Everybody Needs a Hand From Time to Time

I struggled with myself wondering whether telling this next story would be appropriate. I finally decided to share this particular adventure because I would like you to know how taxing some of the situations can be for your volunteer or paid emergency personnel and how they have developed a way of coping.  They use humor that may make them appear less sensitive than they truly are. I have responded to a number of calls that left me physically drained for days; saddened me for months and even some events that changed my life forever. After responding to a particularly gruesome tragedy, you have to be able to step back into your real life and function in your own family even though you may still feel only half normal. I can remember many times when my own children, having fallen down and skinned up a knee badly while playing outside, would come running into the house bawling. If I had just returned from a gory accident where someone had almost lost a leg, where it had been barely held on by some loose skin, it could be hard for me to relate to why my offspring was making such a big fuss over their little "boo-boo." For me to be able to cope after seeing some of the tragic things I have seen in my life, I have had to become emotionally toughened...

It was over a hundred degrees that summer afternoon when the call came in to assist a man and wife who had been traveling back home after a pleasant day visiting the Redwoods. The return road trip was quite curvy and the lady was feeling car-sick. With her eyes closed, she rested her head on her arm leaning out the open window of the passenger's seat to let some cooler air blow across her sweating brow. What caused the husband to careen off the highway, I will never know. But the front fender of the passenger side clipped a massive Douglas fir tree and the car's momentum carried it, scraping hard, along side the car. With her head resting slightly outside the car window, the tree struck her head and bounced it back into the vehicle.

When we arrived on scene, it was a complete chaotic mess. Passing motorists had parked sideways in the road all over the place. First, we had to close the highway so our rescuers and good Samaritans wouldn’t get run over by some gawking "lookie-loo’s" speeding by on the blind corner. Whenever we are extricating a patient from a vehicle, we always wear all our heavy turn-out gear for protection from sharp metal fragments and on this summer day the temperature made that gear almost intolerable. Even though the car had hit this massive tree, it still had not come to rest very far off the roadway. The tourists like to see these ancient, humongous trees up close when they are traveling, so Oregon lets them grow almost next to the side of the road in this section of our highway.

Even with all the surrounding confusion and noise along the busy highway, we could clearly hear the lady screaming in unimaginable pain. I rushed down the slight embankment into loose gravel in the roadside ditch to get to her. I could see that her arm had been smashed completely off just above the elbow where the car had struck the tree and skidded against it before coming to a jarring stop. She was bleeding profusely which I attempted to stem by applying a field dressing. I was not able to make her listen to me, “Hold Still!” “Hold Still!” because she was too panicked by her situation and a serious head injury. My comrades kept passing me huge wads of absorbent bandages as I tried to pack her horrific wound and stop the arterial bleeding. Holding the top of her upper arm firmly with one hand I tried to hold the dressing on her torn stump with my other hand, but she was actually picking my 200 pounds off the ground with the strength her panic and adrenaline had given her.

My boys were working hard to cut her out of the car with the Jaws of Life while I continued trying to stem the flow of her life’s blood. Carefully, methodically, they finally got her freed and she was packaged up for the ambulance, fighting us the whole time. I have never seen (before or since) such a small lady throw so many burly firemen around, but she was ultimately secured and loaded into the waiting ambulance. There is a Cardinal EMT Rule not many people know about that simply states… If you have a patient, he or she leaves the scene with all of his/her respective pieces and parts. So in this case, the relevant question was where was the arm?

The ambulance needed to rush her to the hospital, but it waited while we began looking around frantically for the missing appendage. I was too physically and emotionally exhausted from wrestling with the woman to look for it. I stubbled back onto the highway and began stripping off my sweat-soaked turnouts before I passed out from the heat. I was bent double, with my sweat dripping off my head, my hands trembling on my knees, mentally running on empty when somebody tapped me on my sweat soaked shoulder. I instinctively turned around to retrieve what I assumed would be one of our extrication tools needing to be put away. I stood up and turned around with my hands out into which an ordinary citizen tried to place the lady's amputated arm. I had been the one screaming just a few minutes before, “Find the arm, find the arm!!” I guess the man just figured that when he found the arm lying in the leaves in the ditch, I was the one who wanted it. I reflexly swore at him, “WHAT the HELL!!! Take it to the ambulance!!!!” I doubt I will ever forget the color of the finger nail polish on that “smuffy blue” amputated arm. I did learn later that the lady did survive her injuries, but her arm had been too badly damaged to be reattached. I have struggled with the memory of this call that has remained trapped in my mind for many years.

