Housekeeping

After coffee and oatmeal, the usual order of the morning is house chores. As junior man on my shift, I take the initiative, starting in the kitchen. I'll grab the garbage from the previous day and make my rounds through the station. In the bathrooms, I'll tidy up, wipe the mirror if needed, and hit the toilet with Comet and a toidy brush. By the time I'm finished, the kitchen table is vacant, and someone's pushing a dust broom or mopping. If a call comes in for us, I can expect to return to a clean station, the rest of the crews finishing in our absence.

On Saturdays, though, in department t-shirts, we clean the apparatus bay, moving all the rigs out onto the apron for extended rig and equipment checks by the drivers. The engines are normally parked over large galvanized drip pans, and these are dragged outside to be cleaned, any errant oil spots wiped up. Someone grabs a hose and sprays down the concrete floor. Without any direction, two or three firefighters work together to clear the floor with giant squeegees on broomsticks. In a staggered phalanx, the water is pushed outside and into waiting drains. I lean down, pressing the rubber into the floor, pushing a wave, across the concrete, in front of the tool. I am reminded of curling and wonder if the sport was developed from some similar industrial cleaning process - maybe sweeping the ice at a hockey game? The doors are left open, and, if the humidity is low, the remaining moisture evaporates quickly in the cross breeze. When we bunk up for a fire alarm, we doff our pants and shoes in the bay. With my hand, I will sweep the bottom of my socks for dirt before pushing them into my bunker boots, but they are always clean.

We will pick up garbage, pluck weeds, and if the grass is getting long, we mow. Today, Mike C. and I consulted over the lawn, assessing the length and the noting the tire tracks persisting from last week. We agreed that it looked fine, but in a few weeks the leaves will start to drop from the maples and we'll need to mow, if only to bag the fallen leaves.

By 1030 the chores are done, and the only official duty remaining is to run calls.

Great Balls O'...

I'm going to step outside the convention of the blog and write for a moment about what I write. It's cheap electronic navel-gazing, but I pray you will suffer these words, like an informal aside from the actor on the screen, to you the audience. It's called an exterior monologue, and you might remember Matthew Broderick in Ferris Bueller's Day Off among others. I realized tonight, that in this forum, I profess to write about the business of firefighting, but I really haven't written much about fires. True, most of what we do isn't firefighting, but it does occur. For instance, yesterday morning...

The tones went off again at 0200 "Fire Commercial, lumber operation, multiple reports. Flames, Smoke in the sky, East of highway..." I wasn't really asleep yet, having already been up a couple times for nonsense since midnight. When Mike arrived at my bunk, knowing my pager was broken, I was alert enough to pop right out of bed and follow him down to the engine in a stomping rush. We bunked up and headed north through town to the address, expecting engine 42 and aid 42 to beat us easily, to be first on the scene. We crossed the bridge, looking for the flames and smoke on our right. Nothing. I was still waking up, but "multiple reports" meant I probably wouldn't be climbing back in the rack anytime soon.

"Where's engine 42?" I hadn't heard them respond to the dispatch.

"Engine 42 arrived, nothing showing, investigating." We pulled east off the highway, behind the Battalion Chief, a quarter mile out, waiting for instructions, scanning the sky for the telltale smoke.

"There it is." Behind us a column of black rose in the night sky. After a long S-shaped detour, we rolled up on a burning conveyor in the middle of a log yard, fully involved. I hopped out, grabbing my BA (air pack) and helmet, and pulled a preconnect off the back of the engine. I had two hundred feet to work with, but we were only fifty feet from the fire. I tried to dump a flake off the top, by the engine, but lost several in a pile. Screw it. I trotted toward the fire, flipping loops of hose off my shoulder as I went. I laid the nozzle on the ground and ran back to tidy up my hose, but Mike was already straightening out my mess at the engine, so I ran back and grabbed some hose, pulling it away from the nozzle so that it would pop into gentle bends when Mike, my driver, charged the hoseline with the water from the tank.

Moments later the hose in my hands bucked and stiffened with pressure. I heard it slither on the ground behind me as water inflated the fabric. I cracked the bail and the trapped air hissed out, spitting when the water reached the orifice. The entire steel framework was afire, and at the end dangled a burning length of rubber conveyor belt. Piles of fine bark mounded on the ground below the machinery, each capped with a mantle of flame. Captain CB joined me and pointed me to the area where the wood chips fell onto the conveyor used to load dumps trucks. I hit it with the water and nothing happened. As I move in, the hosestream turned white and foamed from the Firewater added to the tank.

