Half Past Awesome

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.

The 3rd grade teacher implicated in the prostitution ring looks NOTHING like this. Just thought you should know.

What with everything going on with Charlie Sheen and a one Mr. Muammar Gaddafi, there’s just so much material. SO MUCH MATERIAL. And there’s only one small problem with that: EVERY ONE HAS BEEN THERE. Those two are the village bicycles at this point – everyone’s had a ride. I’m out here busting my hump, trolling the internet for worthwhile mindless fodder, such as John Edwards hiring Obama’s old lawyer, the necessity of fighting in the N.H.L. or the live sex classes going on at Northwestern University. But it turns out we don’t need to go to the dark ends of the intarwebs, or Illinois, even, to find nasty news of the weird. We need go no further than the Queen City of The Ozarks, our very own Springfield, Missouri to find the salacious dirt that is grist for a mindless mill. Really, we are leaders in so many ways here in the Show-Me-State. It’s not enough that we “enjoy” the lowest taxes on smokes in the nation (psst- we could double that tax and still be 49th, haters), that we’re arguably leading the nation in meth lab incidents, and that  our county is first out of 114 in the state in child abuse/neglect cases. No, we have a new slice of gossip pie right here in the city that boasts of being home to the worldwide headquarters of the Assemblies of God: we got us a good old fashioned prostitution ring running wild. By “wild”, of course, I’m talking about “involving 5 people”. But how do we ramp up a scandal involving the world’s oldest profession? We infuse it with potential harm to children; we find out that it involves a local school teacher! The alleged acts of ill-repute took place in a basically derelict old building in our downtown, and I took the opportunity to satirize it in a blurb on Fair City News. (In case this is your first day on the internet, all of the text in blue indicates a link to the issues). But really, there was no need, since this kind of comedy is intrinsically humorous without needing to dress it up. It leaves us, the public, three ways to look at it:

1. Relax, already. Consenting adults, we assume, are exchanging cash for pleasure. I, too engage in this; it’s called “drinking a beer down at the Pub and paying cash for it”. It’s also known as “going to the movie theater, handing them cash, and them pleasuring me by entertaining me with 2 1/2 hours of cinematic delight.” At this point it’s perfectly legal for a single young male to meet a single young female, flirt with her shamelessly and find themselves engaged in the business of freakiness. But as soon as money trades hands - BOOM! – you’re breaking the law, buster. Perhaps instead of outrage, we should spend more time on Craigslist as a method of keeping our panties out of a collective wad.
2. We should be even more outraged. In a section of the country that touts family values, God-fearin’ and all as a selling point, why do we have such high rates of crimes against kids, super cheap cancer sticks and outrageous cases of meth mouth? One way that Springfield tries to draw in businesses and people is to sell its low cost-of-living and affordable housing. The dark side of that reality is shockingly low wages, a relative dearth of cultural attractants and an environment that fosters cyclical trash. Think Winter’s Bone, which is the rural version of what we deal with on the north side of Springfield every day. While it provides for great material for fire department stories and continued employment, it really is a bleak tale.
3. They really just don’t pay teachers what they’re worth. As a way of using mockery to highlight a serious issue, I say this with the tongue out of the cheek. Spend a day in your kids kindergarten, especially you dads out there, and marvel at how those teachers don’t spend their free time shaking babies. While the wonderment of a child learning is awe-inspiring indeed, most of the time they’re shrieking and trying to burn the building down. And when they get to high school and really know all there is to know? How those teachers don’t choke the ever-loving shit out of those kids is a miracle in and of itself. Whatever they are making, it’s not enough, despite how much conservatives will screech about how easy teachers have it. They’re responsible for educating our future leaders, and somehow we feel that middle to lower class wages is “spoiling them”. No wonder they have to resort to offering more lucrative business opportunities. Remember, when in doubt, it’s ALWAYS a union’s fault, as is evidenced currently in Wisconsin, where I hear there is a life size portrait of Bernie Madoff hanging in the governor’s mansion.

