Don't Ever Bet Against Me...

...having all our chores done while pulling a shift on this wet Saturday has given me a bit more time to write this afternoon.  The stories are fire related so it is sort of like I'm doing fire related things around the station isn't it?  With my mom thinking I had backed the fire truck out that old muddy road in my last story it reminded me of another...

...we had been called to a fairly significant garage fire located on the base of Eight Dollar Mountain.  It too had a pretty nasty road leading into it, in fact it was quite steep for some distance at the beginning.  The road then flattened once you managed to get over the steep part but had soft potholes littering it with the house still nearly a half mile farther back in the woods.  People in Southern Oregon really like to live off the beaten path sometimes.  I had responded in the "first in" engine, again, barely beating the gang from our rival Station #2 located in Selma.  Yes, amazingly there are constant rivalries amongst fire stations within even the same fire departments.  I will try and share some of those stories in the near future.  By keeping the throttle on my engine pressed almost through the floor boards I was barely able to sneak over the steep section of driveway finally making it back into the fire scene.  Our engine only carried 1200 gallons of the "Wet Stuff we put on the Red Stuff" and it goes pretty fast when you're trying to control an inferno.  We depend heavily on the water tenders arriving in short order, they carried the big loads of water (3000 gallons plus) and plug into the back of the engine and supply us with the knock-out punch of water.

It takes some real tenacity to drive one of these heavy rigs when you know what your doing let alone drive one when you are a new rookie.  For some reason we always stuck the new drivers on the tenders too?  So here I am about ready to run out of water in my engine, just as my fire radio squawks "8942 to Command, I can't make it up the driveway it is too steep, I don't have enough gears to make it".  That was not the radio traffic I wanted to hear because we still had some dragon left in this fire.  I recognized the voice on the other end of the radio traffic and knew he was a new driver.  Figuring I could do anything in those days I had someone drive me back down to where the tender was located at the bottom of the hill where I found the driver nervously yearning to get to the blaze.  I told him, "If he couldn't drive that rig up that little mole hill he had no business even driving that truck in the first place".  I learned that harsh technique from Dixon Davis.  No not really mom. 

I said let me give her a try, knowing I made it over the top in the fire engine, I figured I could do it again in the tender.   I backed down the driveway a ways so I could get a good run at that steep hill.  I threw her into gear and began shifting through the gears trying to gain some speed.  Making it only half way up that darn hill I slowly backed farther down the driveway so I could really get some momentum up for this final try.  The engine in the heavy water laden tender was roaring as I passed the first driver cowering next to the driveway by now.  Almost to the top... almost over, damn just not enough power to drive it over the top.  Slowly I back down the mountain in disgust realizing even I couldn't get that precious water to the blaze.  In that moment of disappointment I remembered seeing my grandpa Buster back up some hill in his beat-up old Caterpillar that was too steep for him to climb going forward.

Knowing vehicles are lower geared when traveling in reverse I took the tender and turned it around in a wide spot in the road below.  In reverse I made it easily up and over that steep spot in the driveway but I still had to back the half mile down this narrow driveway into the fire.  I was simply amazed when I later found out that the fire guys still trying to fight the fire without any water by now were betting I wouldn't make it to the fire in that water tender either.  I scored a lot of  pay back Dr.Pepper off that adventure.  Betting against me, humph...