To step back a few years, I still vividly remember my firefighting baptismal: three floors of apartment, the upper two ignited by flames lapping from a busted window, and propagated upward from the ground-floor unit. It had been the perfect day, uncharacteristically busy, with a wide variety of calls, with my son, A, riding with us on the engine, observing his dad's volunteer firefighting hobby. With only two engines in the small department, we lucked out and I found myself first-on, first-in, at four o'clock, on a summer afternoon. I pulled the hoseline from it's slot, just like the countless drills, and subsequently dumped it in a tangled pile at the door. My lieutenant, DD, grabbed a coupling and yanked the hose straight out from the door before I could arrange the pile into an ordered coil. Our door was at ground level on the A side, but between the basement and second floors. Smoke filled the stairs and hall, and the fire alarm droned. I gave the nozzle to BT, one of the fellow volunteers from my academy, and bent my mass to the task of dragging hose for her.

Two guys, best friends from grade school, and instructors in our volunteer academy, squeezed past us, to force open locked doors, and search apartments for residents that hadn't gotten out when the fire alarm went off. We groped our way up the stairs and the first apartment on our left was charged with smoke when we cracked the door. I couldn't see anything, and I repeatedly wiped my facemask, hoping that my visibility was messed up from smoke and condensation on the lexan. No joy, just too much smoke, all the way to the floor. I tractored the hose into the room and BT yelled that she saw fire. I took her word for it, I couldn't see a thing.

"Hit it," I yelled back. I leaned into her as she sprayed the room with the nozzle. The moist heat came down upon us through our bunks, the water converting to billowing steam. She killed the nozzle and we moved in, struggling to understand what we had done. A couch, charred and smoking, bumped her shins, and I into her. Beyond, trees peeked through the smoke, in the distance through the broken bay window. In hindsight, ventilation would have been helpful, and we should have utilized a fog pattern to blow mist and air out the open window, drawing fresh air through the open door behind us. The couch had ignited when flames lapped up the outside of the building, and the heat compromised the window. A sudden understanding of the situation dawned on us simultaneously.

"There's fire below us!" The danger of this scenario had been repeatedly drilled into our heads.

"Back out!" BT spun around and headed, through the smoke, for the exit, but we found ourselves stumbling into a bathroom. Shit! Our first fire, and we're lost in the building with fire below us. If the floor collapsed, we might be killed. A number of options filled my head: open a window and yell for help, radio for assistance (Shit. Shit! I didn't grab a radio. BT must have one...), activate my PASS device (Personal Alert Safety System), and wait for the shrill alarm to summon help... The threat of certain humiliation quickly ruled out those strategies.

"Stay here, I'll follow the hose to the door and pull you out." I hand-over-handed along the hoseline to the exit. The door was only a dozen feet away, but not where I remembered it. I turned around and drew BT to me. In a second she was out and our lieutenant arrived in his mask to lead us downstairs to the fire floor. We mopped up the burned out unit, hitting hot spots. Another crew had extinguished it from outside, through the failed picture window.

We put the fire out and then spent hours overhauling the scene, pulling plaster, taking the fire room down to the studs. As first-in engine, we waited for the county inspector to arrive and got to watch him work, quite a privilege I'm told. Meanwhile, my son watched from the periphery, waiting in the engine, wearing the mandatory observer's safety vest. I had hoped he would see the heroism in the job, but he came away bored by the experience. He hasn't expressed much interest since.

It's several years later, I am hosing down a steel conveyor belt frame in the night, nozzle gated back both to conserve water and to create the necessary cascade to wash the smoldering bark from the crossmembers above me. A thousand tiny embers flutter skyward when disturbed by the water. It's three in the morning, and this small drama is all mine, but our engine only carries 500 gallons, and there's no hydrant in the area. Twice Mike has refilled his tank from other engines, working with their crews to keep my nozzle flowing. The scene lights on the engine illuminate the area, and my silhouette is thrown onto the side of the de-barker. I look pretty good in profile, I love this job. I'll sleep tomorrow.

The Crying Game

To become a firefighter, I obtained my EMT certification, attended a fire academy, read and studied, worked for a private ambulance company, gave my weekends and nights as a volunteer. I took every opportunity to test for positions in the fire service, hoping, all the while, to be hired by the very department that ultimately gave me my job. After being hired, 10 weeks at the state fire academy, and almost as much time spent studying and drilling on the hated day shift, I received an assignment "in company", actually getting to work on a fire engine. After the usual: "What did you do before?", "Where are you from?", "How old are you?", came the question, "Do you know how to cook?"

"Actually... ", I measured my words, hoping for both humble and competent, " I do."

A long time ago, during high school and college, I worked in a Mexican restaurant. It was an ideal job for this young man. I started out washing dishes, but expressed an interest in cooking, and was soon working in the kitchen, feeding a hundred tables a night. I learned about cooking and cuisine, with an ancillary education in sex, drugs, and rock and roll from the college students with whom I worked. My first serious girlfriend was a cocktail waitress from the bar, a journalism student, 8 years my senior. The week I turned 21, I started pulling pitchers of beer every Tuesday night, in a basement banquet room, for a rowdy college crowd. My culinary education was just beginning,with tutorials in sauces and soups, and I learned early that if you want to make salsa you have to cut onions.