To the general public, we firefighters may sometimes seem quite callus because we tend to joke around with each other a lot. When on scene we are trained to be professional and certainly not to curse at the helping public. Back at the station though, it is quite a different story. When asked later about this crash, "Blaze, how were you able to find that lady’s arm?" I would tell them, "Well, there I was standing in the middle of the roadway when I heard something. I yelled for everyone to be quiet. With all of us listening intently we could hear a snapping sound coming from the ditch along the highway. Creeping towards the faint noise we saw, covered in leaves, the hand snapping its fingers trying to get our attention." Sounds awful? Well maybe, but by making light of the gruesome things we see, we learn to cope with gruesome reality. We make jokes to help deal with some things that are otherwise pretty difficult to talk and think about.

Write about your Tales

For anyone who has ever hiked through the Redwood Forest you know the majesty one feels when just walking down one of it's fern laden trails.  Now add the bugling of six bull elk during the rutting season in full swing, in the meadow that unfolds below us.  Hearing the occasional clash of horns between these giants of the herd for dominance of a harem of cow elk of their own.  These are the sights, sounds and majesty that Larrieann, myself and Stryker enjoyed this past weekend during our first real venture out in the new travel trailer. 

Both Stryker and I watched the battles from a safe distance behind a guardrail.  We made Larrieann venture out for the Marlin Perkins pictures.

We headed south to the Northern California coast towards the Avenue of the Giants.  We only made it as far south as the little town of Orick, CA nestled along Highway 101.  While getting Larrieann her morning coffee fix at one of the local coffee houses we learned what Orick meant in the Yurok Indian language from our friendly hostess.  Orick means "the sound of the tree frog".  Now say it to yourself "Orick", yep it sounds exactly like the sound that a tree frog does make, amazing but more importantly for me, interesting. 

Part of the reason I take the time to write some of my crazy stories is because nobody sits around a warm campfire and passes stories down from generation to generation anymore.  As a society we have become too fast paced and much of our rich history is lost when our older generations move on into the next world.  How I wish I had been clever enough to write down some of Grandma Mary's stories while she was still telling them.

Near the mouth of the Klamath River, home to the Klamath Indian tribe we watched as an elder cooked fresh, caught that same morning, salmon steaks on thin Redwood skewers pushed into the sand next to a bed of coals fueled by dry Madrone and Alder wood.  I noticed the older gentleman was wearing a shirt with a fire department logo on it and made mention I too was a firefighter.  Within a few minutes he handed both Larrieann and I some of his freshly roasted salmon hot from the coals saying "brother, try some of my fish".  It was simply put, delicious. Someday soon we are going to try his technique next to a Beaver Hollow campfire.  While I have never been a fisherman I may have to take up the sport just so I can help make sure this Indian tradition carries forward.

Stryker and I will both be ready for our next adventure in a few weeks but first we are needing to rest up a bit along a sandy ocean beach of course.

Spray me in the Face

Crazy things are always occurring on fire scenes and when you stop and look back at a particular incident, you wonder how anybody avoided getting hurt or killed...

Like the time we had this huge barn fire—this barn was really big, burning like a fuddrucker and it was full of penned-up pigs. We aggressively attacked this fire letting the pigs that had survived out of the pens as we advanced our way through the length of this flame-engulfed old barn. What seemed like an hour later, I came out the far end of the barn into the daylight with my fire hose still spraying water. I was double-dog exhausted. One of the very few women in our department came up to me and asked if I would like to take a short break, get a cold drink of water, while she would keep wetting-down some of the smoldering debris nearby. I quickly relinquished my fire nozzle to her.

I no sooner had turned to go get refreshment when I heard her scream at the top of her lungs. Whirling back around towards the noise, she was no where to be found. Almost in a panic, I desperately searched for her. Just then I saw her bob up out of a pig poop-laden puddle of water. Unbeknownst to us, at the end of this barn there was a big open holding tank where the farmer would wash all the pig poop from the barn. He would dilute it with water and then spray it onto his fields as fertilizer. Cheryl had fallen into this pit of pooh. If Mother Nature had not endowed her so generously with her two built-in personal floatation devices, I think she may have drowned.

She was screaming for me to help her out of the mess, but I didn’t want to actually have to touch her. For God's sake, she was drenched in thick pig poop. Finally helping her out of the vat of rancid pooh, she kept screaming, “Spray me in the face! Spray me in the face!” I must admit I did enjoy spraying her in the face with the fire hose— while I was laughing my ass off.

