I couldn’t sleep the night before, and couldn’t concentrate the entire day through my classes. This would be the night the members of the fire company would vote on whether I could be a firefighter with them or not.
It was just after 9:00pm when the phone rang. Bill was on the other end to break the news to me. And it was good news. I wanted to run into the street and scream with pots and pans like the Fourth of July, but instead, I went to my room and secretly celebrated, staring into my mirror and listening to my scanner. I didn’t want my parents to see me out of control over the fire company. I remembered the rules, school comes first.
School was never my forte. I was only an average high school student at best, and my college grades weren’t anything to write home about. This concerned me, but not enough to distract me from the news, that I had just become a “volunteer firefighter.”
For the second night in a row, I didn’t sleep well. This time it wasn’t nervousness, it was the simple thought of going to the firehouse tomorrow as a member of the fire company. I would have to get my own fire coat, fire helmet and fire boots.
Again, more concerns.
My thoughts turned to my odd sized feet. My left foot was developed as a club foot, while my right one was deformed as a result of the over exertion making up for the left one. I wondered how this was going to work out with fire boots. What were the chances that the fire company had two different sizes I could wear?
I finally drifted into slumber with both concern and excitement whirling inside my head. Needless to say, it was a rough night.
Once again, school the next day drifted by in a frenzy of interrupted thoughts, voices and lights until the last class was over. Finally, I was paying attention to what I was doing, which was heading to the parking lot, and riding to my firehouse for the first time.
As Bill and I approached the station, he muttered something about who might be there and who I would have to see about getting my fire gear. My eyes couldn’t grow any wider as we came to a stop in the firehouse lot. The big bay doors seemed a little brighter today, and I moved a little quicker as we walked toward the firehouse door. My heart beat faster as Bill pulled his key out…
“Will I get one of those keys today?” I asked anxiously. Bill responded with an inaudible sound, which to me signified I was asking too many questions, too soon.
This, I would learn, is something new kids tend to do as they are oriented into the new organization. It would be something I was very patient with, remembering my early days with Bill.
Inside for the first time as a member, the smell of the apparatus and fire gear had a different stronger odor to me, and one I would fall in love with. Bill checked in at the radio room to see if we had missed any calls, hung the clipboard up and motioned for me to follow him to the rear of the apparatus. Bill peeked into the crew room and noticed the Captain sitting there watching television. After a quick discussion, the two came back out to me, scanning the apparatus parked in the bays.
Ed, the Fire Captain, was a man in his early 30’s, stood quite tall and was built a bit wide. As he stepped through the doorway toward me, his curly hair brushed across the top of the door frame.
“So I guess we have to get ya some gear huh?” his booming voice echoed off the block walls of the engine bays.
“Yeah I think so…” I responded following him toward rows of gear hanging on racks behind the trucks.
“What size are you?” he yelled back as he scanned the inventory.
“I’m bout 5-8”!” I snapped back anxiously.
The Captain stopped and turned toward me with a smile.
“I meant boot size, coat size…”
The blood was still rushing to my face as I corrected myself and provided the right numbers.
Bill appeared from behind one of the rows and handed me a pair of rubber hip boots, folded down, with yellow on the toes.
“Try these…” he said abruptly as he walked away still searching through hanging coats and boots.
My first impression of the fire boots were that they were a lot heavier than I had expected. I looked around for a place to sit and pull the boots on and saw nothing but the back step of the nearby pumper. My lack of balance would make it quite difficult for me to stand and pull my boots on, as I had seen the firefighters do so many times before.
Like a kid at a carnival, I sat down on the back step, but took in all the sights along the way. I stared and felt the diamond plated step, eyed up the ladder hanging alongside, and the hose bed above.
“Bill this is a little bit too big,” I said as I walked back to my gear rack with one boot on. Again, a unique way about me was to try only the right boot or shoe on since my left foot was smaller. If it fit the right foot, I was good to go. The left one would have to hang on and float around a bit inside a larger shoe. It was usually too expensive to purchase two pairs to fit both feet, so I became used to the extra room on the left.
