How It All Began...

I had dreams, I guess. But it sure wasn’t to be a firefighter when I grew up, that part just kind of happened.

Sure I heard the sirens in the distance, and can still remember the sound of the old winding up and down of the antique siren as the fire trucks brought Santa Claus through town about a week before Christmas Day. Of course I would go running to the curb as they approached, but who didn’t like candy canes!

No, the first time I actually started “chasing fire trucks” happened to be about the age of 13 or 14. That’s when my friend from school began fulfilling his dream of becoming a fireman. I was just there for the ride. Suddenly, we would leap to our bikes, and within seconds reach our top pedaling speed as we leaned into the turns. I would be yelling questions up about where we were going, why we were going and what was all the excitement about. I would get a quick, “Fire Call!” yelled back to me as he pushed the pedals a bit harder. We would finally get to the firehouse where all the fire trucks had already departed of course, and we would then stand there while firefighters listened intently to squawking radios telling them how serious the call was, and whether they needed more help or not.

As my chest heaved in and out from the sudden workout, the smell of the firehouse became apparent. A mixture of smoke and soot, combined with a clean just mopped scent. It was hard to describe, but it was readily identified for years to come.

Soon the trucks would be roaring up to the front of the firehouse again, returning from their emergency. Backing each one into the station, the clanging of the bells ringing as an old back up alarm, fascinated me. Kids would then begin to collect outside the firehouse and suddenly, my friend and I were somebody important. The other neighborhood kids would be looking at us like we knew or had something they didn’t. And to be honest, I still wasn’t sure why we were there. Was this my friend’s job? Was he a firefighter who just wasn’t fast enough to get on a truck?

On our slow return trip to my own neighborhood, he would try to explain some of the things I just witnessed at the firehouse. He described each firefighter and what they had once said to him, or what he saw them do at one time or another. The more I listened, the more interested I became, but still wondered what all the racing across town was about. I didn’t care enough to ask why we did it, it was fun no matter what the reason.

My interest gradually grew more intent as the months and years passed. When I heard sirens, I began to think about my friend, and the guys I had met at the firehouse and wondered if they were all there, and what they were probably doing. I would repeat the different scenes I had witnessed in my mind as the sirens wailed into the distance.

I became addicted to the TV show “Emergency!” Johnny and Roy became household names and I began repeating the fire dispatches by heart. Some kids would make noises like a siren. I would imitate the dispatcher I would hear on the scanner and on the TV episodes. I found a hard hat my father used to wear when he visited Sun Oil Tankers. Soon, when nobody was watching, this became my make believe fire helmet. I took a large black magic marker and turned it from a white helmet with oil industry safety stickers, to a helmet with two large numbers on each side designating which fantasy fire station I belonged to.

It didn’t take long for me to hook up the new police scanner my brother gave me on my birthday, and soon I knew every fire station number and the dispatch tones for each station.

It was during a particular busy scanner day, when I approached my parents sitting on the back porch. My father was sitting with a drink in one hand when I advised him I wanted to become a fire dispatcher, just like the guys I hear on the scanner. He replied with a discouraging story about how the dispatchers are those who could not make it in any other field, and that most were retired old men who just sat around answering phones all day. This put such a damper on my dream of becoming that voice who told the fire department where the emergencies were.

When I was sixteen, I finally realized, my bicycling friend had realized his dreams. I saw him one day standing at a fire scene, with his long black coat and shiny yellow helmet. He was finally a firefighter. He no longer had to sit on his bike outside the bay doors, he was now allowed inside, and better yet, allowed on the big red fire trucks we had chased for the past few years. I was glad for him. I was very impressed. He knew what he wanted and apparently when after it until he got it.

I was walking out of my Junior High School one spring day and was greeted with the sounds of constant sirens from the distance. They seem to call my name, over and over. Suddenly, I noticed over the nearby tree tops, a thick rising column of dark smoke. I knew I would probably get in trouble for not going right home, but this had me fascinated. I pushed on through the wooded area, staring into the sky to make sure I was still heading the right way. I chased that smoke, like Dorothy and the Tin man pursued the Emerald City, for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, I emerged from the trees on the main road through town, and saw all the commotion. The restaurant in the center of town was on fire, and fire trucks from all over were converging upon the scene.

I took a position across the street where I could get a good view of the flames billowing out the front window, and the firefighters ducking in through the smoke. Hoses were quickly strewn across the roadway, water was pouring from the couplings as they made their way from the nearby hydrant to the pumpers in the parking lot. What a scene to take in all at once. It seemed too short, but time ticked away as I eventually circled the fire scene to make sure I didn’t miss anything. I finally gave in as the dark smoke became lighter and lighter, and I pulled my book bag up over my shoulder as I turned away from the action, and began my walk home.