I’m sure as the details emerge, we’ll act shocked, as fair citizens should, but it’s not as though this game is new to the world. I’m more shocked that this is still in issue in today’s society. The banner under our local newspaper reads “Tis A Privilege To Live In The Ozarks”. Apparently, those privileges extend beyond the realm of mega-churches and cheap housing; you just need to look in the right section of Craigslist.

Commence With The Invasion Of Hoth! / photo copyright © 2008 sean dreilinger

February is just a few days from being dead now; the epic and annual battle against the winter blues is in its final throes for the season, and there is no shortage of casualties on the battlefield. Speaking of which, when measured against the sentence our military folks are serving in that hell-hole of a desert theatre, it seems more than a little trite to bitch about the weather. I can’t help but notice, though, that right now, it’s not just me. It seems like most people I know are one more cold and cloudy day closer to dragging scissors across their wrists as a method of mundane entertainment.

Complaining about the weather, or, for that matter, fundamentalist religious folks, in the buckle of the Bible Belt is akin to moving to Utah and decrying the abundance of Mormons. Chances are the weather and the spiritually engaged were in their respective locations when we decided to inhabit their locales. They were here first, and if you don’t like it, then why don’t you move back to communist Russia, you son of a…..wait, I got sidetracked there for a moment. Where were we? Oh yeah…

February. Brown and cold, like this stale cup of coffee in front of me. I tell anyone who’ll listen how much I prefer the cold of winter to the Vietnam-like summers we get in Missouri; you can always put on more clothes when it’s cold, but in August, when you’re chewing the air and making body-sweat soup, society will only let you get so naked before they call the cops. It’s a real bummer, I tell you.

Missouri is the Show-Me-State, which sounds deliciously perverse until you realize what that means is that they’re a skeptical lot, prone to demanding evidence before they’ll accept anything, aforementioned spiritual endeavors notwithstanding. But really, the name should be changed to the “I Want Something Else State” or the “Short Attention Span State”. Whatever weather is coming up we get all giddy about, be it the tornadoes of Spring or the 3 inches of snow that may, or may not, hit us whenever. Then, when it gets here, the local news goes predictably apeshit over a serious fog pattern and immediately we’re irritated by it. Facebook and other outlets for us get clogged up with declarations of righteous fury over the climate and our eager anticipation for the NEXT season. We’re worse than spoiled kids on Christmas morning.

I’ve decided to join this particular Complain Train this time, though. This time of year always reminds me of the freezer-burnt section of the fridge. The meat is of indeterminate origin, but it’s brown and cold and icy, and even the dog turns his nose up at the prospect. Like the natives around here, I’m anxious to see the lawn green up, enjoy the mating rituals of the firefly and spend our evenings cowering in the hallway while another tornado rumbles through. We’ll enjoy lazy floats on swollen rivers, cheap beer and impulsive flashing being our entertainment, all while complaining about the heat and anticipating the fall colors and football.

But no one is looking forward to February; of this I am sure.

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.

"Looky what I made"

I’m no grammarologist….the evidence is overwhelming. But now that people are communicating more than ever over social media sites and everyone broadcasts their opinions in 140 characters or less, I’m left to wonder if emphasis and emotion triumph over common sense. Of course, the answer is yes, but I have these lingering questions:

• Why do you type in all caps? In the distant past (2002) that was meant as a form of shouting. You did something stupid (broadcast pictures of your boss making out with the entire carpool) and the angry response came in the form of an all capital letter tirade. It usually included the words “YOU’RE FIRED!” Now, I think people are trying to show their excitement, but really, it just comes across as a screeching, desperate plea for Ritalin.

• Along the same lines, I wonder why you feel the need to utilize more than one exclamation point, when maybe even one was too many. I know you’re excited that you’re favorite band is coming to town, or there’s a tweetup going on down at the coffee shop, but using it all the time? Please!!!!!

