When Cops Attack!

There is a hidden war in public safety that the public rarely gits to see. I'm not really sure how it started, but I'm pretty sure it was started by a jealous cop.



In my town this war has taken many faces, here is just one series in many.



We had a rookie cop who was Hispanic and always bragged about his heritage. We quickly figured out he didn't speak a lick of Spanish. I awarded him the nickname "Sapo" which he was really proud of until he went home and bragged to his Grandmother about it. He couldn't believe he was laughed at by his Granny, until he learned we were callin him "Toad."



The P.D. retaliated by sneakin into the engine bay and firing off 12 gauge blanks at 3am.



We escalated the events by catchin a few tarantulas and dumpin them down the windshield of a patrol car one cool morning. The spiders crawled down to the motor for warmth until the vehicle was drove for a bit. When they got too warm they came back out the way they went in, resulting in a very traumatized Sargent on the side of the road.



We thought we had pulled off the sneak attack of the year: no witnesses, no forensics, score one for the good guys!!



Too bad we forgot the police lot is covered by a very nice, top o the line, radio shack special B&W camera. Kinda hard to hide our BRT (Big Red Truck) even on their crappy surveillance equipment.



Course they had to git us back. One, now former, officer snuck into the ambulance and applied a liberal dose of powderized tear gas into our air conditioning vents. When the vehicle was started we were out of service, unfortunately on our way to a call. It took two days for us to git our ambulance back.



It was decided at this point city vehicles were off limits, since the police can't control themselves!

Just to see you smile

We are back from the lil git away we had for the weekend. Was a wonderful trip that really helped recharge my batteries. I really yearn for every second I can be away from the city.

The weekend highlights for me were: (No particular order)

Learnin we had at least one new neighbor. The closest house to the cabin has had a few black bear sightings. Called my buddy Tater to git some info about bears and heard the words of wisdom "They ain't nuthin but damn overgrown raccoons"

CDB got lost durin our nighttime, pre-moonrise 4wheeler excursion. Pretty excitin to git turned around in pastures you have walked since childhood.
I don't point this out to poke fun, it really is neat to git lost in an area so familiar, makes you realise how wild and unpredictable your own land can be.

Did y'all have that awesomely over bright moon out there as well? Once it popped over the mountains you woulda thought it was 6am!

Got to sleep late!!! Was woken up by her laughin bout the perch she caught in the pond on the second morning.

Got to see Rooster again, missed that horse, and dang he is a super stud, looks great from runnin those cows all over the ranch!

Had a very pretty doe jump outta the tree line and streak right past us. She was absolutely perfect in color and conformation. Don't see doe like that every day.

Noticeably less pig tracks! Think the neighbor has been pressuring them pretty good.

Had my now traditional race across the pasture with Daisy, poor Violet still hasn't caught on and was left eatin our dust again! Was even more excitin then usual due to the overgrown field. When I hit third gear I thought my wife was gonna squeeze me in half.

Cindy's Grandma reminded me I'm family now!

Last but not least:

Got to see my wife's real smile, not the one she wears round here.

My friend

I once had a great friend, his name was Brian.

For some reason I have been thinking about him alot lately, not really sure why. Last time I spoke to him was February 15, 1999.

We were called mutual aid to a fire in a lil suburb of Ft. Worth, apon arrival there were reports of three firemen trapped inside. The roof collapsed and they were stuck. I got on the radio and had the last conversation Brian and I would ever have in this world. They were in a corner, stuck but still had a workin hose line and holdin their own. I promised him I'd git him out. He knew I would.

After we started breaching a wall he called out his hose quit, he thought it was burned thru, "Please hurry if ya can."

After that we got feedback over the radios until his melted and heard P.A.S.S. alarms sounding until they failed too. (Alarms we wear to let other firemen know we are down, most of y'all have heard them on 9/11 footage, that annoyin lil chirp soundin over and over on the videos)

His first fire bout 20 years before, when he was 16, was at a church, his last was at this church.

Brian and two other firefighters died that day. It was late afternoon when we pulled them out and brought them home.

Raise a glass lads...