Onions are an essential ingredient, and a salsa without them is a bland melange, no matter the heat. Chopping, dicing, or mincing industrial quantities of onions can be unpleasant. A single batch of "Super Hot" salsa, copiously ladled onto our plates of nachos, required 25 chopped onions. I would often make a double batch to stay ahead of our appetizer-hungry customers. I remember crying real tears, unable to focus on the cutting board, eyes burning, going home reeking of Allium. It was, needless to say, hard duty, and I tried all the folk remedies for the irritation caused by syn-propanethial-S-oxide, the chemical ruining my vision. I'm here to tell you that a piece of bread in your mouth does nothing to allay the discomfort, and keeping your cutting board and knife wet is just plain dangerous.

The only way to really minimize the agony of cutting up the cheap yellow onions was to be fast, efficiently rendering the papery globes into a finished product. Technique is crucial, but equally important is a razor-sharp knife. The sharp blade goes where you will it, and doesn't crush the aromatic flesh. Gordon, the owner's son, and main prep chef, kept a such a keen blade that it would fall through an onion on it's weight alone. I probably developed an immunity to the chemical, but I also became very good at dissecting an onion.

In French cuisine a chef is judged by the number of pleats in his toque, the floppy hat on his head, each fold representing mastery of a different way to prepare an egg. I've come to judge a cook's skill by his ability to disassemble the onion. In the firehouse, we cook something at least once every shift, and, picky eaters aside, onions are ubiquitous in our kitchens. In less time than it takes to describe the process, I remove the ends, bisect the vegetable vertically, and peel back the two halves, removing the skin. Laying it on the flat, I start at a cut end of the onion, making vertical slices of appropriate thickness. Rotating ninety degrees, I make more vertical cuts, tipping the uncut mass to finish at the thick side. Repeat, and you have several cups of prepared onion. This method is the product of the thousands of onions which have surrendered at my hand.

Most of the knives in the firehouse kitchen were nice tools once - on the day they were first used - but apathy and neglect rapidly render them blunt, nicked, and dangerous. Some are actually professional-quality, German steel, full-tang construction, now hospicing in a drawer, awaiting the futile sharpening and resurrection.. Totally worthless are the serrated "never needs sharpening" knives that arrive complete, in a laminated knife block, from discount or department stores. Since working in restaurants, so many years ago, I have amassed a small collection of miscellaneous chef's knives, parers, slicers, and French chef's knives, of which, there are two in my duffel bag every time I go to work. I hone them as Gordon did his, and I pull them out whenever dinner requires extended vegetable preparation. Using a keen blade is a pleasure easily worth the added weight in my bag.

I am not particularly gifted with a creative flair for cooking, but I can follow a recipe. Tell me what you want, and you will have it, and enjoy it. So, I am called Chef, and my brothers underestimate their own culinary abilities and talents. And, I can slay the onion.

Kidding Around

The citizens of the City I serve, like any metropolitan population, can be sorted by an infinite number of arbitrary criteria: income, education, age, gender, ethnicity, zip code, religion, and on and on and on. From the standpoint of a firefighter, the easiest distinction is between those we have seen on a call and those we haven't (yet). Or, perhaps, more accurately, the likely customer, and the unlikely. Middle-aged healthy guy in the nice house on the hill, with smoke alarms and health care: Unlikely. Homeless dude, napping off his Steel Reserve, in the bushes behind the Safeway: Very Likely. The likely demographic shares the common denominator of risk. Everyone risks something, but a likely customer's risks are numerous and serious. Bad choices and bad luck hit these people hard.

I love my job, and I remember daily that it's a privilege to be chosen to work in the fire service. Hardened by repeated visits to a particular kind of person, living a particular kind of life, it's an easy stroll to cynical. I try to treat everyone with respect and make things better. With few exceptions, the people who call us are having a very bad day and need our help.

Every now and then some kind of community event warrants fire department involvement. Sometimes it's a standby duty, waiting, with aid kits ready, to bandage a skinned knee or splint a strained limb. A parade or charity walk will find us riding bikes, carrying packs stuffed with EMS supplies. My favorite kind is of the "meet and greet" variety, just hanging out, maybe displaying the tools on the engine or aid car, modelling our protective gear, making friends. I've attended a couple of these soirees this month, mingling with the public. They press food into our hands, hot dogs, pizza, potluck fare, thanking us for the job we do, and maybe for taking care of a family member. It's flattering to see yourself reflected in their words. To be called a hero is tremendously high praise, but I am humbled by their esteem and the quality of the men I work with.

Two weeks ago I handed out bicycle helmets, sweat rolling down my back, in the August sunshine. Before they received one, the kids had to demonstrate proper hand signals for safe bike riding. Many had a limited command of English, and their siblings had to translate my questions into Russian or Ukrainian or Cambodian. Many confused left and right, but when I gestured in the direction to turn, they got it right every time. пожарник (po(r)-jzarrr-neek) means firefighter in Russian, they patiently taught me.

