within about 5 minutes or less. The bureaucracy – yeah, I gotta mention that twice, and if you work in government service, you can appreciate this.

But on top of that, I feel really lucky. Lucky that I’ve found the career that makes sense to me. The fire service is loaded with all kinds of wayward issues, but really, what job isn’t? Anytime you have more than two employees, you have politics. Any time you answer to the citizens, there’s gonna be one old grouch out there who wants to kick you in the balls just because he got a speeding ticket once. So we accept where we’re at, but that doesn’t always translate into appreciating it.

Every third day I spend in the company of 5-7 others who endure my lies and copious bull. I drink ungodly amounts of coffee, I get to tinker with a three-quarter million dollar ladder truck and generally when people dial 911, they’re happy/relieved to see us arrive. Little kids never, ever fail to wave up at the truck, little old ladies always coo when we change their smoke detectors and our spouses are generally happy to get rid of us for one day out of three. When the economy is down, our business seems to pick up, not necessarily a good thing in terms of public safety, but it makes for interesting times. We operate on a level of maturity with one another that you may have last witnessed in sixth grade.

And still, we bitch about it.

For the next couple of weeks, I’ll hopefully sleep through the night. There will be no phantom alarms at 3am, no loudly lamenting the empty coffee pot, no staring off at the rest of the world going home at 5pm while we have a whole 14 more hours of gilded cage time. No staring at a giant truck knowing that there’s really several hours of checking it that need to get done. No arguing over what channel to watch. I’ll need to keep my mouth in check, since firehouse humor doesn’t necessarily translate smoothly outside the station. It won’t go well, and I’ll end up saying stuff I regret. The Pimp and The Pirate won’t be around to berate me, and tales of JoBoo’s adventures into Oklahoma will have to wait. I won’t think about funding issues, staffing issues, pension issues, rookie issues or the plain ol’ business of fighting fires.

The Heathens will spend time on the beach, time at Disneyland, and time on my nerves. The Wife will pass judgment on my driving skills and my brothers will point out how great it is to see us and how old I’m looking. The Lyin’ Dutchman will probably make some sort of appearance, trying to ambush Buns and me through a meeting that Bones will have unknowingly set up. I’ll spend an inordinate amount of time missing living on the coast. I’ll watch Barbara get married and lament losing time with my family. I’ll secretly wish for a return to a life that really never was. Hopefully The Author and I will have time to meet up and we can wax idiotic on classmates from twenty years ago.

And in two weeks? Putting on the turnouts and climbing on to Truck 2 will seem like a damn fine way to make a living. Even if the coffee pot is empty.

He Who Shall Be Known As Duane

It all started out rather innocently. Okay, it wasn’t innocent at all, but instead, the continuation of a firehouse joke that isn’t even that funny. Sometimes, when I’m in control of the tv remote in the day room, I’ll make the boys watch religious programming (ie- Jim Bakker, the Fleecer of Missouri) or, when bored with that, shows like A&E’s Dog The Bounty Hunter. I’m thoroughly amused by the ridiculous style of these clowns as they tear all over Hawaii and Colorado, intimidating their bail jumpers with cans of Mace and trash talk. After a capture, you can count on what I call “the Jesus talk”, then a proffered Marlboro Red and some sage advice before being turned in. The main players of the show are who make it so funny, what with their mullets, bicep feathers and badges that look like they were picked up in the Claw Machine of a Wal Mart. It’s a train wreck I can’t turn away from; recently, I’ve fallen in love with Beth (Dog’s wife) and it’s not because she’s insane, top heavy and has a penchant for wearing clothes the colors of the American flag. No, I love her because as she scatters to and fro, screaming at perps, she does it while in high heels. And you should know how I feel about that.

So imagine, if you will, my sheer delight when I found out that Dog and his posse would be making an appearance here in Springberg. Apparently, in between moments of kicking ass and taking names around the Big Island, he’s taken the time to “write” a book, and is on a book tour. Never mind the reason, I had to be a witness to this spectacle. There was a fairly good chance I’d recognize many of his fans from my experiences tending to all their woes here on the Northside; it’s a fact that his fan base is very, very solid on our side of town, judging by the unwillingness of many people to turn it off while their cousin/sister/mom is having “the big one” on the couch beside them.

I talked Chad Harris of FairCity News into joining me, figuring if nothing else, we’d get some supreme people watching in; I arrived an hour early, figuring that was plenty of time to get some coffee and meet some people. I was dead wrong. An employee of Borders told me that she’d had people camped out there since the night previous for a chance to touch The Dog. When I finally got some joe and a copy of the book, I must’ve been about the 549th person in line. It was a sight to behold. The smell of stale cigarettes hung lazily in the air, the mullets were plentiful, the teeth not as much, and the gravely voiced chatter of hundreds of super fans prevailed. And then, terror.

A voice came over the store p.a. system to inform us that the tour bus was stuck in traffic and would be two hours late. The collective chatter turned up a notch in volume, with several colorful declarations of incredulity by the crowd. I was hoping for a full-scale riot, but sadly, nothing that violent materialized. Several people went outside to smoke multiple unfiltered cigarettes in frustration. Some dispatched family members to the nearest McDonald’s to grab some sustenance for the long haul wait. I took the chance to meet folks standing around me in line, and discovered some really funny people like Dan, who swore he was only there because his young daughters are uber-fans and Elizabeth who was definitely in the Duane-zone. Some people took the opportunity to dress their infant children up as tarts, some wore the bail bond company tee-shirts of their employers and many looked as though they had active warrants, but were willing to risk it to meet the supposed “greatest bounty hunter of all time”, according to his book.

The Messiah of Bounty Hunting arrives

And four and half hours later? The bus arrived and the crowd broke into shear pandelerium. A three toothed lady shouted his arrival to the crowd while clutching a McD’s bag and had an almost immediate raspy breakdown, she was so overwhelmed. After his Ed Hardy-cloaked advance man surveyed the crowd, The Dog made us wait another twenty minutes before exiting his bus, preceded by the lovely Beth. People went certifiably nuts. THIS was the moment they’d been waiting for, disciples for whom the Messiah had arrived. IT. WAS. GLORIOUS. I had to snap a pic of his arrival. Take a moment to drink in the fingerless gloves, the badge, and the hair. My God, the hair.

No matter. I waited with my new friends in line as we compared notes as to what we’d say to the King when we finally got to the front of the line. What were other people saying? Were they lionizing this lion of fashion? What do you say to a guy who wears eagle feathers in his hair and on his biceps? Does it even matter what you say? Do you offer him a smoke and some advice about Jesus?

Our special "moment"

All of these hypotheticals were for naught, because soon, ever so soon, we were blessed with the visage of Beth, making her way up and down the aisles, meeting and greeting her legions of fans. To my utter dismay, she was not wearing heels nor was her hair built up near enough for my liking. My disappointment was quickly quelled when she high-fived me – the chemistry was obvious to all present and our eyes locked for an eternity. We both knew in that very moment that we were destined for one another and no Dogs nor Wifes could stand in the way of the intertwining of our souls. At least that’s how it seemed to me. She also took the chance to chew Chad’s ass out for his using the family image without getting paid. THIS? Is when I laughed in his face and told him not to get in the way of me & Beth. In fact we took a pic to commemorate the moment, and we’re seriously considering using it for the wedding invites.

The rest of the event was a haze of wrinkled skin and tattoos for me.

What else can compare when love is in the air?

And yes, I have the signed book. It may well be the best afternoon I’ve wasted in an entire month.

Thanks for the memories, Sweet Beth. And thanks to that canine husband of yours for bringing you to the event that you and I will never forget.