So the other day I was listening to my favorite radio talk show host, Dori Monson. He read a news story where an “adult” was injured slightly while playing “Lighter Fluid Tag”. His clothes had caught fire and it seems he was burned a bit.
Duh… Apparently the game is played by squirting some lighter fluid on your own clothes. The fluid is lit by someone else while you try to put the fire out. You are “IT” until you put it out and can then light someone else on fire and the whole process starts over.
Well this led to a radio discussion of how stupid these guys were but it didn’t take long for the conversation to change to all the stupid things the rest of us had done, including some surprisingly near death experiences. Turns out these morons weren’t that different at all.
So at dinner that night Ali asks me to tell the story of “Dodge Darts”. Apparently mom had put her up to it. Well I told it and of course then realized it needs to be put on my blog of stories.
So here goes nothing…..
This story begins in the 60s when I was about 7 or 8 years old. My family was headed over to Bill and Marilyn Porter’s house for dinner one night. David and I were dressed and ready to go while the rest of the family was pulling it together. It was cool fall evening so we were wearing sweaters with stylish baggy sleeves.
We headed outside and before we know it we found a dart with a sharp metal tip. We tossed it around for a bit and then we had the bright idea to begin a game of “Dodge Darts”. We had never played before and rules were not established. That didn’t matter as each of us soon realized the dart is thrown at you and it was your job to avoid it.
Because David was 10 years old, was much more skilled, and carried an ornery streak, he was much better at this than I was. Before we both knew it he had landed a solid strike in my inner forearm of my left arm. He looked at me, I looked at him and neither of us had the nerve to pull it out. At this exact moment my parents came out the back door with the announcement. “in the car, let’s go”. I acted quickly. Knowing my dad would be furious at our stupidity I did what any smart kid had would do. I pulled my rolled up sweater sleeve back down to my wrist and hid the dart under it. “That’ll fix it”, I thought. “We’ll just deal with this later”.
Well the drive to the Porters was at least 15 minutes to get from our house and onto the base. We had a good dinner but I really wasn’t in the mood for much food. The dinner had been served and all the kids were in the backyard tossing balls, climbing trees, etc. I, for some reason, felt more like sitting inside with the adults and remaining still. It had probably been about an hour and a half since the initial impact and I was turning green.
My dad came over and said to me, “Son, why are you sitting in here with us old folks, why don’t you go out and play with the others?” By this time I was about in tears from the pain in my arm. I tried but couldn’t utter a word. I simply reached down and pulled the sleeve of my sweater up to my elbow exposing the dart still stuck in my left arm.
Well I don’t remember exactly what happened after that. I am pretty sure my dad pulled it out….hold on…yeah it’s gone. I don’t recall what kind of trouble I got into for that stunt but if history repeats itself I would guess that I went to bed as soon as we got home and David was given seconds on dessert.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
"a helluva job”
It is my experience that firemen are really just boys who have grown up enough to play with fire and do it legally. During training sessions we built our own fires, the bigger the better, and practiced putting them out. The day we were given an abandoned house “to burn”, was like winning the lottery. It was what we enjoyed doing.
That being said, there is nothing worse for a fireman, especially a volunteer, than having days or even weeks go by without a fire call. I know that this sounds weird, but it gets depressing. Well this story begins at the end of a 3-week dry spell for fires in Bishop California.
Our pagers went off at about 4:00 in the afternoon. “Attention Bishop Volunteers, Attention Bishop Volunteers, we have a report of a brush fire in Round Valley near Horton Creek Campground, Please respond.” Immediately my heart pounded. Was it excitement, was it joy, or a combination? Who cares!!
I responded to Station 1 and knew that we were to take the large brush trucks. I jumped into Engine 14 and looked to the driver’s seat to see Hugh Henderson. Hugh had joined the fire department a few years after I had, but was very experienced and I had no concerns about responding with him as the Engineer. I preferred to be “just” the firefighter on this rig anyway because the action was better. I would get to stand on the front deck and run the permanently mounted nozzle as Hugh slowly inched the former military AWD vehicle through the fire scene.
As we approached the scene, which was about 10 miles from the firehouse we could see a large column of black smoke. We got so excited that we looked at each other and then shared an enthusiastic high five amidst our whooping and hollering. We knew that there was going to be lots of action and we would tackle a good portion of it.
