KICKIN' IT OLD SCHOOL- Survival Breakfast
OK, readers. I know that I promised a couple of pounds of cocaine and some smallmouth bass at the end of the last post. With regard to the cocaine, the case is still pending, so I have thought better of cutting loose with what I know until later. Sorry.
Earlier this week, I was reminded by a friend that I had once gotten drunk in her apartment one morning while tagging along with the guy who was supposed to be house-sitting for her. At the time, I didn't really know her. We had a little laugh, and I got to thinking about the events that led to that glorious morning of Budweiser and Mickey's Big Mouth. For me, this was one of my first big-time experiences with a well-known firehouse phenomenon that I call "survival breakfast".
So, there I was.... in 1988. It was early fall, I was pretty close to two years in the fire department, and I was a live-in firefighter at my original station in North Woodbridge. We had a great crew of guys back in that day. There were no duty crews assigned to cover the overnight portion of the day, so after the duty crews left at 2400, it was live-ins from 2400 to 0700 every day of the week. Needless to say, we got to run a bunch of calls and we were very close. The call that led to the drinking in a stranger's-now-friend's apartment was a little fire in an outbuilding next to a fleabag motel, but the story started back in the summer.
It was a hot day, most likely a Saturday. As I recall, the uniform for the day would have been: 1. some sort of shorts, whether they be camos, sweats, running shorts or whatever; 2. some sort of tee-shirt, hopefully from a fire department somewhere, usually with no sleeves; and 3. some sort of baseball hat. On a Saturday, there would have been no actual duty crew, just a cobbled-together group of live-ins and people hanging around. Our leader was a guy named Harry, who at the time was a sergeant, aged about 24 and a superstar fireman like none who has been seen since. He had a girlfriend that he kept secret. It was a terribly kept secret. He would deny the relationship while making goofs like driving around in her car alone for no reason. He was driving her car this day. We all watched as he walked across the front ramp of the firehouse, jumped into the car and sped off to we-all-knew-where with a little "toot-toot" of the horn as if to say "See ya!". For my part, I was content to keep working on my car, smoking a few cigarettes, and enjoying the sunshine. About ten minutes after he left, I heard the squealing of tires, the massive over revving of a too-small engine, the squeal again, and then here comes Harry, driving way too hard for that car in particular and any car that wasn't his in general. He skids to a stop on the ramp and yells: "Load up! We're going to an auto fire". I think to myself, "Big fucking whoop. Why the crazy driving?" It turned out that while driving to his girlfriend's house, Harry had seen the fire, and came back to the firehouse. I pulled on my trusty camouflage pants and my three-quarter boots, and climbed onto the side of the engine. It would have been a guy named Ron driving, Harry was the boss, myself, my buddy Gordo and a dude named Billy. (Watch Billy carefully here, because this will be important for later) Thanks to Harry's driving (remember- this was pre-cellphones), we got a massive head start on the other engine that was eventually dispatched to this call. Like a five or eight minute jump. We got to the scene, the shoulder of an interstate highway, and find a 1970's era station wagon fully involved and a total loss. There is a small crowd of people standing around. Gordo and I pulled a line and quickly knocked the fire down, being careful to conserve water on our non-hydranted interstate. We ultimately gave up the line to Billy, as he was the senior man, and he wanted to get some nozzle time. Whatever. I lit up a smoke and went over to see why a crowd had gathered. Turns out that there had been fifteen (no shit, 15) people in the car, and the "crowd" were the occupants of the car. Wow. So, there was Billy finishing up the final extinguishment of the car. Harry told him to get up under the dash and make sure all of the fire was out. Billy promptly jumped into the front seat and, of note, made no bones about rubbing the back of his coat all over the burnt out front bench seat. He would grind right to lie down, grind left to sit back up, and grind right again so he could lie down again. Ostensibly, this was to get position to put the hoseline where he needed it. Really, these moves were made to get his coat as dirty as possible. Back in the day it was cool to get your gear as dirty as possible, and Billy was certainly taking care of business. When he got done, the back of his coat was a mess. Dirty was cool, but dirty like that was lame. It was like intentionally rubbing your gloves on your face to look "smoked up" after a fire. So we left what turned out to be a memorable call and went back to the house.