That fire scene had an extreme effect on me apparently. I thought about what I watched for quite some time. I played it back over and over in my mind, the flames, the thick billowing smoke, the brave men and women who battled the flames with heavy hoses in hand, the fire trucks pumping water at high speed, while others screamed toward the scene to help out. If there would be a specific time and place where I caught the fire service bug, I believe it was at this fire.

The next few years for me were primarily spent trying to pass high school. I wasn’t a “bad kid” or anything, just had some trouble with the homework, the tests, the MATH! I loved writing and art, and did very well in those classes. I found it necessary to attend summer school in not only 9th grade, but 11th grade as well. Both times, it was for failing math class. Numbers and I never got along. I found it pretty entertaining that I had to go to summer school for math, but had to read articles in Reader’s Digest and write about them to pass summer school. How this helped my weak areas in mathematics was beyond me. But of course I passed since that was my best subject! I never asked, but maybe I was just in the wrong class.

During my senior year, I buckled down as they say. I knew I could not fail and go to summer school this year. I had to graduate and walk in my blue cap and gown with the rest of my class. And in June of 1981, that’s exactly what I did. I couldn’t believe it myself, but my name was called with the rest of the class as we rose and paraded across the large stage in front of the audience of classmates and proud parents. Of course we were ceremoniously handed a scroll of blank paper at first, but when I first got to open my real diploma, I swore I would hold on to it forever. It was such a challenge for me to get it finally, that I was intent to never let it go.

I had plans to go to college and get a degree in Drafting Technology. I had always liked art and drawing, and actually aced Engineering Drawing class. I knew this was the way for me to go. I continued to think this through the first semester of community college, but soon realized, I would not be able to do this without MATH!

While walking through the parking lot after classes, I noticed a guy I recognized from high school. Bill Grieco was a guy I would see in the hallways, but never once uttered a word to him. I remember seeing him in the cafeteria, walking home from school and even maybe in my homeroom. However, I never knew his name, never once acknowledged his presence, and he reciprocated the awkwardness to me as well.

Bill was on the football team, had stocky football player build, short black bushy hair and gold rimmed glasses. I thought I had his description down until one day in the parking lot I noticed something different about him. He was missing the fingers of his left hand. The hand was only a thumb, and a few small stubs where his fingers were supposed to be. I wondered what kind of accident he had to cause this, and never really thought about it being a birth defect. I then thought about him being able to play football, and was impressed.

The thoughts about Bill were fleeting. I didn’t run into him for another few weeks. However, one day, as I was walking into the bathroom, we ran into each other, literally.

With surprised looks on our faces, I stepped back and greeted this familiar face,
“Hey, didn’t you go to Sun Valley High School?”

A quiet enough kid that we never spoke in high school, and enough that my words shocked him during this sudden meeting, he stepped back to look at me confusingly.

“Yeah I did, did you?”

“Yeah, I saw you out here the other day and thought I recognized you from there.”

This was the initial conversation which would be responsible for most of what happened throughout the rest of my life.

Carpooling with Bill to college every day was a bit awkward at first, but eventually became natural. At first, we weren’t sure what to say. We had gone to the same high school “together” for the pat three years, yet this was the first time we actually said anything to each other. Several weeks passed before Bill asked what I was doing after school one day.

“Want to stop by the firehouse with me?” Bill asked, unaware of the interest I had already held in the fire department.

Little did Bill know what he had just done to me with the one innocent question. This was the beginning of what would be years of emotional and physical turmoil. Yet it would also mark the beginning of years and years of personal accomplishments I never thought would ever be possible for someone born with the severest form of Spina Bifida.

Well, it didn’t take long for me to answer, and within hours, we were on our way to the Lenni Heights Fire Company. This firehouse was located in a town just north of the town where I grew up. This experience would be very new to me. This wasn’t the firehouse I knew, it wasn’t the fire trucks or the same firefighters I had been watching as I grew up at home. But their admirable job was the same.

That day, from the time I left Bill in the parking lot, until the time I met Bill back at his car, well, is just a blur. My mind was steadily wandering to this new firehouse I would be going to after classes, and found myself on numerous occasions, being caught by the instructors looking out the window instead of at the chalkboard. It may have resembled my old days in high school and middle school, but at this point I just couldn’t help it. This was just a bad day for the teachers to attempt to teach me anything.