As we pulled onto the scene we could see that nearly 60 acres were already blackened, smoldering or on fire. The area was completely fenced with a barbed wire and 6x6 post fencing. We came to a stop and Phil Moxley, the fire chief, stepped up onto the side running board. He looked at us and he said, “There is a CDF (California Dept. of Forestry) truck that has gotten themselves in a bit of a pickle. They went too far into the fire scene and the engine on their truck has died. They can’t get it restarted and the crew of 4 is in danger. Go in and get ‘em out.” Knowing there was no time to find a gate to enter, he looked at the fence then back at Hugh and said, "take it out".
Hugh put the 6 wheel drive vehicle in low gear and we proceeded to simply drive over the fence line, knocking down fence post and wire as if it were made of balsam wood.
We went directly to the stranded crew, attached a chain to the front of their vehicle and with little or no effort we were able to pull them about 200 yards into the burn area** and to safety. Here the CDF mechanics would be able to restart the engine without any concerns of safety.
(note: ** When you are on a brush fire and you are in danger of being overrun by a fire that may have turned back, the safest place to be is “in the burn”. It’s hard for a fire to come back through and burn an area that has been burned previously. It might be smoky, but it is safe.)
Once this crew was safe we could put our efforts into fire suppression. By this time Engine 9 had also arrived and between the 2 of us and one small dozer from the US Forest Service, we knocked that fire down in a few hours. Our tactic was to attack each flank with a different rig and try to pinch it at the point. This took careful work as the fire could always flare back up behind you and surprise you. Once we and Engine 9 met at the point we had pretty much surrounded the entire fire with only a few small spot fires within. This allowed the local hand crews, staffed by prisoners, to complete the mop up work.
The engine crew we had saved still had not been able to get their rig running so we really handled the fire all by ourselves, even though it was within the jurisdiction of the CDF. And to top it off we managed to keep it from running up the face of Mt. Tom, which would have been extremely disastrous as the fire entered the Inyo National Forest.
As if the fire fighting that day hadn’t been enough, the crowning moment was when the Chief for the CDF station came on the radio and said for all of humanity to hear, “you Bishop boys did a helluva a job out there today.”
That being said, there is nothing worse for a fireman, especially a volunteer, than having days or even weeks go by without a fire call. I know that this sounds weird, but it gets depressing. Well this story begins at the end of a 3-week dry spell for fires in Bishop California.
Our pagers went off at about 4:00 in the afternoon. “Attention Bishop Volunteers, Attention Bishop Volunteers, we have a report of a brush fire in Round Valley near Horton Creek Campground, Please respond.” Immediately my heart pounded. Was it excitement, was it joy, or a combination? Who cares!!
I responded to Station 1 and knew that we were to take the large brush trucks. I jumped into Engine 14 and looked to the driver’s seat to see Hugh Henderson. Hugh had joined the fire department a few years after I had, but was very experienced and I had no concerns about responding with him as the Engineer. I preferred to be “just” the firefighter on this rig anyway because the action was better. I would get to stand on the front deck and run the permanently mounted nozzle as Hugh slowly inched the former military AWD vehicle through the fire scene.
As we approached the scene, which was about 10 miles from the firehouse we could see a large column of black smoke. We got so excited that we looked at each other and then shared an enthusiastic high five amidst our whooping and hollering. We knew that there was going to be lots of action and we would tackle a good portion of it.
As we pulled onto the scene we could see that nearly 60 acres were already blackened, smoldering or on fire. The area was completely fenced with a barbed wire and 6x6 post fencing. We came to a stop and Phil Moxley, the fire chief, stepped up onto the side running board. He looked at us and he said, “There is a CDF (California Dept. of Forestry) truck that has gotten themselves in a bit of a pickle. They went too far into the fire scene and the engine on their truck has died. They can’t get it restarted and the crew of 4 is in danger. Go in and get ‘em out.” Knowing there was no time to find a gate to enter, he looked at the fence then back at Hugh and said, "take it out".
Hugh put the 6 wheel drive vehicle in low gear and we proceeded to simply drive over the fence line, knocking down fence post and wire as if it were made of balsam wood.
We went directly to the stranded crew, attached a chain to the front of their vehicle and with little or no effort we were able to pull them about 200 yards into the burn area** and to safety. Here the CDF mechanics would be able to restart the engine without any concerns of safety.