Fast forward to the fall. It had been a couple of months since the car fire. It would have been a weeknight. At about 0330, we are dispatched along with two other engines to a structure fire at the aforementioned fleabag motel on U.S. 1, right on the line between our first due and the first due of my current firehouse. Our crew is a guy named Jim who is driving, Harry was again the boss, Billy was the lead fireman, myself, a rookie named Robby, and a guy named Scott. Scott was a Navy Corpsman, and the best medic I have ever seen, bar none, but he was just starting as a firefighter, and was not certified. It turned out that the fire wasn't in the hotel, but in an outbuilding next to the hotel. The location of the fire is difficult, because the hydrants on that stretch of U.S. 1 are not well placed, and to get a water supply, a "split lay" is required. For the uninitiated, a split lay is where the attack pumper drops its supply hose someplace (usually an intersection) and goes to the fire, and a second pumper drops where the first one dropped and lays out to a hydrant. Water supply is achieved by hooking the second pumper's supply line to the hydrant, connecting the middle, and then the first pumper connects to its pump. This is a common fire department tactic, especially for us in this particular area. We were first there, and were going to be the attack pumper. Given the status of our crew, Harry told me to get off with Robby to drop the split lay and make sure that the connection was made. It would have been my assignment if we didn't have Robby and Scott with us. I watched as Robby pulled the line, and I helped him to get ready to receive the line from the second pumper, which was now coming up to us. Once I was satisfied that he would be able to finish the job himself, I ran up to where the building was on fire. Harry and Billy had already pulled an attack line and gone into the building. I put on an airpack and got ready to go in, but I didn't have another firefighter, so I walked up to the front door and stood with Scott, who was watching from outside. The building was 20' x 20' square, wood frame, looked like two rooms separated by an entrance hallway. Fire was blowing out of the front window on the left. Before I could do anything, stuff started to happen. The hoseline jumped, indicating that they had opened the nozzle inside, and I sighed, thinking that I was going to miss the good stuff. The fire didn't go down right away. It didn't go down at all. The line jumped again, indicating that the nozzle had been slammed shut. Weird. Billy appeared at the front door, with smoke cranking out from behind him. When he reached the door, he fell to his knees just past the threshold. I looked at his face, and his wide eyes seemed to fill the entire lens of his mask. He fell to his belly, and I saw that his entire back and his shoulders were on fire. Oh, shit! Before I could do anything, Harry's helmet came rolling out the door. Holy shit! I was getting close to Billy, who was rolling around on fire, when Harry came flying out the door at about waist-height, Superman-style, and pounced on Billy. Harry commenced to smother and beat out the flames on Billy. Billy seemed to be OK. Harry was pissed off and otherwise very agitated. And then up went the mighty cry: FUMBLE!!!! Scott took Billy away, and I grabbed the line, which Billy had dropped. Harry and I went into the building, this time with me on the nozzle. To get to the fire, it was ten feet in, turn left at the door, and hit it. We got pretty close. In 1988, our gear would not let us go where we go now, so we hit the fire we could see blowing out the door to the fire room, but didn't make much progress. Harry tapped me on the shoulder, said something like "Fuck this.", and then kicked at the wall on our left. I saw his plan right away, and we both kicked at the wall until we had a hole big enough to stick the nozzle through. I aimed the nozzle into the hole, opened up, and knocked the fire in the room down in a few seconds. Once fire wasn't shooting out the door, we got up from the hole in the wall and went into the room to finish up. We then worked on the inevitable fire in the attic for a few minutes before we got relieved. We went to check on Billy.
Billy was fine. All of the soot and other shit that he intentionally put on his coat during the car fire a few months ago had left him with a plasticized crust on his back and on his shoulders. Harry tells this part of the story much better than I do, and it works better in person with hand gestures, but it goes like this: Harry and Billy go in with a charged line. When you go into a fire, you are supposed to open the line for a second or two before you go in, so that any air trapped at the end of the line is released. Every time one charges a hoseline, some air is released before the water comes out. It was no different this time, except that Billy didn't open the line before he went in. Harry tells it this way: "He turned to face the door, opened the line and there was this hissing of air, and then the fire just said 'ARRRGH, FUCK YOU' and (arms making a grasping embrace) totally ate him alive.", which in English means that when he blew a bunch of fresh air on the fire, a big fireball shot out at him. This fireball set his coat on fire.