• Boosters. Back in English 101 you would’ve qualified for a public caning had you not cited sources when you were directly quoting someone else. And I mean a direct boost, not a familiar/common saying (Yeah, you, Copper). So why is it now no big deal to steal the wit of someone on Twitter and make it your Facebook status without even some gratuitous quote marks? To make matters worse, when people comment on “your” funny take, you’re not even saying that you lifted it….you’re silently taking credit. Dirty pool, that’s what that is. And guess what? When we meet up in person, and it’s obvious from the vanilla banter that those status updates were not of your own creation? It totally comes across.

• Why don’t you go see a doctor? You’re clearly almost dead; your past 16 updates have focused on your migraine/flu symptoms/ingrown toenail. I get it, we all get it….you need some sympathy and, in the words of my father “a reeeeeal swift kick in de ass.” Save the details of your hypochondria for a blog post, which is clearly a better medium for laying out all the gory details of your latest sore throat. I should know, I do it all the time.

• When you post pictures of your meal, you’re committing the social media equivalent of saying “I have nothing to say. So here, look at my food, why don’t you?” By now, it’s patently obvious that every single person on the internet is a better cook than I, so for the love of Cap’n Crunch stop showing me your braised ribs in duck reduction sauce, or I’m going to start posting pictures of my various, award winning toast creations.  I realize there’s no question here, but it seemed like the right place to lodge the complaint.

• Why must you lambaste your obnoxious teen publicly? I realize, there’s no shortage of material out there that he/she is providing you to give reason for pulling out your hair/drinking at 9 am./taking up a prescription medication abuse hobby, but give the kid just a little break. Remember when we were teens? When our parents lectured us on the evils of drink with a glass of Chardonnay in hand, which only drove us into the arms of Pabst Blue Ribbon? Yeah, it’s still the same. So cut the kid some slack, because believe me, when you bitch about him/her online, they’ve not only read it, they’re busy ordering your credit rating destroyed by all their way-smarter-than-us-technologically friends. And subscribing to porn in your name.

• And lastly, how does re-posting religious proclamations/love for a nurse/appreciation for your nanny as your status make any sense? In the same manner that using a cartoon character as your profile picture won’t stop child abuse/cattle rustling/mesothelioma, your status update is YOURS, treat it as such, and not as a tool of guilty peer pressure. Trust me, no one thinks you’re FOR a bad cause if you don’t hop on the train, unless, of course, we’re dealing with zombies – that’s a game changer.

ps- I still love you, but I’ll completely understand if you recognize yourself in any of these situations and promptly unfriend, unfollow, or simply send a piece of hate mail in all caps with lots of exclamation points.

Just Like That. But Different (Getty Images)

So, in four words, I’m kinda laid up. Nothing bad or critical, nor, much to her chagrin, fatal. Unless, of course, you count aging and stupidity as fatal; if that’s the case, I’m guilty of both and on a collision course with death. Not a glorious cocaine-and-hooker-laden death like Charlie Sheen, more like with the headlines “Man Bends Over To Pick Up Penny And Drops Dead.”

Like all cataclysmic events in the universe, this one came crawling into the room, unnoticed until it was too late. Here’s how I want the history books to record this event of epic proportions: “as Uli was attempting to smash a world record by deadlifting 978lbs. without even warming up, he suffered a neurological anomaly which resulted in a severely crippling injury. Women the world over proceeded to hurl themselves off of cliffs and in front of speeding trains to escape the wrenching agony brought about by his downfall. He’s expected to make a full recovery in three days and will be once again smashing records and breaking hearts.”

The truth is more like this here: “I bent over to pick up a measly 65lbs. worth of weight at CrossFit, and by the x- number of reps, something went “twannnngg”, and I was done. I’ve since been shattered to a whimpering, whiny pile of puny-ass, reduced to looking for Oreo crumbs on the corner of kitchen floor, where I’ve been since Thursday.”

I’ve spent the remainder of the time, when not at the chiropractor or chewing on Ibuprofen like they were Skittles, trying to defend the tragedy within. “I swear, it was really no big deal, I have no idea what the issue was, normally I can bench press school buses” I mumble and attempt pass off, though no one is buying it. There’s also no cache in lame, completely improbable scenarios, either. “Yeah, I turned around to catch an errant dust mote, and BOOM! I was on the floor.”

No.