(note: ** When you are on a brush fire and you are in danger of being overrun by a fire that may have turned back, the safest place to be is “in the burn”. It’s hard for a fire to come back through and burn an area that has been burned previously. It might be smoky, but it is safe.)
Once this crew was safe we could put our efforts into fire suppression. By this time Engine 9 had also arrived and between the 2 of us and one small dozer from the US Forest Service, we knocked that fire down in a few hours. Our tactic was to attack each flank with a different rig and try to pinch it at the point. This took careful work as the fire could always flare back up behind you and surprise you. Once we and Engine 9 met at the point we had pretty much surrounded the entire fire with only a few small spot fires within. This allowed the local hand crews, staffed by prisoners, to complete the mop up work.
The engine crew we had saved still had not been able to get their rig running so we really handled the fire all by ourselves, even though it was within the jurisdiction of the CDF. And to top it off we managed to keep it from running up the face of Mt. Tom, which would have been extremely disastrous as the fire entered the Inyo National Forest.
As if the fire fighting that day hadn’t been enough, the crowning moment was when the Chief for the CDF station came on the radio and said for all of humanity to hear, “you Bishop boys did a helluva a job out there today.”
Monday, May 4, 2009
Where in the world is Alessandra from?
For years we have been astounded at the individuals that will ask Alessandra what race she is. She has had school chums ask her if she was part black, part Mexican, full Mexican or Asian. I mean to tell you this has happened probably 40 or more times over the past 8 years or so. It’s uncanny.
What is even stranger is that people will ask her are you “fill-in-the-blank”? And the most common fill in the blank is “Guatemalan”. I once was talking with a ward member who had served a 2-year mission in Guatemala and I asked him his opinion about this. His answer was, “you know I can see it. Put her in native dress and she definitely would pass as a Guatemalan native”. Crazy!!
Anyway the reason I bring this up, the other day Ali was cleaning her room and came a cross a notebook where she had written down a few of these exchanges with strangers and/or school mates. Here are a few good ones.
1. The three of us are at Taco Bell in Yakima. Ali is holding our table while Melodie and I order the food. Her hair is braided very tightly for a week of Young Women’s Camp. A 60ish black woman walks by and stops. She says, “Who braided your hair?” Ali replies with “My mom”. The woman says back, “Oh is she black?”
2. Troy, a black student in the high school band, asks Ali to produce a picture of her mom. He wants to figure out why she turned out so “not white”.
3. While on a trip to Washington DC after 8th grade a young lady, who has one white parent and one black parent confesses that she thought Ali was always of the same parentage.
4. During a band performance the Saxophone section queries Ali.
Saxes: Are you black?
Ali: No I’m not.
Saxes: Asian?
Ali: No.
Saxes: You mean you’re white?
Ali: Yes.
Saxes: You sure you’re not Puerto Rican?
All this racial background and there’s no college money. Where is the “Guatemalan/Part Black/Asian/Maybe Puerto Rican College Fund” when you need it? It’s just not right.
What is even stranger is that people will ask her are you “fill-in-the-blank”? And the most common fill in the blank is “Guatemalan”. I once was talking with a ward member who had served a 2-year mission in Guatemala and I asked him his opinion about this. His answer was, “you know I can see it. Put her in native dress and she definitely would pass as a Guatemalan native”. Crazy!!
Anyway the reason I bring this up, the other day Ali was cleaning her room and came a cross a notebook where she had written down a few of these exchanges with strangers and/or school mates. Here are a few good ones.
1. The three of us are at Taco Bell in Yakima. Ali is holding our table while Melodie and I order the food. Her hair is braided very tightly for a week of Young Women’s Camp. A 60ish black woman walks by and stops. She says, “Who braided your hair?” Ali replies with “My mom”. The woman says back, “Oh is she black?”
2. Troy, a black student in the high school band, asks Ali to produce a picture of her mom. He wants to figure out why she turned out so “not white”.
3. While on a trip to Washington DC after 8th grade a young lady, who has one white parent and one black parent confesses that she thought Ali was always of the same parentage.
4. During a band performance the Saxophone section queries Ali.
Saxes: Are you black?
Ali: No I’m not.
Saxes: Asian?
Ali: No.
Saxes: You mean you’re white?
Ali: Yes.
Saxes: You sure you’re not Puerto Rican?
All this racial background and there’s no college money. Where is the “Guatemalan/Part Black/Asian/Maybe Puerto Rican College Fund” when you need it? It’s just not right.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)