Sooo, we were happy Billy wasn't hurt, and we had a little laugh about how Harry jumped on him like SuperFly Snooka of the WWF, but after a while we all realized that we were pretty freaked out. We got back to the house at about 0700, turned the pumper over to our paidmen, and sat around looking at each other with that shared look of "wow, we almost got hurt there." Billy had to go to work. Scott too. Robby was leaving town. Harry suggested that he and I should go get drunk. I couldn't have agreed more. Without having showered, we walked down to the 7-11 on our block and bought about thirty beers. 18 Budweisers and 12 Mickey's as I recall. I was wondering where in the firehouse we were going to devastate that beer, when Harry said, "hey man, let's go to Sue's apartment and drink up there." At the time, I didn't know Sue very well, but once Harry explained that he was house-sitting for her, I was happy just to have someplace to go that was not the firehouse.
So we loaded up in my car and went to Sue's apartment, which was too-nicely-decorated for two dirty-assed firemen who were looking to get their drink on. We started drinking. We talked about what had happened. We laughed the laugh that you get to laugh when you know that you have been close to (and perhaps over) the edge and pulled it back in. I call this "survival breakfast". Survival breakfast is not necessarily a meal, and is not necessarily breakfast. It works whether it is beer in the morning, or is actual breakfast in the firehouse, or is a cigarette in the parking lot of a convenience store. It is a little moment where you realize that you have seen something bad, but you are glad to be alive. That feeling of being alive is a feeling of being not just alive, but very much alive. The probably-too-occasional opportunity to to these things is one of the best things about being in the fire department. Because of the location, this one was a little wierd. Once we were all drunked up, we went out on foot and had a little adventure in the Lake Ridge Giant, but that is for another post. Events like this were powerful learning experiences in my youth. It is amazing how well you can sleep with a dozen beers on board after fighting fire all night.
For the love of God, if you have read this far, please leave a comment. More to come soon, but until then, peace.
DTXMATT12
Earlier this week, I was reminded by a friend that I had once gotten drunk in her apartment one morning while tagging along with the guy who was supposed to be house-sitting for her. At the time, I didn't really know her. We had a little laugh, and I got to thinking about the events that led to that glorious morning of Budweiser and Mickey's Big Mouth. For me, this was one of my first big-time experiences with a well-known firehouse phenomenon that I call "survival breakfast".
So, there I was.... in 1988. It was early fall, I was pretty close to two years in the fire department, and I was a live-in firefighter at my original station in North Woodbridge. We had a great crew of guys back in that day. There were no duty crews assigned to cover the overnight portion of the day, so after the duty crews left at 2400, it was live-ins from 2400 to 0700 every day of the week. Needless to say, we got to run a bunch of calls and we were very close. The call that led to the drinking in a stranger's-now-friend's apartment was a little fire in an outbuilding next to a fleabag motel, but the story started back in the summer.
It was a hot day, most likely a Saturday. As I recall, the uniform for the day would have been: 1. some sort of shorts, whether they be camos, sweats, running shorts or whatever; 2. some sort of tee-shirt, hopefully from a fire department somewhere, usually with no sleeves; and 3. some sort of baseball hat. On a Saturday, there would have been no actual duty crew, just a cobbled-together group of live-ins and people hanging around. Our leader was a guy named Harry, who at the time was a sergeant, aged about 24 and a superstar fireman like none who has been seen since. He had a girlfriend that he kept secret. It was a terribly kept secret. He would deny the relationship while making goofs like driving around in her car alone for no reason. He was driving her car this day. We all watched as he walked across the front ramp of the firehouse, jumped into the car and sped off to we-all-knew-where with a little "toot-toot" of the horn as if to say "See ya!". For my part, I was content to keep working on my car, smoking a few cigarettes, and enjoying the sunshine. About ten minutes after he left, I heard the squealing of tires, the massive over revving of a too-small engine, the squeal again, and then here comes Harry, driving way too hard for that car in particular and any car that wasn't his in general. He skids to a stop on the ramp and yells: "Load up! We're going to an auto fire". I think to myself, "Big fucking whoop. Why the crazy driving?" It turned out that while driving to his girlfriend's house, Harry had seen the fire, and came back to the firehouse. I pulled on my trusty camouflage pants and my three-quarter boots, and climbed onto the side of the engine. It would have been a guy named Ron driving, Harry was the boss, myself, my buddy Gordo and a dude named Billy. (Watch Billy carefully here, because this will be important for later) Thanks to Harry's driving (remember- this was pre-cellphones), we got a massive head start on the other engine that was eventually dispatched to this call. Like a five or eight minute jump. We got to the scene, the shoulder of an interstate highway, and find a 1970's era station wagon fully involved and a total loss. There is