Slightly Off the Mark: firefighting

Showing posts with label firefighting. Show all posts

A Fire Department Block Party, and the Block Isn't Even On Fire

Music. Beer. Buff firemen. Well, some are buff, and we'd prefer to be called firefighters, 'cause it's the 21st Century.

Yes, the Albion Volunteer Fire Department is hosting its first block party, an event which, typically, involves having a party on a block. In this case it's the Noble County Courthouse Square, which is indeed a block. If you want to be specific, it's around the area of Main and York Streets, which--come to think of it--I can see from my part time job.

But I can't have beer on my part time job. Still, I'm betting there will be other beverages there, and besides, most of the people reading this don' t have my job. This is on a Saturday (September 12th), so there'll be plenty of parking in the courthouse square area, too. But if you plan to visit the beer tent, bring a designated parker.

This is where I usually post a link to the Facebook event page, but I can't get it to work properly because FB is dumb. Okay, I probably pushed the wrong button, but the AFD's page is here:

https://www.facebook.com/albionfd

The money raised goes toward, among other things, tools, fitness equipment, and training props. The fitness equipment part is pretty self-explanatory. Let me explain: When we started out in 1888, most members of the department had physical work that kept them in shape. There were butchers, bakers, candlestick makers ...

Well, our first fire chief was among other things a baker, and butchers would make sense--I don't know if we had any candlestick makers. Here is what I eventually determined is the first known photo of the Albion Volunteer Fire Department:

I had this photo for a few years before I realized the little frame building under construction on the right is, in fact, Albion's first firehouse. It took me awhile after that to figure out that the men marching in the white belts are some of the town's first volunteer firefighters, which dates this photo to late 1887. The women behind them? Probably the Ladies Auxiliary, or whatever it was called back then. Their job was to follow along and, if one of the men chickened out and tried to run from the fire, shame them into going on.

It's possible I'm making that last part up.

Back then I would probably have been a candlestick maker, working on my feet all day, walking from place to place, drilling with the fire guys to hand pump the engine, and having earwax problems. I don't know. Wouldn't candlestick makers have wax issues?

Now we need fitness equipment. These are the days of typing on keyboards, riding trucks instead of pulling engines, and drinking beer instead of well water. (We can't actually go to a fire if we've been drinking, which is the main reason why I never took up drinking.)

But when those fires break out, we still have to put on a zillion pounds of equipment and go running toward the flames.

Speaking of beer, there are also those training props we need to pay for. We used to find buildings due to be demolished, and train there on every aspect of firefighting, until it was time to let the place burn down completely. These days it's a lot harder to find a building we can legally beat up for training. The State of Indiana does help out on training resources, but there's the need for us to build our own doors and windows to force, roofs to ventilate, and 150 pound mannequins to haul around.

Should various government entities pay for our training needs? Sure, but in some cases they can't, and in others they won't. Besides, now we can have a block party.

So come over, have a beer, listen to music by Sweetwater All Stars Band, and bring the kids! Not for the beer. For them there'll be a "touch a truck", the fire prevention trailer, and no beer. Enjoy the local cuisine, which is a Greece word that originated in Turkey, meaning food. Oh, and if you wander over to the AFD's booth (let's fill that boot! With money. Duh.), you can buy a beverage Koozie to remember us buy. That might not seem like a big deal to you, but my dispatcher Koozies are getting ragged.

You can find our books, and my alleged humor, all over the interwebs:

· Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

· Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/search?attributes.contributorId=13727646

· Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter

· Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/

· Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/

· Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/

· Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914

· Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/

· Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter

· Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter

· Substack: https://substack.com/@markrhunter

· Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ozma914

· Audible: https://www.audible.com/search?searchAuthor=Mark+R.+Hunter&ref_pageloadid=4C1TS2KZGoOjloaJ&pf

Remember: The one thing we’ll never let burn is books.

Smoky Deer is Today's Video

Another video, for my midweek photo blog. Because I'm a rebel.

Most of you are aware Canada is burning, either because you follow the news, or you breath. Forest fires are common in the wilderness areas of Canada, and if they're not near any homes or infrastructure, firefighters usually can't fight them--it being the circle of nature, and all that. They're mostly inaccessible, and the resources to battle that many fires at once just aren't there.