A Mother's Worry Never Ends

Awhile back I wrote on my blog about one of the ladies I work with, son had been hurt over in Afghanistan, here's an update from Roo.

Hey billy blaze

June 16t 2010 at 6:45 a.m. I got the call from my son Brad that my oldest son Daniel has been hurt, and the military was calling his next of kin list to let us know. I thought the whole world had just fallen out from underneath me. I couldn't believe it. I sat on my bed hugging my pillow and crying into the phone that they were wrong it was a mistake. My husband tried to take the phone from me but I couldn' let go of it. I couldn't let Brad hang up until I knew Daniel was ok. Brad had to go to his NCO to prepare for the news if it were bad.  All the military would tell us is that they will keep us up dated over a secure email.
Hours went by with no word.

24 hours passed before I got the up date that Daniel was ok. For three days that is all the military would us. He's ok. So now that my son has come home for some rest and recop. I can tell you all what really happened. My son and his crew were sent out to clear bombs up country. Shortly before leaving to go up country they did their equipment check and found that the thing (sorry I can't remember what he called the thingy) but the bomb detecting thing that is on the front of their truck was broke so they went to their NCO and let her know. She told the guys to remove it and go anyways. Daniel said "No" and then got into a fight with her. Ok keep in mind that this NCO's went from college to combat. She hadn't been in a war or fire fight before. Daniel spent two years in Iraq and was in 24 out of 27 active fire fights. Daniel knew that removing the bomb detector was against the regulations and confronted her. But she is his boss so they left to go up country with the broken vehicle.

The first truck has three guys in it the driver, the computer guy and,a gunner in the turret who mans the 50 cal gun.The second vehicle has a driver, a 50 cal gunner and three other guys who walk along side the vehicle. They are all armed. They watch for an ambush. A convoy can be up to 10 or more. However there were only 5 vehicles this time. Daniel wanted to put his crew on the 50 cal guns in the vehicle. These men had been in Iraq with Daniel and he knew that they wouldn't panic in an attack. But the NCO wanted to put all the cherries (new guys) in the territ so they can get some experience . When the bomb went off it killed the driver Gainer and the guy who was in the territ, and flipped over and killed Stanley who was walking along side the second vehicle.  Then while everyone was disoriented they were attacked from the ground in an ambush. The guys in the territ froze and never shot back. My son was shaken, bruised and had a bad headache but was ok. Other than seeing his friends hurt. There were a lot of soldiers hurt that day. But you never hear mention of the soldiers who were hurt serving their country only those who died or did something heroic.
Well as far as I'm concerned All of our Soldiers are HEROS!!!!!!!!!!! They fight for us and they didn't have to they choose to.

Three of my sons friends died that day. When I heard about Gainer and Stanley I cried again for their families. I had met both Gainer and Stanley and even spoke with them when Daniel was able to call home. They would joke around with me like they were my kids. They would place their monthly orders for cookies, banana bread, pepperoni and jerky. And magazines with pretty girls. We should all remember ALL of the SOLDIERS who are fighting, have fought or will go to fight in the future for or freedom. Thank a soldier every time you see one and tell them you care and tell them to be careful.Cry with the families who have lost a brave soldier. Those who have died left behind grieving families and close friends. Cry for those who got hurt and have to pick up the pieces and learn everything all over, and for the family members and friends who are there with the glue to keep it all together. My son and I looked over some pictures of him with his friends and we cried when we saw the pics of Gainer and Stanley.

I can't begin to thank blaze, his followers on his website and the friends I work with. Along with my husband and kids they were the glue that held me together that day and the long days that followed. Bill it meant the world to me that you included my family to your web page you didn't have to but you did. I have sent your web page out to soldiers and their families that way they can see there are a lot of people who really do care.
My son Sgt Grubbs is now back in Afghanistan so the worrying is back too.  Not like it ever left. All my boys are in the Army so my worrying won't end until their all state side and fairly safe.

Thank you guys again for your concern and again I really am sorry it has taken so long to get back you on this.  I will keep blaze updated on the where abouts of all three boys and how they are doing.

Roo

Amen

Back to the Fire Stories

I have noticed that the readership of my blog has dropped drastically since I started narrating about my families history.  I hope it is because everybody that normally follows along with my postings is out enjoying these trailing days of summer but I presume it is in fact most people don't give a flying leap about my families Americana.  So with that part of billy blaze's life reported, lets revert back to some more of my fire adventures and when I run out of them to tell I'll start making crap up...