As my last class adjourned, my feet couldn’t get me up and out fast enough. I stuffed notes and a text book into my book bag as I walked down the hall, looking for the closest exit. I was to meet Bill back at his car as soon as classes were over, and like a young school kid running from elementary school on the last day of school, I shot out the lobby doors, and scurried up the stairs to the parking lot. I didn’t want to make it look like I was in a rush to go to the firehouse, but my body language did nothing to help me hide that.

My feet were clumsily stepping across the blacktop, my eyes anxiously scanned the lot looking for Bill, and a stupid grin felt like it was glued to my face. When I finally approached the car, with Bill sitting in the driver seat, I took a deep sigh, and tried to slow everything down, acting like it was just another post class meeting between us, before we drove home bitching about our teachers of the day. I tried to begin a conversation about the song on the radio, but it soon turned to how long Bill had been a member, who else from high school was a member, and soon the calls he had been on while a member there.

The drive to the firehouse was long geographically, but combined with my anxiety level, the trip seemed like it was taking forever. We eventually pulled into a parking lot which was situated on a hill. In front of us was a small two bay garage, two wooden overhead doors with a peaked roof. The building seemed to have been built when horses pulled the apparatus. However, to the left of us was the firehouse I had been waiting for.

The brick building had two large green bay doors across the front, enough to hide four fire truck bays behind them. Above the doors “Lenni Heights Fire and Rescue” was written in red letters. Bill led the way toward a green door with a small red plaque which read “Members Only.” My heart began racing a bit as I walked through this door, which to me seemed like a back stage entrance reserved for VIP’s.

Right away the odor struck me. It was the old familiar smell of the firehouse. Soot mixed with clean in some odd way. Whatever the mixture, it was a smell which would bring back memories of the old firehouse we used to ride to on our bikes. Across the front of the bays I saw four fire trucks of different sizes. A red and white step van was parked closest to me, while two similar looking red pumpers and then a large four wheeled drive vehicle sat at the farthest bay door. The apparatus to me looked like four warriors hiding behind the bay doors, waiting for the sign to be let out and attack whatever confronted them on the outside. Again, I could feel my heart beat through my chest and my breath quickened a bit with the building excitement.

Bill began the tour of his firehouse with a quick glance into a small closet like room with a window toward the fire apparatus. A large framed wall map hung on the opposite side and there was no door. I could hear those voices I heard on my scanner at home coming from inside this small alcove.

“That’s our radio room,” Bill said passing by the opening. I stopped briefly and glanced inside. Sitting on the white counter under the picture window sat two radios on top of one another. Clipboards hung from screws on the paneled wall next to them. Under the counter several large binders were nestled on to a crowded shelf. It appeared to me that even though this was probably the smallest room in the building, it must see a lot of action during an emergency.

“This is probably what you’re more interested in,” his voice echoed from behind a red and white fire truck. I quickly caught up to him as he continued his guided tour. “This is the rescue truck, one of the busiest in the county.”

I peered into the rear door of the truck, leading to an interior adorned with equipment on both sides. I could recognize the yellow air packs and masks hanging on one side, while other equipment sat on shelves on the opposite side. Bill motioned to get in and I took the invitation to climb up into the apparatus. Inside I could just imagine the guys who usually ride inside as they respond to emergencies of all kinds. I certainly felt like a little kid waiting in line for his first fire truck ride. I was actually inside one of those trucks I often saw racing past with the sirens wailing and the lights flashing.

Bill stepped back down out of the truck on a mission, “you’ve heard of the Jaws of Life before?” Heard of them? Hell, I’ve dreamed of them!

“Yeah I think so, for car accidents?” I was great at holding back the enthusiasm.

“Yeah we use these all the time,” Bill said pulling open a side compartment.

My eyes were large trying to take it all in. I didn’t want to miss anything and I was trying so hard to hear what the dispatcher was saying in the next room, while listening and following Bill from one truck to another.

Behind the resting apparatus were lines of coats and helmets and boots, not so neatly hanging on racks along the back and side wall. Some gear was dirty, some never worn clean. Black marks on the helmets, melted stickers and dirtied boots told a story of past firefighting battles this equipment had seen before I arrived. I noticed the different colored helmets hanging above the coats.

“These white ones are the fire chief’s and officers,” Bill explained walking through the aisle of fire gear like he was perusing the rack at Sears. “The yellow ones are firefighters.”

The more Bill guided me through this world, the more convinced I became that this is what I wanted to get involved in, somehow.

After a full tour of the apparatus, as if was about to be tested on them, Bill led the way through the metal door with into another room.

“This is where we hang out, crew room, game room, whatever.”

My eyes again were filled with new exciting visuals. The TV was on in the corner, framed by piles of VCR tapes. Trophies sat and plaques hung on book cases across the opposite wall. Three couches encircled the tile floor, each one with a person on it.