Kids are the best and worst part of the job. I like to wave to families as I ride in the back seat of the engine, cruising neighborhoods, returning from a call, or even on the way to an emergency, with flashing lights and screaming sirens. Sometimes the adults wave back, but the kids always wave. When we go on a call for a sick or injured kid I often involuntarily mutter an "Oh shit" when I hear the short report over the radio. We wear headsets in the cab, and the captain and driver can't help but hear me, but I never hear anyone else express overt dread on the way to such a call. Kids are resiliant, but moms and dads also need special attention when their child is hurt. I am reassuring and confident, but I worry that they will smell my fear for their kid's health or safety.

We regularly visit a number of apartment complexes, where a disproportionate fraction of our calls originate. Their names change regularly, as they pass through new slumlords' hands, and our map books often do not depict the latest moniker, so we use the address in the index. Without fail, there is a small mob of kids in the parking lot, riding bikes and scooters, playing in the dirt or mud. They flock to us as we approach the unit to which we were dispatched. If we are not running, I deflect their questions about who's hurt and ask them where their bike helmets are. On the way out, I make a point of talking to them, joking if I'm not wheeling a stretcher, handing out compliments while I back the driver out of the tight parking, avoiding the carport roofs' overhang. I hope I'm never dispatched to see one of these carefree kids.

There is a persistant myth that firefighters hand out stickers. No one on my shift carries any stickers, but when I was on probation I ordered 200 stickers on the Internet, depicting different kinds of ladder trucks. I tucked some in the EMS notebook in my hip pocket, which I rarely open except to fetch the spelling for a prescription medication. I also carry some in the breast pocket of my Class B blouse (yes, that's what it's called, I know, the shame). I was at a church picnic last week and as soon as we parked, two kids ran up to me, asking for stickers.

"Firefighters always have stickers," she confided to her friend.

"I think I might be out," I admitted, patting my T-shirt for pockets that didn't exist. I fished the EMS notebook out of my pants, and found the last two decals. Great, she's gonna tell every kid here to hit me up. The firefighter without stickers was not the firefighter I wanted to be. The rest of the time at the picnic kids climbed all over the aid car and asked their questions and answered mine. A bright trilingual ten-year old from Russia, named Victoria, told me of her plan to be a doctor. I joked for thirty minutes with an acting student named John, telling him he should think about firefighting when he gets older. I wish I could have given every one of them a sticker, but, luckily, none asked.

My own children live 1000 miles away, with their mother for most of the year. I see them once a month, for a weekend or a week or two in the summer. They mostly live a life without me, sometimes forgetting my birthday or father's day. They have a thin understanding of what I do, and how important it is to me. I think it makes me a little hungry for a child's unquestioning love, and fascination with the world. I wallow in the interaction I have with the City's children, but I miss my own kids.

Lucky Me

The kids are in town, and I haven't posted anything in a few days. We've had various adventures, swimming, fishing, hottubbing, movies. Non-stop fun. I was exhausted yesterday. Going to Shrek, the Musical today.

Since writing that I would look for a four-leaf clover this summer, I have found seven. I have pored over tracts of lawn, combing the grass in vain, and other times, I have merely looked at my feet, only to spot one immediately. I'm not sure exactly what the greater lesson is, but if you seek, you will find. Sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not.

School starts for them in a week, and I won't see them until late September. I am very lucky to spend this summer goof-off time with my kids. Their time is normally highly structured, even during summer. I think they know they're lucky too.

See One, See Two

Harborview Medical Center (HMC, aka "The Zoo") and the University of Washington constitute a potent one-two punch in the EMS world. The legendary Dr. Micheal Copass is the medical director for King County, WA, and every King Co. paramedic trains under his direction. The medics in my department also attend paramedic school at HMC, and I plan to join their ranks in the next year or two.

In our fire stations, there's some small stigma attached to people who willingly commit to attending ten months of medic school in Seattle. At first, I was reluctant to share my goals, but our paramedics are also firefighters, performing truck operations (search and rescue, ventilation...) at working fires, and thus retain some firefighter street cred. I'm told it's a brutal ten months, but Harborview paramedics are considered some of the best in the business, with many thousands of patient contacts during their fellowship.

Every June, Harborview and UW host the WAMI (WA, AK, MT, ID) Trauma Conference. EMS providers, doctors, nurses, paramedics, and clinical eggheads converge on Seattle for two days of symposia and edu-muh-cation. There's pastries in the lobby, with vendors hawking gadgets, tools, and services. I've attended two of these conferences and come home with pockets bulging with swag and fancy ballpoint pens. The grub's pretty good, too.

Last year, at the very tail end of the two days, after hours of listening and learning, I was privy to a fascinating presentation by a panel of wilderness rescuers, paramedics, doctors, and surgeons. A friend of theirs, a seasoned climber, a doctor at Harborview hospital, was scaling a mountain in the wilds of Alaska. The members of the panel took turns sharing the story of their roles in the dramatic rescue and rehabilitation of this man, after he lost his footing and fell on the ice, breaking his neck. He spoke, himself, of losing all sensation in his limbs on that mountain, lying on that snow, for eleven terrifying minutes, as the shattered bones of his cervical vertebrae and the swelling pinched his spinal cord. He told us of imagining a motionless life if he survived. In a perfect storm of situation, training, and friendship, his buddies got him off the mountain and into immediate medical care. He teetered on the brink of permanent paralysis for those eleven minutes, but, in the end, other friends at Harborview repaired his neck, and he recently ran a very respectable marathon.