YouTube version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-aHVUO5a70

If the weather is right, the smoke drifts south and you get what we got across the Midwest last week: smoke. It's not even a fun campfire-like scent, because the nature of smoke exposed to sunlight cause changes that give it a nasty, almost factory-like smell.

I'm something of a smoke expert, if I do say so myself (not really, but let's just say I've experienced a lot of smoke). I've been in way worse than this, but it's still not a lot of fun--and it's very unhealthy, of course.

I took this photo during a training fire. Notice everyone has breathing protection.

Emily and I drove to Huntertown Gardens in the smoke, because the doctor told me to eat fresh fruits and veggies or die. It's a tough choice, especially since we had to work our way around three construction areas to get there. But I now have low potassium for some reason, and we were hoping bananas, kale, and potatoes would share their potassium with me.

On the way home, as you'll see in the video, it felt like one of those foggy mornings even though it was early afternoon. That might be why the deer were active: Maybe they thought it was near dusk. We saw two fawn, then a grown up deer ran in front of us on a county road.

The deer responsible for accidents often isn't the first one; it's the second one. So I slowed way down and sure enough, the second ran across the road right in front of us. Have some corn, fellas.

And that's why you get another video on picture day. Between that and the moron in the pickup truck that I posted over the weekend, one has to wonder why Emily and I go out at all. Easy: Otherwise we'd starve. But maybe that whole DoorDash thing isn't such a bad idea, after all.

You can find safer adventures in our books:

· Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

· Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/search?attributes.contributorId=13727646

· Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter

· Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/

· Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/

· Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/

· Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914

· Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/

· Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter

· Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter

· Substack: https://substack.com/@markrhunter

· Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ozma914

· Audible: https://www.audible.com/search?searchAuthor=Mark+R.+Hunter&ref_pageloadid=4C1TS2KZGoOjloaJ&pf

Remember: You don’t have to go out to read

Tag! I'm It: 10 Random Facts About Me

I was tagged over on ... wait, where was it? The Book of Faces? The Stack of Subs? Well, somewhere, a lovely person named Author on Wheels tagged me to present 10 random facts about me, not related to writing.

I don't think Author on Wheels is their real name, but these days who knows?

Also, although it takes away some of the fun, I won't tag 10 other authors to do the same. I always thought it made people feel like they have to do something, and there are enough things we have to do in the main periods of our lives: childhood and adulthood.

Of course, for a lot of years now I've been telling people everything about me in my columns/blogs, so the real question is, can I surprise you with something interesting? Probably not.

10 random facts about me, not related to writing:

1) Everyone knows I was a volunteer firefighter, but the first time I crawled into a burning building, at age 18, the extent of my protective gear was a pair of pull-up thigh-length rubber boots. Other than that, it was jeans and a windbreaker. We don't do that anymore.

We were smoke eaters ... and young.

2) After graduating high school I moved seven times in seven years, without ever leaving town limits ... and now I've been in the same house for 36 years.

3) I only spent the night in a hospital once, with mono when I was fourteen. Now you have an idea of how extreme my dumb luck is.

4) As a youth I suffered from severe shyness (no, not the same as being an introvert, although there's that, too). But I got it in my head that I wanted to be an actor, and forced myself in high school to join drama club and choir, and take a speech class. To this day, I don't know where I got the courage.

5) I have a comical inability to do any kind of physical handiwork or maintenance whatsoever without completely screwing it up. It's why I prefer my tools to be electric: Small engines and I are not friends.

Now, destroying things isn't a problem.

6) When they were first married my parents had no money, so on the day the previous month's comic books were priced down they'd buy a stack, and read them over the weekend. This (and the Oz books they bought) is how I became an avid reader.

7) For my entire life I've had absolutely no interest in dressing to look good; as long as I'm warm, I'm fine. Emily has turned me around a little, though.

8.) Despite being allergic to cats, there's been at least one in my home most of my life. When I was a kid I thought everyone walked around with a stuffy nose.

You think shooting pool while sneezing is easy? It is not.

9.) The first time I ever got my picture in the paper was when I was very little and the first customer at a new store (My parents bought me a U.S. map puzzle). The article said I won a large stuffed animal, but I never received it.

10) I can raise or lower my own pulse rate. Sometimes I used that to mess with EMT students.

There are probably odder facts about me I haven't even thought of, but I can't think of them.