None Too Slick

Schroeckenthal (sp?).  “Shrek”, for short.  Captain 2 Zach’s nickname.  But Schroeckenthal, in full, on the “butt tag”.  Butt tags are the last name tag that hangs off the bottom of the back of a firefighter’s jacket.  In theory, they are there so you know who is in front of you at a fire.  So you can yell their name, if you have to.

Which, in Shrek’s case would be (for me) “Captain!”.  For me, it would be Captain because my adult life has been thirty-plus years of chain of command responsibility doing the life improving and, in dire moments, life-saving work of municipal service.  When you call 911, your state representative does not show up.  Nor does your governor, congressman, senator or White House occupant, whomever they may be.  When you dial 911, police officers and / or firefighters and / or EMTs show up.  Sometimes, public works is not far behind. 

When you call 911, the people who show up to help have names, but they also have ranks, which have hopefully been assigned via competence and meritocracy into a team that can make whatever bad is happening into something a little less bad at a minimum; and into something good as a goal.   Some settling may occur, and your mileage may vary. 

In Davenport, I once jokingly asked that my city hall parking space be number 14 (Ernie Banks) and Public Works remembered that and skipped a few numbers when they repainted the parking lot to make my space 14.  Kinda cool.  Much appreciated.  In Seaside, I told Assistant City Manager Lesley the family joke about me always yearning to have a nickname, so long as that nickname was “Slick” (because nicknames have to be the opposite of who you actually are).  So, for my five-year anniversary, Seaside staff gave me a workshirt with a “Slick” nametag, which Lesley sewed on herself. 

Here's the (next in a never-ending cavalcade) embarrassing part.  When I would wear the shirt while doing some work in a Seaside park or something and people would say, “Thanks, Slick”, I would forget that I was wearing a shirt with a “Slick” nametag and think … “hey, that person thinks I’m slick.  Aren’t I swell?”

Truly unhinged, would have been a better nametag.  Or perhaps, bemused beyond repair.

So, anyhow, after you make it through probie purgatory, they think about investing in a butt tag for your jacket.  And I only mentioned this once and it’s not a big deal that it didn’t happen but wouldn’t it be cool if my butt tag was “Madalinski” – the name I was born with.   Because ... well, the longer the butt tag the more awesome it is and Madalinski is so much more characterful than Malin. 

But I suppose you can’t really have an inside baseball name joke in emergency services.  So the butt tag reads the same as the driver’s license and mortgage signature, not the birth certificate.  And Schroeckenthal still wins with four more letters than Madalinski, so I will somehow move on with my life.

Christmas, for example.  Second call of the day has me, James, Mitch, Lt. 2 Alan and Cpt. 1 Brandon up north of Portage at a house fire.  Pretty much a column of smoke as we arrive.  We split into two teams.  Lt. 2 Alan, Mitch and James man a hose on the A/B corner.  Me and Cpt. 1 Brandon report to a Portage Chief at the C/D corner.  The roof and exterior walls are gone and Cpt. 1 Brandon and me are assigned to go into the smoke column and take down a wall so that it doesn’t fall and trap someone.

Happy to have an assignment, it did not register with me in the moment to consider whether I could potentially be the “someone” the Chief was surmising might be injured or trapped by the wall we were tasked to knock down.  This mission focus stuff is going to get me in trouble, someday.  Anyway, Cpt. 1 and me take two steps into the smoke that used to be a house and lose sight of each other.  And where our pike poles are pointing.  And our hands in front of our faces, for that matter.  Cannot.  See.  A thing. 

But Cpt. 1 was (raising my right hand) over there, and the wall should be (left hand pointing in front) I do not know – thataway so … keep the pike pole pointing thataway and not … over there.  I do not want to leave the smoke plume with a Captain shish kabob.  A game of Marco / Polo thus commences whilst on the mission to find the wall of doom.  I have not been this disoriented since Sammy Haggar took over for David Lee Roth.

The smoke is all-enveloping but every ten seconds or so the wind will change velocity or direction for a quarter second in such a way that there will be an eye-blink of semi-clarity for a few cubic feet.  There will be a moment where I see the sky or maybe a foot or two of the pike pole I'm carrying.  Then, in the next instant, fully blinded by grey smoke.  Not to get too esoteric, but it is a simulation of being.  Fog of uncertainty beyond your control interspersed by intelligible moments.  I am of course aware it is Christmas, and this is somebody's house and belongings being carried away in the wind on Christmas Day and that is terrible.  But the immersive smoke swirling about has a gossamer quality that is visually mesmerizing.  

Anyway, it turns out that converting blind steps forward over smoldering jetsam into theoretical interior design features is not an exact science.  But the Chief said there was a wall in here so keep going.  Step.  Step.  Step into a hole, almost fall.  Step some more.  Marco?  Captain? 

Here it is!  Stud wall on fire.  Can’t see where it starts or stops and not all that interested in the feng shui anyway.  Captain has found it too, but our pike poles are overmatched, and too long given the smoke to see where they are poking if we step back to try some physics.  So we just muscle the flame-weakened wall into submission.

Threat neutralized, we turn on our heads-up display compasses and plot a course back to the Chief, standing outside in the clear air.  When I say “heads-up display”, I mean where our memories think we came from.  Which works, reasonably well.   

Mission complete, both Poynette Fire teams finish up some hose work before being sent off to rehab, where former Cpt. 1 Lexin (now on Portage Fire full-time and working EMS at the fire) takes our pulse and reminisces about his volunteer days.  After clearing rehab, we collect our tools and head back to Engine 31.  We walk past some firefighters I don’t recognize from another mutual-aid department and their Chief shouts, “even the officers carrying tools” as a mark of respect.  Back at Engine 31, we stand in the snow on the side of the road and hose the soot off our tools and turnouts, no one complaining about standing in the cold, in a wet t-shirt, on Christmas Day.

If you came looking for the metaphor, you have a few to choose from.  On Christmas Day, someone’s house burned down.  A bunch of people showed up to do what they could.  It was not enough, because time does not slow down to give homes miles from hydrants - out in the country - a fighting chance. 

If anything, as time presses forward, it seems to speed up.  Engine 33 replaces Engine 31 as our first responding engine.  Brandon replaces Lexin as Captain 1.  James, Lexi and Pete replace me as the department’s probie, and Adolfo,  Morgan and Jerry replace James, Pete and Lexi as probies as James, Pete and Lexi are voted off probation. 

Wasn’t it just yesterday that Captain Lexin was telling probie me to always take a tool when I left the rig?  Now Lexin is on his way to being Chief at Portage and I am telling probies to take tools with them (and not worry too much about whether it is the perfect tool).    There is some metaphor there, and it has something to do with time appearing to speed up as it compresses.  Don’t read too much into that, except an understanding that the metaphoric Malin butt tag will one day be lost to sight not in the smoke of a fire but in the haze of time itself.

Here's my life lesson; embarrassingly unslick as it may be.  It was Christmas Day, which meant the Portage Dairy Queen was closed.  Thus we could not stop for ice cream, as we traditionally do on the way back to the station after helping Portage with a fire.  Not to dismiss the pleasures of the flesh … er, tongue of dairy state life, but it is probably not so much the ice cream itself that we seek on the way back home, but the moments of camaraderie dripping from cones and Blizzard cups. 

But it was Christmas Day, and we had family to get back to.  

What a gift, that is.