Ironic in some weird sense

…on a hot afternoon I was standing in line at our local D.Q. I had ordered a ice cold fresh fruit strawberry milkshake, my absolute favorite. I could hear them blending the ingredients and could almost feel the cool creaminess melting down my throat already. Some people I knew ran through the stores door and immediately recognized me. In small rural communities everybody knows everybody else living in the surrounding area. They knowing I was a fireman, with a puzzled look on their faces, asked, Bill why aren’t you down at the big fire. Catching me off guard a bit with that statement of “Big Fire” I muttered where.

They lead me outside and pointed south down the main drag. I didn’t see any fire; I saw a huge black column of smoke billowing high into the August sky. Leaping into my van and squealing out of the parking lot I head towards where the excitement would be. Every fireman knows where there is a huge column of smoke you too will find fire to play with somewhere under it. I slid into the graveled parking lot at almost the same time the engineer activated the air brakes on the responding fire engine. Pulling my spare set of turn-outs from my van and quickly getting dressed, I wondered to myself, how did this fire, in the middle of the afternoon get so big before someone reported it? It was an old church that had been turned into a funeral home. The funeral home director’s mobile home was positioned only a few feet away from the main building. The old sanctuary was already heavily engulfed with flames. Each licking flame was launching hundreds of hot embers into the dry grass, brush, and other residences surrounding the burning structure. Pulling the chin strap on my fire helmet tight I knew we had to knock the dragon out of this one. On a cooler day we might have went into the “surround and drown” mode, but not today. It was too explosive outside on that hot afternoon to let the dragon take his time burning this landmark down. If we couldn’t take some heat out of this one, it was going to light more stuff on fire.

The engineer hands me the nozzle for the pre-connect and I start making some decisions. I didn’t want the flames to creep into the funeral home residence so I advanced with my charged hose line and positioned myself in the narrow passageway between this hot demon and the house. As with most rural volunteer fire departments across our country it sometimes takes a while for additional volunteer firefighters to muster. This was the case that day, so I was going one on one with the beast that hot afternoon. We had a luxury today that we normally don’t have at most rural fires, we had a fire hydrant to draw the “Wet Stuff” from. Knowing this, I pulled open the bale on my nozzle wide and let this unruly demon have a big drink. With the large sanctuary room on my right, it was split by a hallway of sorts.

Across the hall way was the old Sun day school rooms turned into a mortuary, ironic to me in some weird sense.  I figured I would sneak down this long hallway with my hose line spewing the way, I’d try and keep this dragon away from the already perished across the hall. Heavens knows they had already had a bad week, why let the devil have any of them early. I remember slowly advancing; the hose line was heavy, as I kept nudging the beast backwards. Gradually I fight my way to the edge of the auditorium some fifty or sixty feet inside the building, the mood inside was surreal. The high vaulted ceiling gave way to the deep blue sky today. The beast had already busted to the outside. The smoke wasn’t actually too heavy inside. Through a red hue I could clearly see the pulpit, the pews all lined up and the stained glass windows across the room. Talk about fire and brimstone. With my back pressed against the wall leading into the mortuary rooms I felt myself becoming almost spell bound. It was beautiful in there, in some thwarted way. The flames would whorl around the room and then suddenly leap out through the hole in the roof. The whole while I’m pouring hundreds of gallons of water on this amazing creature, I flash back, dang I left my strawberry shake. Looking skyward I can see the beautiful summer blue sky through the jagged burnt roof, interspersed with my now billowing white smoke. I noticed the huge wooden beams holding the sanctuary roof up seemed to almost be bouncing. I could see the accumulated dust rolling off of them and then mixing with the smoke. Under my breath I giggled to myself, boy they probably never dusted way up there before.

The next thing I remember, I was pressing hard against the skirting around the mobile home outside. With the nozzle shut down, I was holding it next to my face with my teeth gritted real tight. Every muscle in my body was tensed as I lay there in the fetal position on the ground. Just then four or five fire guys came running through the narrow passageway. Sprinting over to me they screamed, are you ok? The whole inside of the fiery sanctuary had collapsed in on itself. To this day I have no idea how I made the journey from so far inside the structure to the outside, still holding the fire hose in my hands and turning the nozzle off in the process.

Another example of “when it’s your time to go, you'll go and when it’s not, you won't”. Driving back to the D.Q. afterwards I splurged on an extra large strawberry shake that day, I had earned it.