Absolutely lacking any seniority, I change assignments regularly, and I bounce around the City, working variously on fire engines, ladder trucks, and air cars. My situation is in flux, and I accept the possibility that I may arrive at my assigned post, only to be told to pack up my gear and move to another station. It's nice to have a home, though, and I am currently working on an aid car, with my new partner, SE. Yesterday, we were toned out to an aid call at a teriyaki restaurant, in a decaying strip mall. BLS, 30's male, fall, neck pain.

Every aid car shift with a new partner is a small adventure in negotiation and technique. The rider deals mostly with paperwork, and patient interviews, performing the de facto officer role. The driver drives, of course, maintains the rig, and carries the kits, usually. There's a lot of wiggle room in the two roles for overlap and cooperation. Some guys want a hard division of labor, others adapt their contribution to the situation at hand. Either way, you're often all alone, and your partner better have your back. Over time, you grow into the personality of your partner, and you develop a rhythm and flow.

SE and I are still learning how to work together. That sounds like we're constantly butting heads and arguing over minor points of honor and protocol, but, in reality, we both bend over backwards to help each other. It's much more like those two gophers in the Bugs Bunny / Roadrunner Hour cartoons of my childhood Saturday mornings:

GOPHER 1: "I'm so sorry. I was completely out of step."
GOPHER 2: "Oh, no, no, no. You must be mistaken. You were in perfect synchronization. It must have been me!"
GOPHER 1: "Ridiculous! Your sense of rhythm is superb! I am the guilty party in this case."
GOPHER 2: "I am sorry, but I cannot let you take the blame for some wrong I am responsible for. No. No. No."
(And on and on...)

We arrived on scene, to find a grubby man sitting against the restaurant's front wall. He has some blood on his shirt from a small scratch on his left elbow, grass-stained socks on his feet, moaning loudly, too loudly. His pants and shirt are dirty, hair unwashed. I take vitals, while SE tries to get a story from our patient. His pupils are unreactive, and he is sweating. His story is confused, but our competing contributions to patient care do not help. He fell, from an undetermined height, while he may or may not have been walking along a rockwork retaining wall, while he may or may not have been using the stairs. Two hundred feet away, there are stairs, but they are equally far from the nearest retaining wall. He denies any medications or allergies, but admits to using Dilaudid, a narcotic, for pain two months ago. Hmmmm.

He says he landed on his head, but there's no visible trauma to his scalp. His neck hurts. I consider mechanism of injury, a possible four foot tumble off the rock wall, and I am inclined to full spinal precautions. SE agrees, and fetches the backboard and our spinal kit. On the backboard, his neck immobilized in a C-collar, head taped to the board, he's yelling as we gently load him in the aid car. The hospital is just a few blocks away, but I drive slowly, snaking around potholes and manhole covers. I hear him, in the back, " -because it HURTS, man!", shouting, angry.

After, returning to station, SE and I agree that this guy is probably seeking pain medication, and wasn't really injured. We laugh with an affected cynicism at how we backboarded him and how he was probably strapped down for an hour or more. Yeah, we see it all the time.

Later that night, we took a nice Russian grandmother to the ED for a bleeding varicose vein. I made up the stretcher with fresh linens outside, in the summer midnight air, and waited for SE to finish delivering the short report to the nurse. I finished and sat down on the rear bumper just as he came out the sliding door.

"Hey, I checked on the dude we brought in earlier. The guy with neck pain." He made little quote marks in the air with his fingers. "He had C1 and C2 fractures. They transferred him to Harborview. Good thing we backboarded him."

In EMT school, the importance of C-spine protection was pounded into my head. Keeping the neck from moving minimizes further spinal insult and prevents a permanent paralysis like the doctor on the mountain suffered for those eleven awful minutes. The higher on the neck, the greater the paralysis. An injury below the C5/C6 vertebrae preserves your diaphragmatic function, allowing you to breathe on your own. An injury at C1/C2 would have certainly doomed our patient to a sessile life on a respirator, numb from the nose to the toes.

"Protocol, dude!"

"Dude!"

In the dark cab, we bump knuckled fists.

Cadence

I was examining, in the cold light of a new day, removed from the emotion, the poem I wrote after my experience at Chief Dan Packer's memorial. While writing, I gave some thought to the meter, but I opted for simple and direct, avoiding a complicated rhyme and rhythm structure. I just realized that I unwittingly wrote a cadence.

That seems appropriate.

See: http://schlemsshortreport.blogspot.com/2008/07/sing-sing-song.html .