a small crowd of people standing around. Gordo and I pulled a line and quickly knocked the fire down, being careful to conserve water on our non-hydranted interstate. We ultimately gave up the line to Billy, as he was the senior man, and he wanted to get some nozzle time. Whatever. I lit up a smoke and went over to see why a crowd had gathered. Turns out that there had been fifteen (no shit, 15) people in the car, and the "crowd" were the occupants of the car. Wow. So, there was Billy finishing up the final extinguishment of the car. Harry told him to get up under the dash and make sure all of the fire was out. Billy promptly jumped into the front seat and, of note, made no bones about rubbing the back of his coat all over the burnt out front bench seat. He would grind right to lie down, grind left to sit back up, and grind right again so he could lie down again. Ostensibly, this was to get position to put the hoseline where he needed it. Really, these moves were made to get his coat as dirty as possible. Back in the day it was cool to get your gear as dirty as possible, and Billy was certainly taking care of business. When he got done, the back of his coat was a mess. Dirty was cool, but dirty like that was lame. It was like intentionally rubbing your gloves on your face to look "smoked up" after a fire. So we left what turned out to be a memorable call and went back to the house.
Fast forward to the fall. It had been a couple of months since the car fire. It would have been a weeknight. At about 0330, we are dispatched along with two other engines to a structure fire at the aforementioned fleabag motel on U.S. 1, right on the line between our first due and the first due of my current firehouse. Our crew is a guy named Jim who is driving, Harry was again the boss, Billy was the lead fireman, myself, a rookie named Robby, and a guy named Scott. Scott was a Navy Corpsman, and the best medic I have ever seen, bar none, but he was just starting as a firefighter, and was not certified. It turned out that the fire wasn't in the hotel, but in an outbuilding next to the hotel. The location of the fire is difficult, because the hydrants on that stretch of U.S. 1 are not well placed, and to get a water supply, a "split lay" is required. For the uninitiated, a split lay is where the attack pumper drops its supply hose someplace (usually an intersection) and goes to the fire, and a second pumper drops where the first one dropped and lays out to a hydrant. Water supply is achieved by hooking the second pumper's supply line to the hydrant, connecting the middle, and then the first pumper connects to its pump. This is a common fire department tactic, especially for us in this particular area. We were first there, and were going to be the attack pumper. Given the status of our crew, Harry told me to get off with Robby to drop the split lay and make sure that the connection was made. It would have been my assignment if we didn't have Robby and Scott with us. I watched as Robby pulled the line, and I helped him to get ready to receive the line from the second pumper, which was now coming up to us. Once I was satisfied that he would be able to finish the job himself, I ran up to where the building was on fire. Harry and Billy had already pulled an attack line and gone into the building. I put on an airpack and got ready to go in, but I didn't have another firefighter, so I walked up to the front door and stood with Scott, who was watching from outside. The building was 20' x 20' square, wood frame, looked like two rooms separated by an entrance hallway. Fire was blowing out of the front window on the left. Before I could do anything, stuff started to happen. The hoseline jumped, indicating that they had opened the nozzle inside, and I sighed, thinking that I was going to miss the good stuff. The fire didn't go down right away. It didn't go down at all. The line jumped again, indicating that the nozzle had been slammed shut. Weird. Billy appeared at the front door, with smoke cranking out from behind him. When he reached the door, he fell to his knees just past the threshold. I looked at his face, and his wide eyes seemed to fill the entire lens of his mask. He fell to his belly, and I saw that his entire back and his shoulders were on fire. Oh, shit! Before I could do anything, Harry's helmet came rolling out the door. Holy shit! I was getting close to Billy, who was rolling around on fire, when Harry came flying out the door at about waist-height, Superman-style, and pounced on Billy. Harry commenced to smother and beat out the flames on Billy. Billy seemed to be OK. Harry was pissed off and otherwise very agitated. And then up went the mighty cry: FUMBLE!!!! Scott took Billy away, and I grabbed the line, which Billy had dropped. Harry and I went into the building, this time with me on the nozzle. To get to the fire, it was ten feet in, turn left at the door, and hit it. We got pretty close. In 1988, our gear would not let us go where we go now, so we hit the fire we could see blowing out the door to the fire room, but didn't make much progress. Harry tapped me on the shoulder, said something like "Fuck this.", and then kicked at the wall on our left. I saw his plan right away, and we both kicked at the wall until we had a hole big enough to stick the nozzle through. I aimed the nozzle into the hole, opened up, and knocked the fire in the room down in a few seconds. Once fire wasn't shooting out the door, we got up from the hole in the wall and went into the room to finish up. We then worked on the inevitable fire in the attic for a few minutes before we got relieved. We went to check on Billy.