“Here this should do it then,” again Bill appeared with another pair in hand.
Suddenly, all hell broke loose inside the firehouse. In the background of my gear fitting, dispatch tones broke through the silent overhead speakers. Pagers on Bill and Ed’s sides suddenly erupted into beeps and the two ran into the rows of gear without saying anything. The only voice I heard at that moment was coming from the speakers mounted in the corners of the engine bay.
“Station 69, 54, 50…22 North Pennell Road, Middletown Township, a chimney…”
The only thing I could think of was…”HOLY SHIT!”
“Grab the rest of that gear hanging right there!” Bill yelled back to me as he threw his own gear on. I hobbled over to the other boot lying behind the pumper, pulled it on and reached for the big black coat, and yellow helmet, hanging at the end of the rack. “Get on back here, let’s go!”
Bill again barked instructions to me as I was trying to match the clasps on the heavy coat, I looked to him for a little help, but he was gone, disappeared into the jump seats in the front of the truck. The engine roared to life as Ed started it from the driver’s seat. The red lights filled the room with a glow I wasn’t used to.
Other volunteers began running into the firehouse, quickly donning their gear and jumping into position on the truck. I stepped up on to the diamond plate I was just using as a seat, grabbed tightly on to the hand rail, and took a deep breath. I suddenly noticed another firefighter had joined me on the rear step.
“You guys ready!” Bill’s voice could be heard screaming back to us over the loud engine. “Yeah let’s go!” the man next to me responded. A second later, the engine roared and the truck pulled out of the station. I was now responding to my first fire call, as a volunteer firefighter.
With the sound of the engine, the siren and wind in our faces, the firefighter next to me tapped me on the arm…
“I’m John! You just join?” I just nodded in response.
“Me too, this is my first call!” I couldn’t believe that the two firefighters on the back step had never been to a fire call before. What a coincidence! Then I thought, how scary!
“All I know is that if they yell to drop the line, we pull this off,” I said patting the large three inch supply line packed in front of our faces. As the truck roared up the hill, the siren began blaring. Over the roof of the cab I could see the traffic light ahead, and it was red! The adrenaline pumped through my body so fast I could feel my heart pounding.
I looked back behind us and watched the cars stopped along the side of the road that had pulled over for us. As we pulled through the intersection I noticed a fire policeman standing in the road blocking traffic for us. The feeling of just how important we were at this moment washed over me. People all around us were stopping and letting us go, and for the first time in my life, I was part of this elite group.
“Bump!” John yelled over the siren to me. I gripped tighter and noticed he was bending his knees, so I did. The bump came and went smoothly. “If you ride with your legs flexed a little you just go with the bumps!” This was a tip I would repeat to new members in the future about a thousand times.
I looked ahead of the truck and saw flashing lights from another truck ahead of us. Soon the sirens subsided and we pulled up in front of a small two story brick house, my eyes poured over it looking for signs of smoke or fire or really anything at all.
The only sign of anything wrong was the two fire trucks parked outside of it, bathing it in red from their flashing lights. Ed called for us to follow him to the rear yard. Dragging my large boots across the blacktopped driveway reminded me of where I was when the call came in.
“Yeah these aren’t going to work…” I said to the tall Captain in front of me. He looked back over his shoulder and down at me almost like “who are you speaking to me during a fire call…”
I never mentioned it again, and the fire call turned out to be nothing for us to handle. Soon we were back on the truck returning to the firehouse, and finishing my fire gear fitting.
Other than getting my gear and hung up next to all the other firefighters' gear, the rest of the day was uneventful, and eventually, Bill did make me leave the firehouse.
Today I look back on that day and can remember it like it was yesterday. I still feel the fabric of the cotton jacket hose, the rust on the diamond plated step under my oversized boots, and the black top whizzing by below that.
Oh how times have changed...
No comments:
Post a Comment