A Christmas Excerpt.....

It was the Friday night before Christmas, a crisp  starlit evening.  We were cruising the township roadways with Santa Claus on the rescue.  It was an annual event, much enjoyed by many of the smaller members of the community and, truth be told, by many of the bigger ones as well.   

The lights were flashing, the siren screaming, the air horn blasting and regular sounds of “Ho Ho Ho” were echoing in the night air from behind me.  I rode the officer’s seat in the cab, just enjoying the atmosphere and the smiling children we encountered on our slow tour.  My fun was broken by a radio call. 

 “Comm Center to Chief 36,” the radio query came.  After I responded, the dispatcher asked, “You wouldn’t happen to be out with Santa Claus by chance, would you, Chief?” 

 “Affirmative,” I answered. 

“Can you call in by phone?” the dispatcher asked. 

I didn’t have a good feeling as I reached for the cell phone mounted on the dash.  Was some scrooge upset by the siren noise, I wondered.  When I got the dispatcher on the line, it was nothing like that. 

“Hey, Chief, we just had a call from a grandma on Greenfield Road.  She was upset ‘cause she had been out when you went by and her grandchildren just missed Santa.”

"Please tell me she didn’t call in on 911?” I asked the dispatcher, almost dreading his response.  The 911 emergency line is certainly not the proper method to obtain a visit by Santa Claus. 

  “Oh yeah, she did,” he said with a laugh. 

  “Sorry about that, we’ll take another run down that road.”  We have to take care of a grandma like that, I thought to myself. 

 “Thanks, Chief, and Merry Christmas,” the dispatcher answered, as we both disconnected the line. 

 

From the Introduction

I explained what had happened and that I was in the hospital.

“You burned?” Dad asked.

“No, but I’m not sure why,” I answered.

“Are you going to call home later?”

“Yeah,” I responded.

“Just be real cool when you do,” he instructed.

Dad only worked about a mile from the house and usually came home for lunch every day. I figured he would tell my mother about it then. At about five p.m. that day, when the long distance rates changed, I called them. That’s when I learned that he hadn’t said a word to her. He wasn’t stupid. He knew how she’d react.

She started yelling, “Your father’s been doing this for over twenty years and this never happened to him.” My “yes, but” answers weren’t doing very well. I knew it was worry and concern on her part, but that wasn’t making my explanation any easier. Over the next few phone calls, the volume went down but the butt-chewing continued.

Gary's Acknowledgments

This book could not exist if it weren’t for the time and dedication of hundreds of firefighters. The stories herein are based on my best recollections and I have attempted to tell them as accurately as possible. There is no doubt that some participants may recall some aspects differently; any errors in that regard are solely mine. Names, with very few exceptions, have been changed and the stories are mainly, but not entirely, chronological.

Every firefighter will notice some incidents in which accepted standards and practices for safety and use of personal protective equipment are violated. They are related in this way simply because that is how it happened and they are not to be taken as an example of proper firefighting technique; as my son, Mike, regularly tells me–“You can’t do it that way anymore, Dad.”

I would also like to thank the Endless Mountains Writers Group (EMWG) and, in particular, Hildy, Marcus, Jeanne, Carl, Rob, Ann, Eleanor, Mary, Mary and all the other group participants.

I am also grateful to George Navarro for his assistance in locating photographs. The placement of the pictures throughout the book is random. A photo does not necessarily depict an incident described in the corresponding text of a chapter.