There was nothing but trying to lift some light weight without responsibly warming up, first.

It’s called getting old.

The chiropractor had a fun and fancy name for whatever the hell my lumbar action is up to, but really, it’s just being old and out of shape.

And as I lay there on the kitchen floor, casting about glances for errant food that may have fallen from the counters, I’m forced to confront this new reality. In the age of the druids, I’d be considered a very senior citizen with one foot in the grave and a rune-script headstone declaring “he lived a long 36 years.”

Hours later with some muscle relaxers on board thanks to the mysterious Brown Sugar, I’ve curled up into a fetal ball on TOP of the kitchen counter, ready to take on the world.

As long as the world weighs less than 65lbs.

Let's not force the issue / copyright, some Italian guy on Flickr

It must be time to lay out another essay: there were 99 comments in the spam filter, almost all of which were either in Russian or advertising porn and cut-rate Cialis. I’d hate to disappoint my perverted Soviet core support group, so I thought I’d write up a little something. How about 5 things I’ve learned this week? Sound good, comrades?

1. I learned of a heretofore unused new term for “hangover” that has been employed by my father: vertigo. It’s much more socially acceptable to use that term when you’re staggering around the next morning, growling for coffee and babbling incoherently. I shouldn’t be surprised, really; he has an awesome laundry list of other claims (read them here!)
2. Pull-ups when you’re as weak as I am can only be accomplished through what looks to others like a genuine and total seizure, complete with grunts and spastic slobbering. Which is why, after one or two, I collapse into a heap and actually have a seizure.
3. There’s nothing that can make a motor mouth like me speechless like witnessing my 1st grade son kiss his girlfriend in the school hallway. In front of parents and teachers. And me. There is no escaping that moment, and the accompanying mix of emotions: pride, fury, respect and a desire to slap them both. That was a fun car ride home.
4. Offering up your writing to various outlets is a great way to learn the many versions of the word “no” that are out there. It’s also a great self-esteem check valve.
5. Yelling at cats doesn’t phase them in the least. If anything, it makes them shoot a leg up into the air and lick their genitals in front of you. I could take a lesson from their self-assured obliviousness.

From The Dirty Churros Archives....

Tomorrow, I’ll be undergoing some sort of exploratory procedure. The details are somewhat murky, but the long and the short of it is that some people who practice this sort of thing will be trying to discover why I can’t hardly eat a solitary slice of apple without having a near death choking experience. Since it gets really, really old to constantly be clutching your throat at restaurants while your eyes shoot off in different directions, I’m on board with this whole thing. But since I’ll be under the influence of drugs the names of which I cannot pronounce, I immediately assume there’s a chance I’m gonna die, violently maybe. That being the case, I thought I’d update my will, the last copy of which was printed on a cocktail napkin one night in the throes of a rum bender and an argument over the origins of the M.A.S.H. theme song.

So here goes nothing, literally.

I, Uli, being of unsound, unstable mind and broken body do leave my entire estate to the following people in the event of my untimely demise in a bizarre industrial mishap or some equally chaotic end.