...on some most ordinary evening while lounging around at home the “bread and butter” call to any fire department sounded over my fire scanner setting on the dusty shelf. No one is ever allowed near that radio for fear they may accidentally turn the volume down, or worse, turn it off, so dust accumulates. It shrieked the alarm, “STATION 1 and 4, STRUCTURE FIRE!” Jumping into the old van, I peeled out my driveway, being extra careful not to crash into the other fire dudes and “dudettes” {< hickernism} (lady firefighters) responding from the other directions leading to the fire station. We all had our designated parking spots to slip into at our station. This well orchestrated parking plan of ours worked most of the time except when the weather was really cold and the front parking area was frozen over. Then it was every man or woman for him or herself. The front bay doors would magically open for us because my mom who had become the night dispatcher for our fire department lived directly across the street from the fire station. Her dispatching office window looked directly out the front of her house a short distance across the highway into the front of the apparatus bays. When she would see our responding car headlights coming from both directions; she would trigger the bay door opener, and then close her eyes hoping for the best during “parking time”. We would all scamper inside to our turnouts hanging on the wall waiting for us. They were always cold and stiff when you first donned them. The stiffness came mostly from the stale sweat and smoke smell that had permeated through them. Clamoring aboard the engine the adventure would finally begin.


On this peculiarly dark evening we were called to heavy fire involving the back portion of a single family dwelling. The scene-lights were raised, and began glowing brightly from the engines light towers that helped turn the darkness into daylight. We began the battle with the fire dragon. This dragon turned out to be more smoke then fire and it was quickly squelched with the “wet stuff.” After even the slightest battle with a dragon there is always a lot of cleanup to be done. Mopping-up is when we search through the burned areas looking for hidden fires and hot spots. When we come across one we extinguish them and look for valuables that we can recover for the homeowner before they get even wetter. Sifting through this fire rubble is often time-consuming and an arduous task, but one that we know needs to be done properly.

My dragon slayer buddy (partner) and I had just stepped outside the messiness of the fire for the first time so we could get fresh air bottles inserted into our air packs.  Just then the homeowner confronted me with, “Did you see my turtles?” By this time in my career I thought I had heard almost everything, but I answer back, “What sir?” He reiterated, “Did you see my turtles inside the house? There were four of them.” I’m sure with some tone in my voice, I told the guy, “No, we were pretty busy with a dragon; we weren’t really looking for turtles right then.” He motioned toward the destroyed back portion of the house and told me he had some turtles in an aquarium back there. Assuring him we’d look closer when we went back in, but not with much hope in finding the little suckers alive, I gathered up my partner and we headed back inside for “the great turtle search”. At the time I had forgotten that turtles are direct decedents from dinosaurs and they probably would stand a better chance during a fire… then say… a hamster. [not to mention they wear armor or nature’s turn-outs]

Even with our scene-lighting glowing brightly outside there are always dark places hiding things in the shadows of a burnt home, which is a good thing because it means some of the walls are still left standing. I collected my partner, Jeff, and headed back inside and into one of those dark corners where I started feeling around thinking to myself, “Oh, my God, I’m looking for turtles,” when, even with my thick firefighting gloves on, I feel something that feels about the right size for an aquarium. Throwing off the broken sheet rock which had gotten wet and crashed down onto the top of the thick glassed aquarium, I reach over the top lip and felt around inside. To my surprise I pulled out 1, 2, 3, then suddenly four and five dripping wet turtles. Quickly snatching up a big, partially-melted Tupperware container from all the mess, I toss them into it. Thinking to myself, “Hmmm, I thought there was only suppose to be four turtles in here” but then surmising that we all know what those turtles had probably been doing in that aquarium, don’t we? Being that there was quite a bit of debris on the floor it was difficult to negotiate across it with the big container with little light from the outside affording a pathway.

We stepped out into the glowing light with our big surprise for the homeowner, his prized… turtles. He peered into the container then looked back at me with almost a disappointed look in his eye, “Where’s the big one?” he implored. I replied, “Hey man, you told us there were four and look- we found five.” He tells me then, “No, there’s another tank just a ways further around the wall— he’ll be in that tank.” By now, I was somewhat tired and my patience was wearing a bit thin, but we did always try to go that extra mile to please homeowners since they were the ones that paid for everything our volunteer fire department owned with their tax dollars.