A Hundred Engines

A hundred engines in the queue,
polished, gleaming, old and new

A hundred engines come to life,
mourning diesel: drum and fife

Four hundred wheels begin to wend,
stretching miles end to end

On bridges and beside the road,
on median freshly mowed,

With hands on hearts, or with heads bowed,
strangers stopped to watch us pass.
They stand in knots, their shoulders crowd,
now gone,
outside the engine's glass.

Our brother takes his final ride,
A hundred engines parked outside.

A hundred engines, old and new,
heading home, there's work to do.

A hundred engines.

Still, too few.

In Memory of Daniel B. Packer, Fire Chief
1958 - 2008

Some time ago...

We were watching a documentary about parasites on the Discovery Channel, my number one son, A, and I. We sprawled on the couch, a summer breeze wafting through the house. On the TV, we were guided through an exposition on leeches. Terrifying, misunderstood, they have a time-proven value in reconstructive surgeries, promoting blood flow, for instance, in cases of digital reattachment. The leech secretes both anesthetic and anti-coagulant, painlessly gorging on its host's life's blood. We watched, fascinated, as our host placed a half-inch long leech on his forearm. In less time than it took to write this paragraph, the leech had swelled to three inches in length, thick as one of my meaty fingers. Grinning, he plucked it from his arm, and the blood continued to ooze from the tiny wound while he spoke.

Number 1 son: "I think I'm gonna puke."

The last time my son hurled, he was watching TV, in this very same room, on this very same carpet. It is a Persian carpet, wool, eight by twelve feet, and dead-body-heavy. The closest carpet cleaner, in Seattle, is a ferry ride and more than an hour's time away. Puke on the carpet is huge pain in the ass.

Dad, logically, "Well, get off the damn carpet."

Number 1 son sprang up, made for the bathroom, through the kitchen. Three steps - WHAM. What the hell? The family converged on the kitchen, drawn by the noise. My son, A, lay on his right side, against the oven. I rolled him onto his back, his limp body flopping over on the cold slate, his bloodless face white against the jade.

"Not again."

The men of my in-laws' family (Do in-laws remain in-laws after the law is broken?) have a long tradition of fainting. Getting a shot poses an existential crisis for my son's uncle. Grandpa E has hit the deck a few times in his time. Number 1 son, recently, pulled a loose tooth at my behest, goaded by a fat ten dollar bill if he could just get it over with, instead of worrying over the dangling incisor for days. I found him, then, on this same kitchen floor, passed out after seeing the tiny drool of blood in the white porcelain sink. I am not surprised, but I am filled with a disgusting guilt for not expecting this. I feel like I should have recognized the signs of a pending fainting.

A's right eyebrow is split open by the impact against... the stove? the cabinet? I'm not sure. I imagine a ripe tomato, on hitting a hard and immovable surface, would pop in exactly the same manner. He's not awake, nor is he bleeding. It looks serious enough to warrant stitching, as, in childhood, my sisters were stitched up after certain bouts of horseplay. Not sure what to do, I call 911.

The fire station is less than a half mile down the road, and shortly there is a fire engine and a medic unit in the gravel drive. A is now awake, still lying on the floor. He's still pasty, and the gash on his forehead refuses to bleed. His mom gets a blanket. The paramedic and his bunker-clad EMTs assess his vital signs: his blood pressure is low. Volunteers arrive in their cars. We stand in the kitchen, over number 1 son, in a loose circle. It is a pretty big kitchen. I feel foolish for calling these people to our home for such a silly drama. The paramedic calls our family doctor. I drive him to the doctor's house and A's eyebrow is glued together, with a caution to sleep on his back for a few days, lest his eyebrow heal crookedly.

I resolved that I would become an EMT. With three kids in the house, and living on an island, I could protect my family and help my neighbors. The next Monday I found the training office at the fire station down the road, and was welcomed into the volunteer fire service. I attended King County Medic One EMT classes in Bellevue, carpooling on the ferry ride with new friends every Thursday evening. Saturdays we spent at a fire station in Kent, practicing our new skills under the eyes of our instructors. We took our tests, and received our certificates from the state. When the volunteer fire academy rolled around, I signed up for that, too.

In rural America, people become firefighters for the same reason I did: to help your neighbors, to learn something useful, and because someone's gotta do it. In 2006, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) counted 823,950 volunteers in the fire service, against 316,950 paid, or career, firefighters. Clearly, most of the firefighters out there, 72%, are doing this out of altrusim, perhaps a family tradition, or a desire for excitement. Unfortunately, the same census disclosed an 8% decline in volunteers since 1984. As our populace migrates into the denser metropolitan areas, there will be fewer volunteers covering an increasingly isolated rural population. In the two departments for which I volunteered, this decline in the local volunteer pool prompted a call for candidates from outside the community. Unlike myself, these were people motivated to attain employment in the fire service, looking for training and experience to further a professional career. I came to embrace the idea that I could actually be a paid firefighter, and threw myself into my studies.

