Happy 4th, y'all!

So, about 17 years ago I was living in Yosemite National Park, and driving back from Mammoth Lakes after spending a long weekend there. As my roomie and I pulled into Yosemite Village (kind of the central part of the inhabited area of the Park), there goes my fire engine, #7, closely followed by my Captain in our wildland truck. How he saw me, I'll never know, since our pickup looked like about a thousand others, but he leaned out the window, holled "stables...now!" at me, and then he was gone.

So like the good volunteer firefighter I was, we screeched to a halt in front of the 'house, my roomie took over the wheel (since there was NO WAY I could drive a Chevy S-10 stickshift in my turnouts), and we hauled ass to the stables, on the other side of the park. We blew through about five stopsigns, all luckily manned by park rangers who knew us and waved us on.

We spent eight hours fighting a tree-top to tree-top fire, and thank goodness, no one got hurt! And what started it? A couple of kids playing with firecrackers.

I guess my big message in this blog is BE CAREFUL!! Pretty much everyone I know buys firecrackers (including us), but make sure you've got adequate "put-out" materials handy in case your fun turns into something else.

As a totally fun aside (after that little public service message), Engine #7 that I referenced above was the truck you saw on Emergency, the TV show...you remember (if you're an old fart like me)...Jonny Gage and Roy DeSoto??? LOL. Anyway, when Emergency went off the air, the truck went back to LA fire for a bit, until Yosemite Park & Curry Co (which was owned by MCA) asked for a new truck...and we got Engine #51 for a buck!!

If you check out the first link, you'll see that they say they have a staff of ten pail/on-call folks...hmmm...I wonder if things have changed since I was on-call, because we only got paid $5 a call! LOL!

That's it for me...y'all have a FAB, safe 4th!!!

Terri/Keira