“Everyone, this is Pat, Pat this is everyone…” a low murmur groaned from each of the guys already engrossed in what was on TV. I nodded and smiled, “How ya doin?”

Bill continued through the TV room and through an arch way leading to a larger room.

“This is the game room, meeting room and bunk room is over there.” As Bill spoke, my eyes scanned across a long cinderblock wall covered with photographs of past incidents and emergencies. At one end of the room two guys were shooting pool. At the opposite end two guys were sitting at a rectangular table under a floor to ceiling bulletin board covered with papers of different sizes and colors.

Again, Bill tried to introduce me to these guys, but again, they seemed disinterested in any visitors at the moment.

Bill and I stayed at the firehouse for a short period of time, and unfortunately, no calls came in during our stay. Although this visit ended too quickly for me, little did I know, it would become an almost daily occurrence over the next few weeks. By January of 1982, I had made a number of friends at the firehouse, and these friends were quite special to me. They were actual firefighters.

Almost every day of school ended with a drive to the firehouse. I never complained, I had no where better to go. Only occasionally would I get to see a fire truck respond to a call, but mostly, I would hang out playing pool with the firefighters or just watching TV. Almost every time we stopped inside the apparatus bays, we would be joined by another firefighter who would then launch into a “war story” of what the last big fire looked and felt like. I quickly found out that these stories never wore out, and very few firefighters forget the “big ones.” I didn’t know it then, but I would eventually become that guy who had the war stories and the battle scars on my gear to show the new guy. But for now, I would let them all talk, as I learned about the fire service I so strongly admired.

This class-followed-by-firehouse routine continued for weeks. Finally, while perched on the back step of one of the pumpers, a new acquaintance of mine dropped the question.

“Pat, you are here so much anyway, why don’t you join?” the firefighter asked curiously. I looked at him first to see if he was serious. “I can get you the application right now if ya want…”

My eyebrows shot up across my forehead. I couldn’t believe what he was asking me. I shook my head with a smile trying to just blow it off, but never would there be a question asked of me which would make such a difference in my entire life.

The thoughts of him asking me to become a firefighter with him, not only stunned me, but I was actually surprised he would seriously consider me for the position. My birth defect was not exactly hidden from the public eye. I walked with a significant limp which many times would not only attract stares from those around me, but questions would be asked like,

“What’s wrong with your hip?” “What’s wrong with your legs?” What’s wrong with your back?” What’s wrong with your feet?” And my favorite of all time,
“Do you have Polio?”

With all this said, he would have at least seen the impairment, whatever he thought it was, and he would have already spoken to Bill about it, I only assumed. It sometimes appeared to me that I thought about my handicap more than anyone else, or so I was told as I got older by many friends and family members. But still the fact remains, I was asked to join the ranks of those who risk life and limb to save other’s lives and property. What my parents would say I wasn’t too sure, but I did know that somehow, someway, this was going to happen for me.

I don’t recall how I worked up to it, but the day I asked, or announced, I was joining a fire company, you could have wrung out my shirt from the sweat. I was never so nervous, because I was never really asking to go out on my own to do something this controversial, or at least considered controversial by my mother.

I sat on one side of the living room just inside the front door, perched on a small stool next to the television. My elbows rested upon my knees as I stared into the rug, trying to come up with the right words. My mother sat on one end of the couch carefully aiming her sewing needle in and out of a pair of jeans I had previously ripped. My father was paging through the newspaper in his chair next to the couch.

“I am going to join a fire company.” I announced somehow. My father looked up from his newspaper, my mother looked up from her sewing. There wasn’t a lot of discussion, but there was a lot of rules. My father laid them down as if chairing a committee meeting.

“You can join, but I don’t want you hanging there all day and night,” he paused briefly, “no using my car going to calls, racing through the streets, school must be going well before you consider going to any firehouse…”

I immediately thought to myself, “He wasn’t saying no.”

The next day after class, during our typical firehouse visit, I asked for a Membership Application. I was finally doing it. With the triumphant feelings of this exciting occasion in my life, came sporadic comments or opinions from those holding no faith in my abilities or determination.

One such discouraging person was my brother’s brother in-law, a former deputy fire chief from a neighboring company. He explained to my brother that I was “too much of an insurance risk” for the fire company to accept me. Well, this was not only discouraging to me, not knowing the amount of truth to his statement, but it also ignited an anger inside. I wondered how someone could make such a statement without even knowing exactly what my impairments were? How does this person know what I can and can not do?

NEXT: Firefighter - Day One