1. To my children, The Heathens, I leave the bulk of my substantial debt. This seems to be trend of our national leaders, and I’m nothing, if not a patriot. I would encourage them to utilize this situation to learn how to speak multiple languages and enjoy the concept of living abroad, preferably in the company of women of ill-repute.
2. To The Wife, I leave my 5 hockey sticks and my entire metric wrench collection. I never did trust her to use the standard size with the proper amount of respect. Also, I leave to her my collection of dirty and clean laundry, unwashed dishes and vast assortment of paper clips I’ve been hoarding over the last year.
3. To The Dirtbag, I leave my beloved dual-sport motorcycle. I should warn you, it’s not paid off yet, so rip the plate off and head south of the border when you come pick it up. As well, you’ll have access to my motorcycle gang of two, The Dirty Churros, and my friendship with El Jefe, but odds are you two won’t get along. Think of this as a team-building exercise, and my last gift to you.
4. To my shop cats, I bequeath my air compressor and all the associated pneumatic tools. I think it would be awesome if they figured out how to use them to terrorize the feline world. Best of luck, gatos.
5. To ThunderChicken, I leave my vast stash of frozen bacon. Lord knows, you look like you could use some, man. That staying fit stuff might kill you yet….in fact it may be why you’re now reading MY last will.
6. To my brothers, Bones, Buns, Chewie, Nan, and Barbara, I leave you nothing, because you’ve spent your lives making mine miserable, and this is what you deserve. Fine, the five of you can split my sweet collection of old red shop rags. No fighting.
7. To RoJo, I leave all of the books and magazines I’ve been quietly stealing from you since I was 18. Don’t hold a grudge.
8. To The Outlaw Trucker, I leave all the scrap metal in my shop. Weld me something beautiful, preferably a statue of me stabbing a savage, attacking wild beast in the eyes. Use your imagination.
9. To The City of Springfield Fire Department, I leave that tube of toothpaste that’s in my locker, and that itchy, nasty wool blanket I was issued in rookie school and made to swear I’d return in 25 years. Most lower mammals wouldn’t use that thing to nest in, by the way.
10. To my friend The Author, I leave my glorious, luminous and entirely non-grey head of hair and magnificent pelt of manly chest hair. You’re welcome.
11. Finally, to my beloved canine MoJay the psycho-killer boxer, I bequeath all of our domestic garbage receptacles since you’ve spent the last year knocking them over and rooting through them at every chance. Go on, help yourself to old banana peels and coffee grounds. I hope you gag on an old guitar string, you obnoxious bastard. I love you so much.

There you have it. I expect this will to be faithfully executed, but let’s be honest here: most of you are gonna come over, loot all of my worldly possessions and then burn my house to the ground, pissing on the flames as you pour out your malt liquor over the ashes. I’m good with that, too.

Winter's Bone-Chilling Cold (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato)

This past weekend an old high school friend I call The Author paid me a visit from out in sunny Southern Cali all the way to the snowy center of the continent. Ostensibly, we were looking over some information that may have led to a collaborative project between us; realistically we were catching up and enjoying the company as one only can with a friend with whom you have a couple of decades of history. As to the writing project, we’ll talk about that later, but suffice it to say that I really look up to this guy; what he’s done in the creative community, projects from novels to screenplays and roles in his life as varied as mountaineer to independent producer. Just the chance to collaborate with him is worth at least a six pack of Guinness on the open market.

He took off last night, back to the land of the fit and fabulous, back to his grind of creative output. And here I sit in front of my seemingly vanilla laptop (not a Mac), staring at the same old news sites I use to come up with inane tales of stupid observation (hello, Daily Mail) and there’s an overwhelming melancholy to the whole bit.

I think it’s being surrounded by the creative energy of someone else that inspires such impetus for me to create. That’s why observing my kids create art, ninja battles and other products from their fertile imaginations provides me with such intrinsic happiness. It’s why I root for the artists striving to break out, such as Nathan Maulorico of Unknown Films or Sarah Bliss Rasul, who does amazing work in several types of media. I want to see their creative talents rewarded, because they’ve been given a gift, one that I hope provides them with the ability to dedicate their lives to it.

Because if they can do it, I’m inspired to believe that I can as well.

The downside is when I’m apart from other weird, creative types, I get into a funk. It feels like the world is transpiring all around me, as though there’s this tremendous wave of artistic flow happening just outside Missouri’s borders. It’s the same feeling I used to get when waking up from an afternoon nap as a kid: something just happened out there, and I missed it. Let’s face it – the fire service is just that…. a service, and a valuable one at that. Really, though, it’s the application of science to disaster. Preparedness, training, conditioning, paperwork, all these are hallmarks of a successful career in the fire department. While it’s necessary to keep the lights on with a job like this, for which I’m grateful, I pin a lot of happiness on the ability to create while off-duty.

And when I find myself in a melancholy jag, watching a friend’s plane take off from our gray and white world out here in the Great State of Ranch Dressing? I look to the boys, my very own Heathens, and take comfort and inspiration from their very own creations. Ninja battles and Legos never looked so good.

