Band of brothers

My new department was definitely not something I was used to. We actually hung out at the station, put our gear next to the truck so when a call came out we would be ready to walk into whatever the problem was, we hung out together outside the station...we were a team. When you're a young fireman, one of the coolest things to bring around the fire station is a pretty girl you just happen to be talking to. You want her to see what you do with your spare time, and you want your buddies to see who's been keeping you up at night when calls haven't. Most of us have done this a time or two in our lifetime. Even if they're not the girl that you're talking to, just bringing girls around the station is a welcomed change of pace. It would give us something else to look at other than each other, and a slightly different means of entertainment. I know what you are thinking, and we were respectful and professional. Most evenings, after the paid firemen had left, and most nights were spent in the small common room in the back watching tv, talking about everything, and busting each others ass. Even this didn't entertain us fully, small prank wars would usually start off right about this time. They were virtually harmless and once all was finished, we made sure to clean up any evidence. We never really had to stay at the station, but we did just so we didn't have to go home or respond from our home, we could just respond in the firetruck. Most of our calls were fire alarms or medical. We got the occasional car fire, woods fire, or house fire but it always seemed to happen all at once. We provided mutual aid to the departments south of us and to the one north of us, the one that I came from, so there was generally always something to do. 

The state of Mississippi, a volunteer fireman can run red lights on the streets and highways, as long as he's going to a call of course. The first time I returned a red light on to respond to a call in the southern area before I was ever a member of that particular department, some lady in an SUV decided to jerk her car almost completely off the road. I didn't run lights in my truck after that for quite some time. It actually took me a year and a half to run lights after that. Once I got with my present department, I began to run lights a little bit more. Any volunteer fireman who's been doing this since the 90s can remember the old interior rotating lights. By the early 2000's, strobe technology was hot. However, it didn't take long for strobe technology to begin to fade away when LED became popular. One of My Christmas presents in 2005 was an LED dash light. I was high-tech now!! I took a class on emergency vehicle driving, which helped me respond to calls in my personal vehicle even better. It also gave me the opportunity to begin driver training in the fire trucks for when I turned 21. But at this point that was still quite a few months away. 

Things still hadn't gotten completely back to normal since the hurricane. A lot of businesses and restaurants closed by 10 PM. The only places that would really be open around where I live were the waffle house and Taco Bell. As a young fireman, and working at the scrapyard with my uncle and his friends, I ate waffle house WAY too much! That doesn't go to say that I gained quite a bit away from eating there, but that I developed a strong intolerance for their food for a long time. The first trips to Taco Bell before 2 AM were something similar to when a brand-new restaurant opens that has never seen your town before. I saw shorter lines at Kmart when I was a kid. What was worse is that the lobby was closed, this line was in the drive-through! How these people didn't cause a traffic accident is beyond me, except for the fact, that at 2 a.m,  no one was out on the road. That didn't stop us from going and sitting in line to get a late night meal when we just weren't ready to go to bed. 

It didn't take long for me at the car wash, doing windshield repairs, to realize that the money was never going to be as good as promised. It didn't take me long after that to realize that the money I was getting wasn't going to pave the way for something more. By Christmas 2005, I was unemployed. I had never been unemployed without first securing another job since I was a teenager. It wasn't that scary of a concept at the time, but it wasn't something that I did or planned to do on a regular basis. My unemployment didn't last long, I had heard from friends that a warehouse in the same town as the car wash and scrap yard needed help. It wasn't exactly the town that I wanted to be in, but it was a job. They were either really needing someone to fill the position, or I just dazzled them with my personality because I was hired almost on the spot. It was an industrial tool warehouse. They sold handtools and power tools to the fabricators and handymen around town and in the surrounding areas. My daily routine would be pulling orders, stocking the shelves, and delivering to those that could not make it to where we were located. My delivery route was primarily Mobile Alabama and surrounding areas. It was one of the easiest jobs I've ever had in my life, I can't stress this enough. 

This was January 2006, A winter not as cold as some that I have lived through, but it wasn't Miami Florida. I met a girl from out-of-town that happened to be tagging along with a friend who had some serious eyes for another guy in the fire department. She looked like she needed somebody to hang around with, so I moved in to try and be that person. It worked, And it only took a day for us to be VERY interested in each other. As a young fireman and sort of a hopeless romantic, you often think about pulling up to a house fire with your girlfriend, throwing your gear on, and giving her what may possibly be a last kiss before you run off into the flames. After spending half of the day roaming around with these two girls doing whatever came to our minds, we rested our trip that evening at fire station. That night, there had to have been a dozen members and guests just hanging around. All conversations ceased when the alert tone came over the radio and the dispatcher told us we had a house fire. It was assholes, elbows, and every body running around to get to either their vehicle, or the fire trucks. Since I couldn't take them on the firetruck, we just piled up in mine and lit out. Pulling up on scene, I got to give away that very kiss before marching up to the driveway with my friend, Mike. Him and I seemed to be a pair when it came to fighting fire. From that kiss on, I was hooked. Writing back to the station that night meant two things, That we had saved most of the house, but that she would be leaving in just a couple short hours. Some young men wait a lot of their life just to be able to wrap their arms around a girl. I got to do that very thing, and she would be leaving me shortly. I would talk to her the entire ride home and quite a few hours of the day and night the entire week we were apart. Each weekend, from then on, either she was here or I was up there. 

