Posted via m.livejournal.com.

Posted via m.livejournal.com.

Well, on Sunday I was on the northeast side of town at our local fail!Joann Fabrics, picking up fabric for a last-minute Halloween commission (one of my co-workers wanted to come to work as William Wallace in Braveheart), and my dad called me.  Now, for the record, Dad never calls me*, so when he does, I make quick in answering the phone.

"What's on fire?" he said.  Dad is not known for messing around when in phone conversation -- he hates talking on the things.  Typical guy, you know how it goes.

"Huh?  Nothing, so far as I'm aware.  What's going on?"

"Something near your house is on fire, and I was curious if you knew what was burning.  We're on our way to check it out -- it's pretty impressive."

"Uh, Dad, it's not my actual house, is it?"

Dad chuckled.  "No, it's not your house...I would have mentioned that right off the bat if it was your place."

"If that's the case, I'll join you in checking it out."

Well, he was absolutely correct.  It wasn't my house -- it was an insulation company within a half-mile of my house.  It was the largest fire I've seen in person in quite some time.  Dad and Bitz had been coming out of church on the northwest side of town when they saw the smoke plume, and Dad being Dad**, he was extremely interested in scoping the whole situation out.  He managed to find an exceptionally good vantage point across West Jefferson Boulevard, where I met up with them.  I sat in their car and Dad told me all about the tactics the different fire personnel were using, the difference between a variable-nozzle hose and a smooth-bore nozzle, his estimation of how many gallons of water per minute were being pumped, how modern bunker gear has evolved from what he used to use back in his firefighting days, some of the situations in which he was nearly killed, different attack techniques for different fire situations, and so on.  I'm sure Bitz was bored to tears, but I was fascinated***...I rarely get to hear tales of Dad's firefighting experiences and I was so young when he was on the fire department I can't really remember it****. 

I told Dad that one day soon, I plan to schedule a day for just the two of us to sit down with a tape recorder and let him go on about his firefighting experiences.  I'd like to transcribe those recordings and make copies of both the voice recording and the transcription to give to the local Firefighter's Museum, the Smithsonian, and the Library of Congress.  While the latter two will undoubtedly stick the recordings and transcripts somewhere in their basements, someone somewhere might eventually do research on a really nifty transitional time in the history of American firefighting and might find Dad's oral history useful.



*I think the last time Dad called me was in 2009 when we were coordinating travel for my brother's wedding.

**Dad was on the New Haven, Indiana volunteer fire department back from the late 1970s until the late 1980s, so he was on the department while it transitioned from a small VFD to combined FD/EMS service and the study of fire science really started to make headway.  By the time he retired from the FD, he was their photographer and arson investigator in addition to his other duties on the FD.

***I cheerfully admit that I adore and hero-worship my dad to the point that if he asked me to jump off a cliff, I'd do it, no questions asked. 

****Let me put it this way...I was young enough for most of his FD service that I remember imagining that Dad's bunker pants would suddenly start walking on their own a la Bedknobs and Broomsticks.