Regathering my composure, Jeff and I headed back inside again, but this time with a flashlight. Stumbling back through and over the debris and around to the darkest corner— Jeff was not helping too much with the flashlight—he was more interested in seeing the damage the fire had caused and not the big turtle hunt. Feeling around, feeling around, yep, I got something. Throwing the fallen debris aside that was covering the cracked tank I peered inside, but the water was too murky due to the gunk floating in the tank. With my gloved hand I once more plunged it into the tank’s water and began feeling around and finding something solid I pulled it out. “Hey, shine that light over here—dang-it—ahh, it’s just a big chunk of wood— I throw it over my shoulder. Back into the slimy water I grope till, suddenly, I feel something bite down on my fingers. Not that nipping kind of bite that you might get from a small cute puppy, but that kind of pain you would get from slamming-your-hand-in-the-car-door kind of bite. Screaming at the top of my lungs, like a girl, I jerked my hand out of the tank.  Jeff finally decided to shine the light in my direction to see what all the commotion was about. Hanging from my hand is a big, Frisbee-sized turtle. Nooo, definitely not like the quaint little river turtles I had just saved from the first tank. This looked more like an African Snapping Turtle from Hell. It didn’t have those cute little octagonal markings on its shell. This monster had fricking spikes protruding from its thick turtle shell. Grabbing its shell with my free hand I tried to pull it off  before it gnawed off my trapped, gloved fingers. The harder I pulled on its shell, in an attempt to free my throbbing digits, the longer its neck got and the harder it bit down. Realizing that I was in big trouble now, I stumbled towards the light outside around the fire engine and a fire axe, if needs be. My partner, my fellow dragon slayer, Jeff, was no help at all— he was now laughing too hard. I think he even dropped our only real light rather then using it as a weapon to beat this demon off my hand. Screaming, stumbling, falling and then screaming some more, I finally landed outside on the porch. Did any of my fellow firefighting buddies rush to my aid? Nooo, they, too, think this is the funniest battle they have ever seen and drop whatever they were doing to come watch.

Finally, I pried my fingers out of my thick fire-glove (did I mention turtles are descendants of dinosaurs?) and I threw that varmint to the ground, quickly counting my fingers to make sure they were all still there. A gasp comes over the assembled crowd of firefighters as they rush to see if the turtle is OK, as it crawled across the driveway with my glove still firmly in its mouth. I ask the homeowner, “What the hell kind of turtle was that?” and he tells me some sweet sounding Latin name. I know to this day it really translated to “African Snapping Turtle from Hell”.

The Dick Tracy Adventure

…after I graduating from high school, I suffered through two terms at Oregon State University, before marrying your other grandma and settling down with a new baby girl (your mom) together we began hacking out a living. Erica must have been about two years old when we traveled to Portland to visit your other grandma’s parents that lived there a short time. During this particular trip your grandma informed me that she knew where my real dad lived and it just happened to be a couple hours drive further north to the town where he lived. I used to hate visiting her parents so I took the opportunity to skedaddle, plus I still was curious about my real dad.

Over the preceding few years your grandma had stealthily gleaned information from this family member and that family member of mine and kept the info she had found out about my real dad hidden from me. While I was interested in tracking down and meeting my dad it was not worth the commotion it would have caused in my family if they knew I was looking for him, so I didn’t ask questions. Myself, your other grandma and our baby girl, (your mom) started our journey early one Saturday morning. Not having much extra money in those days we knew we would have to find my dad, meet him, and travel back to Portland in one day to spend the night with your grandma’s parents because we didn’t have money to afford a motel overnight. We had no idea if my real dad had remarried and if he had, maybe he didn’t tell his new family about me, so we wanted to be cautious and not ruin his life if I was suppose to be a secret. We headed north on I-5 then traveled west to Highway 101 ending up in the small berg of Aberdeen situated along the coast line of Grays Harbor. When you are trying to find someone in a town you are unfamiliar with where do you start looking? The phone book would be the place of course.