Wrong Hooker, but you get the idea.

Let’s face it: it’s a tough economy out there. We’re all struggling to make ends meet, even while those who control gasoline production insist on bending us over their barrels of sweet, delicious crude oil. Cities everywhere are determining that public safety should be valued on a risk/reward system, whereby it’s perfectly okay to close fire companies that are, you know, just a real drag. I’m perfectly aware of this, and while I’m grateful as can be that I still have a firehouse to call home, there may come a time where our fair citizens demand even lower taxes on their cigarettes (despite our state having THE lowest tax rate on coffin nails….read here) and I’ll be shit out of luck. If that becomes the case, I’ve decided that prostitution will become my next career advancement. I have many reasons why, but here are the top ten:

TOP 10 REASONS I’D BE A GREAT PROFESSIONAL HE-HO

1. I’m really quite unremarkable. Ladies, the last thing you need when you hire an escort is for it to be obvious that you’ve paid to have some massively strong and good-looking dude-hooker accompany you to fancy functions. Lucky for you, no one will suspect you’ve spent a dime when you show up with me on your arm, and you can claim we just “met on the internet”.
2. No middleman. Pimps have a bad reputation, and they’ve earned it. As such, my self respect demands that I do not employ said dealers in pleasure, and I can pass the savings right on to the customer. Plus, no weird canes or obnoxious hats and tricked out Monte Carlos with gold-spoke rims to contend with.
3. I can do the dishes. This is a quality that plagues many an otherwise harmonious relationship. So, for a very reasonable fee, I can come over to your house and suds up those pieces of dining ware that you’ve been leaving in the sink. There is a three day maximum waiting period on that one though, cause then we’re dealing with some gross stuff, and I just don’t get weird like that.
4. I’m a fireman. Now, before you go dreaming up someone who might be in a calendar, I mean this in a totally different way. Firemen gossip worse than hens on a fence, so maybe you need to talk some trash about that skank at work who’s clearly slutting her way to the top. I’ll not only completely understand, I’ll probably be able to contribute some completely salacious, and utterly fabricated, commentary about her clear lack of morals.
5. I have a horrible short term memory. This will come in handy when we run into each other at a local coffee shop and you’re in the company of your family. I can barely remember my kids’ names, so there’s no fear of awkward social encounters or the need to explain how we know each other….chances are I won’t recall a thing.
6. No need to be self-conscious. As The Wife informs me on a regular basis, I’m no prize; therefore, there is no need for you to feel bad about any aspect of your being, either. Worried that you may have a bit too much of a mustache for it to be considered socially acceptable? Pfffftttt….I can grow one of those things in three hours. There’s beauty everywhere and in everyone, and I’m guaranteed to see it.
7. I know how to change a tire. Do you have a long road trip that will take you along poorly paved highways, or are you worried about being car-jacked in the city? Then you should consider hiring me. I’ll bring the Funyuns, and we’ll listen to the music of the REM, and claim how we got Michael Stipe before anyone else did, thereby making us “better” than everyone. I’ll even bring a set of tools for changing a flat tire or intimidating the hell out of roadside thugs. It’ll be great.
8. I don’t hunt or fish. This is mainly a regional issue, but here in Midwest, there are many, many sportsman’s widows. Their hubbies get their goatees trimmed up, break out their finest camo and disappear into the woods or onto the lakes for days on end, all vying for machismo rights when they kill something with brains no bigger than a housecat. I could care less. So, when the fall and spring are here and you’re abandoned for the company of some other guys who smell like deer piss, give me a call. We’ll go eat some overpriced sushi and grab some Starbucks, head back to your place and burn all of his shit on the front lawn.
9. I’m tax-deductible! Apparently, for many years, The Wife has been claiming me on our tax statements under the category “financial sink-hole”. I’m not sure what this technological jargon means, but I’m 72% sure you, too, can claim our rendezvouseseses as a deduction of sorts. It’s like you’d be throwing away money NOT to engage my services; be diligent about your fiduciary duties, already.
10. I’m NOT a Craigslist Killer. I just thought I oughta put that out there.