Make it Happen

James can’t see.  While being blind could in other circumstances be a serious problem, here it is a semi-amusing inconvenience.  “Here” happens to be Portage, Wisconsin, where James, Captain 1 Brandon and me have spent our Wednesday nights since January. 

Portage is achingly depressing these days but it once was the center of new world commerce.  It was basically the Strait of Hormuz when the world ran not on liquid dead dinosaurs but beaver pelts.  A mile and a half portage connected two rivers (today the Fox and Wisconsin) which made canoe transport possible between the Great Lakes and Mississippi River.  Portage was a big deal in the 1600s. Then somebody invented trains and interstates.

Today they are known for a state prison and a tired downtown.  They bill themselves as the place “Where the North Begins”.  Which would be funny if either, A) you don’t think too hard about how that could have possibly been the best slogan the committee came up with or, B) the entry sign on the north side of town said, “Where the South Begins”.   Maybe next to a Chic-fill-A. 

No such luck, though.  In a state renowned for killer ice cream, it has a Dairy Queen.  

Back to James, who is blind.  It is the end of FIRECE 47503743, otherwise known as Driver/Operator - Pumper.  The class “prepares participants to perform fire apparatus maintenance, driving, positioning, operating/pumping and testing functions. It provides the Driver/Operator-Pumper candidate with information needed to meet job performance requirements by the National Fire Protection Association.”  You wanna drive a fire engine screaming down Broadway for FDNY?  You take the same class, and pass the same tests.

We have already completed the fire engine obstacle course and water pumping tests, where you are given various scenarios for X number of hoses Y feet long needing water at Z gallons per minute and I have run out of letters pressure and are told ever so-helpfully, “Make it happen.”  You stand at a panel of levers, knobs and dials Willy Wonka could not imagine and produce aquatic splendor.  That was then.  Now, we are completing the driving test. 

But this ain’t Broadway.  It ain’t broad at all.  It is a twenty-eight foot wide dead-end street in a sterile, treeless townhome subdivision under construction that James drove us into.  “Us” is James, me,  Cpt. 1 Brandon and two test proctors.  Good dudes, who have been firefighters for decades, and don’t want just anyone at the wheel or pump panel.  We need to meet the standard or practice some more and try again next time. 

James has finished his driving exam and we are swapping seats so I can start mine.  Engine 31 is our reserve engine, but she has the best driving dynamics of any of our rigs.  She’s 10’2” tall, weighs 46,500 pounds and can flow 1,510 gallons per minute at 150 psi at 1,365 rpm.  Need more flow or pressure?  She’s governed to 2,400 rpm.  She may not sing like the 9,000 rpm redline 1LR-GUE in an LFA, but she’ll bellow a fine humpback whale song for as long as you need her to while getting the wet stuff to the red stuff. 

None of that really describes the current problem, though.  I am at the wheel of a 32’5” long whale that needs to be turned around on a 28’ wide street.  With a blind spotter.  With two test proctors genuinely amused at the predicament. 

James is blind because there is a thunderstorm blowing in from where the Chic-fill-A should be and it just so happens to have a wall of wind preceding it that has created a shamal at this very moment in this under-construction dirt-filled no cul-de-sac townhome hellscape geometry problem. 

Try not to laugh.  The test proctors might take it the wrong way.

Apply air brake grab my safety glasses open the door and hand them to James.  Don’t know it in the moment but I’ll be spitting grit out of my teeth until morning for the three breaths I took in the dust storm.  Climb back in, release the air brake and start solving the geometry problem. 

Get her turned around and set the air brake again (it is a state test and I am on my best behavior) as Pig Pen climbs in and buckles up in back.  Double check James is buckled and release the air brake.  Look over to Proctor 1 in the officer’s seat and say in the most deadpan I have ever deadpanned, “Would you like to go to the eye of the storm, or just flirt around the edges.”

I think that was the moment I passed.

In two (back to back) classes, it has been ten months of Wednesday nights and sporadic Saturdays and Sundays learning fire craft.  On top of Thursday night drills and calls and community events the department participates in.  Which is by no means complaint. 

Learning craft tends strongly toward art.  Where a new skill meets a new need and creativity is applied, art results. 

Art is life.  Make it happen.