I fantasize, like many firefighters, that my son would make an excellent firefighter. He is whip-smart, and breezes through tests. He's more than up to the physical challenges of the work, and he possesses that vital quality measured and weighed during probation - he's nice. He is on the cusp of eighteen, with a university education all lined up. He may change his mind about business school, as I changed mine repeatedly in college. I think he'd love firefighting, the learning, the helping, the camaraderie - if he's outgrown the fainting.

Chicken Soul For The Soup

Firefighting epitomizes the ideal of the do-anything McGyver. At any moment, the tones could sound, signifying an emergency for the City's citizens. Regardless of the nature of the call, the City's citizens pay us, and expect us, to solve their problems. Fires, vehicle accidents, strokes, cuts, scrapes, and bruises fall into the category of the expected and well-rehearsed crisis. I'd be lying if I said that every call is a bona-fide emergency, and many aren't. But to the person that dials 911, it seems that way at the time. When a bad situation lands outside the box, problem solving and creativity save the day.

A firefighter's apprenticeship consists of, in part, getting to know your available resources, such that a solution can be cobbled together when the time comes. Many of our bread and butter strategies, the ones we practice, the ones we pull out in time of need, were once somebody's hare-brained idea.

Take, for instance, the drop-bag evolution. Once upon a time, probably early in the business of fighting fire, a man had a better idea. Suppose there's fire on the third or fourth floor, stairwells deep inside the building, and no standpipe. Rather than making entry with a charged hoseline, the pipeman and officer pull a couple of sections of hose and a nozzle from the hosebed of the engine. A satchel of tools and a bag containing rope are retrieved from a compartment. Pipeman and officer enter the building, finding their way to the best floor from which to attack the fire. A window is busted out, or, better yet, opened, and the bag is dropped to the ground, rope spooling out, as it falls. Meanwhile, at the engine, the driver has pulled some hose and attached it to a discharge port at the pump. The end of the hose is secured to the rope, and the pipeman hauls it up and connects it to the now-assembled hoseline. A signal is given, and the hose stiffens with fire-quenching water pressure. No dragging of hoselines through the structure, no unnecessary hose, with its attendant complexity and friction loss, no bullshit. Quick, easy, and direct.

When I attended my volunteer academy, I faked my way through a myriad of situations, relying on my heft and experiences to guide me, until muscle memories were formed, until I understood the why of it. Throwing ladders wasn't too hard, but smaller folks wrestled to get the get them upright and placed properly. I could start the power equipment, and dismantle a chainsaw. My background in science and chemistry served me well in my studies of hazardous materials and fire science. And I knew my way around a kitchen.

In the firehouse, we live together, a family united in a common cause. We have our quarrels, our triumphs, our history. Every meal is a ritual coming-together, whether it's over bacon and eggs, tuna salad, or fresh-caught wild salmon. As a volunteer, canned chili con carne and instant cornbread lost its allure quickly, and I'd shoulder my way into the cramped kitchen and gently take charge of preparing dinner. Through high school and college I worked in restaurants, working my way up from dishwasher to cook. Later, I would entertain, leafing through cookbooks, assembling elaborate feasts for friends and family, with an emphasis on Italian and French country cuisine. I enjoy cooking, and in the firehouse, the skills and techniques from my previous culinary endeavors play well.

In my department, in a station with more than one crew, dinner duty rotates every shift. The inspired or simply helpful will pitch in, and other crews will, if possible, cover calls for the guys in the kitchen. Everyone has their own specialties and talents, and we have a lot of collective cooking experience. Dinners range from coupon-clipping serendipity to full-blown gourmet. Regardless of the chosen menu, everyone pays their fair share, and happily. When time, ingredients, and the budget line up, our shift dinners can be the best meals of our week. Occasionally, though, the day is full of calls and/or training, and shopping and preparation for dinner is forgotten. It's always good to have a few go-to ideas for dinner under your hat when dinnertime is looming. Fast food is always an option, but I prefer the economy and comfort of the home-cooked firehouse meal.

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40 Minute Chicken Noodle Soup With Dumplings.

(serves 5 firefighters)

Ingredients

-1 grocery store roasted chicken

-4 carrots

-1 huge onion

-1 bunch celery

-olive or canola oil as needed

-1 package egg noodles

-1 14 oz can of beans (kidney, garbanzo, whatever)

-1 can mushrooms (tell the picky eaters to suck it up)

-salt and black pepper to taste

-rosemary, sage, bay leaf to taste

optional -canned chicken stock or bullion cubes (with a reduction in salt)

-sour cream

For dumplings:
-5 cups baking mix, like Bisquick
-1-1/2 cup milk
-copious black pepper

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-Recruit some kitchen help and wash your hands.
-Pick meat from chicken, reserving diced meat in a bowl. Skin and bones go into the stock pot.
-Chop onion, toss skin and ends into stock pot.
-Dice 3 carrots, tossing ends and 4th into stock pot.
-Slice 4 celery stalks, tossing ends and a couple stalks into stock pot.