Pulling into the nearest phone booth and checking the white pages, yep Bernard Van Wormer. Dialing the number listed, some man answers and I ask are you Bernard Van Wormer? The voice on the other end of the line says no, but he used to live here. I asked, "do you know where he moved to", but the voice didn’t know. Before hanging up the phone the voice informs me Bernard’s mom (my grandma on my real dad’s side) lived in the next town a couple miles over, he didn’t know her name but had her address which he gave to me. Searching out the address in Hoquian I knocked on the older homes front door. An elderly lady greets me at the door. I ask are you Bernard Van Wormer’s mother, thinking this actually might be my grandmother. In a saddened voice she informs me, no she had passed away just the month before. I ask do you know where I can find Bernard. She says no, because he had just moved recently and she did not know his new address. She did inform me that an article about him had been in last weeks newspaper about Bernard helping out with some local charity project in another small town a couple more miles away in Cosmopolis. Since we were becoming true detectives by now we tracked down last weeks newspaper and sure enough in bold print on page three was a story about a fund raiser Bernard was helping with. No picture of him, no address to reach him at, but the article did have a contact name and address where money could be sent for donation, yep a couple miles back in Aberdeen. We pull up to a big ten story office building on Main Street, but it is closed due to it being Saturday. About the time I was going to walk away and head back down the highway to Oregon in defeat, a man dressed in a nice suit came to the front door of the building and asked if he could help me. I told him the abridged saga of my life and my search for my real dad. The finely dressed man told me to wait inside the lobby door for one minute as he went to a desk a short distance away and got on the phone. Within a very few minutes a half dozen nicely dressed women were standing by his side. The man fired off instructions to the ladies and they darted off in different directions. Come to find out this man was a lawyer in the local community, with some contacts. I stumbled backwards once finding this out, knowing I didn’t have the money to pay for his services. Stuttering my concern to him, he just chuckled and said, young man I battle people everyday of my life. Your lost dad story was so compelling I must admit it is fun to just help people sometimes. Five minutes later the ladies begin to scurry back handing the lawyer small pieces of paper with handwritten notes on them. He walks over to me and hands me his card with Bernard’s new address scribbled on the back. He further informs me that if this address is not correct to call his private number on his business card and he would remedy the problem. Stunned and bewildered I say thank you.

Yep we now have to drive back to Cosmopolis, it’s getting later in the afternoon by now so we stop for a quick bite to eat. Erica is beginning to get fussy with all the driving, stopping, waiting and going. Afterwards we proceed to North 101 Whatever Street. We park our car on the street and just before I get out to knock on the front door, a old beat-up car drives up into the driveway. I swear a man weighing 400 plus pounds crawls out of the driver seat, with the crack of his butt boldly showing, pulls up his pants and goes in the house that I’m about ready to knock on the door of to ask if he is my dad. I start our car and I’m ready to drive back to Oregon for sure now but your grandma says "you’ve come this far you need to go find out if he in fact is your dad". She was right, as I trudge to the front door of this run down home. Knock, Knock The heavy set man ambles to the front door and says “may I help you?” I glumly ask are you Bernard Van Wormer in a mono tone voice, to which he replies, NO. I almost jump for joy shouting back towards our car “It’s not him, it’s not him”. I show him the address the lawyer had given me and he informs me that I’m on the wrong side of town. I had misread the address, thank God. Your grandma and I decide this is going to have to be our last try because the day is ending and we still needed to drive the couple hundred miles back to her folk’s house in Portland.

We drive to South 101 Whatever Street and pull up in the driveway. I go and knock on the front door, knock, knock. A shorter balding man opens the screen door and asks “may I help you’. I ask are you Bernard Van Wormer, to which he replies YES. I ask do you know a Charlene Gray (your great grandmother Ka’mya) to which he replies, Yes I was married to her. I then tell him that I am her son. The man stands there stunned for a few seconds then whirls around letting the screen door slam shut but I can hear him yelling to other people in the house, my son is here, MY SON is HERE. A lady comes to the door all excited and invites all of us inside. We exchanged some pleasantries, took a couple photographs and as quick as the visit started it came to an end. Bernard had to go to work, he worked at one of the local sawmills and his shift was soon to begin. We said our goodbyes and we both drove our separate ways, him to work and myself back to my family in Oregon.

In the forty five minute visit I had with my real dad I learned he had not been watching any of my football games secretly from the grandstands. When my mom found out a few weeks after the adventure, that I had snuck off and tracked down my real father, she was not real happy with me. To this day I’m not really sure why she became so distraught, because it seemed obvious to me that any young man would want to find out if he was going to turn out looking like this, or like this when he grew older.

... like his Grandpa Buster,

or like this when he grew older.  That's Erica, Bernard and a very young billy before he was blaze.  Unfortunately I turned out looking more like my real dad then my grandpa when I myself got older.