The beaches had open back up on the coast, which meant everyone that had been cooped up in their homes for weeks was out on it seeing what  progress had been made. I had friends in a local car club, and that seemed like a decent way to spend Friday nights that I was around. The rest were spent quite a bit farther north than where I lived, with the girl I was seeing at the time. All we really did with the car club was sit on the beach until the cops ran us off, then we would migrate to a nearby sonic that we had not yet pissed off and would stay until close. We were not philosophers by any stretch, but we did all have life lessons and words of wisdom to share among each other. If you paid attention, cared enough, and had an open mind, the things that were said out of heart could only boost your personality in the long run. 

There was a burn ban in effect for months after the hurricane, it seemed like forever. Did that stop fireman from lighting a fire in a cleared plot out in the woods? NOPE! When the car club wasn't happening, we would gather up all the firewood we could find, load up everyone's four wheelers, head out to a spot in the woods, light a fire and do what we did best. There was a certain spot we liked to go to behind the high school where not a whole lot of people would mess with us. Even the cops out there didn't mess with us too much, they all knew who we were and where we were from. I remember one night, pulling up to a bonfire that someone had already set, telling them that there was a burn ban in effect and that they would probably all go to jail, then taking over the bonfire ourselves and finishing out the night. I never said we didn't do dumb shit. The next morning, we were all woken up to quite a surprise. The very location we had been the night before with a bonfire, was now the location of a woods fire. Uhhhh, whoops! Turns out though, that it wasn't actually our fire that started this, it was a vehicle that had been left there by someone well after we had been gone. The vehicle had been set on fire which calls the woods to catch on fire after a burst of wind. I'm pretty sure that's the first time I had ever let a woman drive my truck without me in the passenger seat. Needless to say, I kept my eye on the back window of the firetruck the entire time. 

Driving back-and-forth between my home and the town that I worked in was a slight strain on my bank account. I had heard friends talking about needing help in their company that installed garage doors. The office was closer. The work didn't seem any easier, but it was a new skill to learn. So I did the respectable thing to do, put in like two weeks notice at the warehouse, and started work three weeks after that installing garage doors. Installing garage doors isn't rocket science, it's a fairly easy, repetitious process. I learned a lot in this trade. We screwed off a lot while we are on the job or driving back-and-forth, but we did our jobs well and we did them in a timely manner. We always remained professional for the customers though. Some of the hours weren't all that ideal. We would come in at roughly 6 o'clock in the morning and sometimes not get back to the shop until 6 o'clock that evening. It all just depended on how many doors we had to put up that day and where they were. I'm not sure if I was just missing the employment I had before at the warehouse, or if the guy they put me with when it was all said and done was an idiot, But I began to realize that may be the warehouse was where I belonged. So, I contacted the warehouse manager and the owner and they agreed that I was a good fit for them. I went back 2 weeks later. 

My decision to go back to the warehouse came with a decision to try living at my moms again. That decision came with the question of whether a long distance relationship was really what I needed. I ultimately decided that it wasn't and attempted to break the news to the girl I was seeing. I've come to learn that sometimes, want to girl is in love with you, they will do and say things in an attempt to keep you around. These actions and words could be good or bad, but rest assured, they may be on their way. I don't with quite a bit of that on both sides. One day would be arguing and fighting, the next day it would be promises and future. You can pretty much count on your phone blowing up as well. I did what I had to do to get past it and I moved on. I tried staying with my mother again, which proved to work a little better this time since the fire department was the only tie that I had in Mississippi. At this point, I was even considering living in Alabama permanently. I would go on calls when I was in the area, but while I was in Alabama, I would assist a small volunteer department on the Mississippi side of the state line. Because of their low volunteer base, they were pleased with my assistance. I would mainly visit home on the weekends, and run calls whenever possible. It was around this time that MySpace was quite popular. Everybody seemed to have one. I was a little behind the times, but I signed up and began to discover old friends from different periods of life. I wasn't really on the hunt for a new girlfriend, I just wanted someone to put my arm around. A lot of people around me seemed to be buying four wheelers, and I had wanted one for a long time. I marched right down to the Suzuki dealer and walked out with a brand-new four wheeler. It was only brand-new for two hours before I had it sunk, fender deep, in mud. It was on, from there on out. Weekends were usually spent on four wheelers on whatever trail we found around home, and places that other people with four wheelers had been going. It was even a welcomed invitation to a lot of girls! They love the four wheelers! I accomplished my objectives of finding a girl or some girls to put my arm around, That turned out to be a little more trouble than I bargained for.  We lived, we rode, we fought fire together. A band of brothers enjoying life as it was given to us. We knew that the days may not always be in our favor, we were just enjoying the good moments that we had.