Billy was fine. All of the soot and other shit that he intentionally put on his coat during the car fire a few months ago had left him with a plasticized crust on his back and on his shoulders. Harry tells this part of the story much better than I do, and it works better in person with hand gestures, but it goes like this: Harry and Billy go in with a charged line. When you go into a fire, you are supposed to open the line for a second or two before you go in, so that any air trapped at the end of the line is released. Every time one charges a hoseline, some air is released before the water comes out. It was no different this time, except that Billy didn't open the line before he went in. Harry tells it this way: "He turned to face the door, opened the line and there was this hissing of air, and then the fire just said 'ARRRGH, FUCK YOU' and (arms making a grasping embrace) totally ate him alive.", which in English means that when he blew a bunch of fresh air on the fire, a big fireball shot out at him. This fireball set his coat on fire.
Sooo, we were happy Billy wasn't hurt, and we had a little laugh about how Harry jumped on him like SuperFly Snooka of the WWF, but after a while we all realized that we were pretty freaked out. We got back to the house at about 0700, turned the pumper over to our paidmen, and sat around looking at each other with that shared look of "wow, we almost got hurt there." Billy had to go to work. Scott too. Robby was leaving town. Harry suggested that he and I should go get drunk. I couldn't have agreed more. Without having showered, we walked down to the 7-11 on our block and bought about thirty beers. 18 Budweisers and 12 Mickey's as I recall. I was wondering where in the firehouse we were going to devastate that beer, when Harry said, "hey man, let's go to Sue's apartment and drink up there." At the time, I didn't know Sue very well, but once Harry explained that he was house-sitting for her, I was happy just to have someplace to go that was not the firehouse.
So we loaded up in my car and went to Sue's apartment, which was too-nicely-decorated for two dirty-assed firemen who were looking to get their drink on. We started drinking. We talked about what had happened. We laughed the laugh that you get to laugh when you know that you have been close to (and perhaps over) the edge and pulled it back in. I call this "survival breakfast". Survival breakfast is not necessarily a meal, and is not necessarily breakfast. It works whether it is beer in the morning, or is actual breakfast in the firehouse, or is a cigarette in the parking lot of a convenience store. It is a little moment where you realize that you have seen something bad, but you are glad to be alive. That feeling of being alive is a feeling of being not just alive, but very much alive. The probably-too-occasional opportunity to to these things is one of the best things about being in the fire department. Because of the location, this one was a little wierd. Once we were all drunked up, we went out on foot and had a little adventure in the Lake Ridge Giant, but that is for another post. Events like this were powerful learning experiences in my youth. It is amazing how well you can sleep with a dozen beers on board after fighting fire all night.
For the love of God, if you have read this far, please leave a comment. More to come soon, but until then, peace.
DTXMATT12
posted by DTXMATT12 at 9:26 PM
3 Comments:
Hahah I would have loved to see that. I can understand why you all would have been shaken up though.
Cool blog
I wonder what "survival breakfast" tastes like. Does everything have no taste? Or is it the opposite, you can really taste everything because you are so sensitive to what it feels like to be alive? Scott sounds like a cool dude. It sounds like being a corpsman is amazing preparation for being a good medic. Keep up the good work! I really enjoy reading your blog!
Memories... Back in the day it was considered bad form to clean your helmet. A nice coating of black was the sign of someone who had been around for a while. People complained about getting new clean helmets. I remember a day when someone I shall leave nameless (rhymes with hilly) got caught with his brand spanking new NewYorker leather helmet in the oven at 500 degrees.
anonymous, for me the breakfasts have no taste. I'm usually to busy trying to remember what happened or to hear my buddys version of what happened to think about the food, cig, whatever.
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