On burner number 1:
-Cover contents of stock pot with water, heat over high heat until boiling
-Season with pepper, bay leaf, other spices of choice. Reserve salt until soup is assembled.
-Maintain rolling boil, uncovered, for 20 minutes.

On burner number 2:
-heat a large pot of water, to boiling, for egg noodles. Cook per instructions. Reserve.

On burner number 3:
-Place cut vegetables in large skillet with oil. Saute until onions and carrots soft. Add diced chicken meat, and brown lightly. Reserve.

Meanwhile:
-Gently combine Bisquick, milk, and pepper, think fluffy thoughts.
Variation: add 1-1/2 cup cooked rice of choice, in lieu of dumplings.

After 20 minutes of boiling stock:
-Strain contents of stock pot in preferred manner, maintaining lookout for errant pieces of chicken. Discard solids (called raft in the restaurant world).
-Add sauteed vegetables and chicken to stock.
-Add the drained beans and mushrooms.
-Add the drained noodles.
-Add water, chicken stock, or bullion if desired.
-Adjust seasonings, Salt to taste.
-Gently spoon dumpling mix onto top of soup, covering. Simmer, uncovered, for 10 minutes, cover and continue simmering 10 more minutes.

Soup's on! Garnish with a dollop of sour cream. Serve with a simple side salad, with ice cream for dessert. Don't burn your tongue! Enjoy, considering modifications to make this your soup.

Spit & Polish

Charles H. Beckman started the Redwing Shoe Company 103 years ago, and, since then, his company has always made excellent footwear. My duty boots are Redwings, and they are Birkenstock comfortable. In lieu of laces, a zipper is lashed to the eyelets, allowing me to zip 'em on or off easily. Some guys will kick off their boots, flopping into a recliner, waiting for the big one, but I rarely take them off while on duty. I don't even notice that they are on my feet after a busy day, even though they are heavy, with their steel toes and shanks.

I am at home, after working yesterday. I've had my coffee and oatmeal, and my boots need a shine. I've had these boots a couple of years and they've only been polished a couple of times. I collect some glossy polish, a rag, a horsehair brush from the shoeshine kit LMB's uncle made, and pack a dip. I take my project outside, sparing the kitchen floor from the inevitable and indelible polish. Summer is waning and the air makes me think of apple pie. I settle into a cedar lawn chair and arrange my tools on a small cedar side table. A crow is perched above me, in the birch, nagging about something, RAAW, RAAW, RAAW.

Ah, this polish is crap, I complain to myself, not very shiny, as I rub the waxy paste into the faintly greening leather. The boot in my hand is well worn and fits my foot like a glove. The various bumps and joint of my feet have coaxed the boot to a perfect fit, and I massage polish into the bulge formed by the outside metatarsal of my EEE dog.

Overhead, the crow is still bitching. I doubt that there is a nest nearby, perhaps he's allergic to shoe polish. I hear the bird move in the branches above and a tiny bit of bird shit lands on the boot in my hands. Sonova... Right at the seam where the upper meets the vamp. It's just a drop, and I rub it into the seam, thinking it might swell the stitching and tighten the boot just a tiny bit, extending its service life. Some cultures believe that a bird pooping on your head is a good omen. I decide to interpret this unlikely blessing from above as just another in a long series of blessings. Stupid crow.
I'm attending a funeral today. One of my department's elder statesmen, BD, lost his grandson this week in a motorcycle accident. BD has been visited by far more than his fair share of grief lately, and I dearly love the man. I have my Class A uniform layed out on the bed, but my boots need some attention. Our policies state that either duty boots or the specified pansy patent shoes are appropriate for occasions requiring the dress uniform. Let the office jockeys and the chiefs wear their shiny black shoes, I am wearing the boots I work in.

The toes are a bit torn and scuffed up. I've kneeled on a glass-strewn freeway, helping to package a drunk driver's victim for transport to Harborview. I've minced around the dogshit on the carpet of too many disgusting apartments. Performed CPR in mobile homes and on the sidewalk. These boots have been peed, vomited, and now shat upon. They've also been scoured in hydrogen peroxide and bleach. BD won't mind.

I'm thinking I'll need to go back inside and rustle up a different tin of polish as I pick up the brush. The dried wax transforms into a glossy shine under the horsehair bristles, and I grin with satisfaction. These boots have scars, but they have a lot of life yet in them. They look good - not the frantic impeccability of our boots during fire academy, but respectfully shiny. The cuts and scratches affirm that these are duty boots, and sometimes duty is hard.

A chief at East Pierce Fire and Rescue was killed last week, fighting wildfires in California. 49 years old, he died fighting the Panther Creek wildfire, overcome by flames on a steep slope. Found under his aluminized fire shelter on top of a ridge, he had four daughters and two grandchildren. His memorial is next week, and my department is sending an engine for the procession. I'll be riding with two of my brothers, but departments from all over the northwest will also attend.

It's a week of grief. Shine 'em up, boys.