Seaside In The Rearview
Week before last, I’m at Poynette Village Hall after dinner, doing some work. The fire pager goes off and the run begins. The old Public Works pickup truck which sits in the Village Hall parking lot for just this purpose awaits my arrival. It is below zero so the summertime tearing the work shirt off as I run to the truck is not a thing. Nor, as I find out when I turn the key, is the truck. A mobile thing, that is.
It won’t start. Not even close.
Flip through the rolodex in my head for options. Run to the fire station? That will take five minutes and I’ll miss the first rig out the door. Run home and grab the Jeep? Three and a half minute run and sixty seconds of driving. Still might miss Engine 33’s departure. Hate is a strong word, but I hate missing fires.
A new card pops into my brainodex. Burst through the front door of the American Legion, which shares the Village Hall parking lot at night. “I need a ride to the fire station, now”, I shout to the assembled crowd of regulars at the bar. Standing there in my ridiculous yellow Mountain Hardware summit parka, the Legion collectively looks at me like Princess Leia looked at Luke at the door of her jail cell on the Death Star. Aren’t you a little … um, puffy for a firefighter?
The collective disbelief is palpable, so I go to the props. Holding up my radio strap and pointing to my Poynette Fire hat, I reissue the command with the preface, “Seriously (because saying that is key) I need a ride to the fire station, NOW”. Some beer-drinking dude throws his car keys to some other beer-drinking dude who is closer to the door, and out into the cold we go. Jump in the commandeered car and Dude #2 asks, “where is the fire station?”.
Recapping … Dude #2 has no idea where the fire station is. But he KNOWS where the beer is. “On Wisconsin” starts playing in my head.
Dude #2 gets me to the station in time to grab the nozzle seat on 33, and we head off to Lodi to turn into ice-covered stalagmites while keeping a garage fire from spreading to its attached house. At one point I was hustling a 24-foot ladder up the hill to the house on my own (as crews from other departments were doing the same with three firefighters) and overheard the “he’s our village administrator” refrain. That is a customary note on fire scenes, as being village administrator and firefighter is rare to the point that I have not heard of anyone else doing it.
Village Administrator for Poynette, and no longer also City Manager of Seaside. Seven months of flying out to Seaside and back each week while doing double duty as Interim City Manager for the best city looking out upon Monterey Bay (has that been renamed yet?) are done. They got a new guy and the joke goes – some guy from the Midwest out on the California coast alone … who thinks that is going to work? Bob Seger tried to warn us.
The joke is a joke because that is exactly what worked. Midwestern sensibilities and work ethic tends to work most everywhere. You can work us like dogs and we’re happy as can be. Seriously, have you ever seen sled dogs at work? Brutal conditions, but happily running for hours and days at a time. Some sleep. Some food. Let’s go. Work is huge fun.
Even the Quad City Times, laid low by negativity and snark as they were, took note. When the Davenport City Council approved my 2014 employment agreement the Times ran an editorial titled, “How About A Vacation?”. They opined, “Agree or disagree with Craig Malin's decisions. But few can challenge the Davenport City Administrator's work ethic. In addition to the big raise, the contract includes aldermen's insistence -- emphasized in italics -- that he take at least five consecutive vacation days each year.”
The last seven months of using my Poynette vacation leave to be in Seaside are over. It was a nice small chapter in the career, and I have no shortage of happy Seaside memories or United miles to use, but I am glad it is over. We did some good work, again. Filled key positions. Tossed negativity in the trash where it belongs. Moved developments forward. Took a day off and kidnapped some staff who had bever been to Yosemite to fix that. Made some Save Ferris hats for them to remember the day…
Took a couple hours off for a farewell party softball game, relearning that I will never be as stylish as Ted (front and center)...
Stylishly or naught, left Seaside better than I found it, again. And then drove back with the stereo and albums and other flotsam again, ticking off three national parks in the process.
I am now returned to Thursday night training meetings at the fire station, rather than marathon Thursday into Friday Seaside City Council meetings 2,000 miles from home. And I am also returned to the diesel-scented Zen of plowing snow off Poynette park and neighborhood paths, which I did this morning, while pondering what chapters might have been, and are yet to be.
Zen master that I am, I bashed my head into the tractor cab’s overhead console when the plow caught a curb and stopped much more immediately than my forehead. Copious blood, as head wounds tend toward, with a billboard-sized bandaid now on the forehead to advertise my tractor driving skill. Turned the bashing into art with a Roy Lichtenstein “BAM!” glued onto the bandaid, because taking injuries seriously is not really my thing.
My thing (or, at least one of them) is to be a full commitment, full-contact employee. Accordingly, there has been blood (including the non-metaphorical kind) spilled everywhere I have ever worked. A kinetic full-contact bursting through the door life is such. Welcome to the club, Poynette.
It is good to be home.