When I was a relatively new fireman I met an interestin character named "Corn Water"

Corn Water's real name is Jerry. He is an expert in vertical rescue. He is the man who trained me in the joys of roping off buildings, bridges, cranes, water towers, out of helicopters, and into deep holes in the dirt, or any numerous other area where people find themselves hurt or stuck.

Jerry got named Corn Water at the fire station due to his particularly weird fetish. Every time we cooked canned corn he would suddenly appear like a squirrel on crack cocaine. He would be lickin his lips, holdin his cup and sayin things like "That corn water looks good" or "Ya ain't gonna pour out that corn water are ya?" or my personal favorite "If you ain't gonna drink that corn water I sure wouldn't mind havin it"

It got rather amusing when somebody would pretend to dump the water out. Corn Water would be so forlorn, until he would see you apper in the doorway holdin his corn cup and he would just grin and swig his elixer.

Sorry y'all, I sure do suck at this bloggin. Seems like life is movin so fast with deer season around the cornor, then holidays and b-days commin up. Will just have to make myself sit and write when stories pop in my head.

Skunked

Well, I'm back in the land of the grocery store shoppers after a weekend of livin in the wild.

Had a real good time, and nope no drinkin and shootin. Unless ya count the mornin after when we hunted the very elusive Bud light cans emptied Friday night. Makes me feel good to recycle beer cans into targets.

I thing some of the greatest times I've ever had have been at the lease. A place where men can gather, relax and just be ourselves. Plenty of practical jokes occurred, stories swapped, and insights into life shared. It's nice for this good ol' boy to be surrounded by his own kind.

On a hunting note, the animals won this weekend. Z.H. just can't shoot, I was lookin the wrong direction, and Tater was laughin too hard to fire a gun. I was alerted to the commotion by six rapid shots at what appeared to be dirt and weeds. They swear there was a Grey fox there, but the jury is still out.

Least I brought home souvenirs from my trip, several cactus spines in various parts of my body. Gotta be careful where ya sit.

Call of the wild

I am so lookin forward to this weekend!

On friday a few buddies and I are headin to the deer lease for a weekend of drinkin, shootin, chainsawin, BSin, and hopefully killin.

The plan is to leave after we git off work, head west and set up camp. A night of coyote/fox/bobcat callin. Sleep thru the heat of the day and hopefully scare up some feral hogs.

Wife, clean out the freezer, I'm bringin home the bacon!

(But please don't throw out the fox head, I swear I'll git it cleaned on of these days)

I am sofa king we todd did.

Sorry y'all that it's been a few days, had to help my wife git over part of her yuckyness and work is kickin my butt.

On Sunday we went to a "Harry Potter party." My girl was super excited, kept askin my how they were gonna turn the pool into Hogwart's lake. She had several excellent suggestions, but unfortunately all of them would have been death to a pool pump.

CB had been tellin me how obsessed this group was with The Boy Who Lived, so I thought it would be great fun to dress as a wizard tryin to look like a muggle. Tacky t-shirt, dress pants, polka dot tie tied wrong, polka dot scarf as a belt, camouflage Boonie hat and flip-flops. CB wore her graduation robes with the crazy master's degree flappy bat wing lookin thingy on the sleeves. My girl dressed as a student in uniform, and I whittled her a wand usin a branch from our Crape Myrtle.

Imagine my dismay when we got there and nobody was dressed up. I felt like a doofus. They all just looked at me like I was insane. The party itself was great, they really went all out with the games and tests, and had just about every kinda wizard food ya could imagine, was pretty impressive.
The best thing about this event was that they had muggle beer which is way better then butterbeer any ol day,help ya git over the fact you are dressed worse then a teenager.

I once met Chuck Norris.

They came to film an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger. Durin the pre-filmin they taped a red line to the fire station wall at 6' high. If you were over 6' tall you couldn't stand with-in 10 feet of Chuck Norris while filming.
Bein 6'4" I was kept away. Course the producers wanted me to give my red helmet (Captains wear red to stand out) to one of my volunteers. I kindly told them where they could go if they expected me to give up my brain-bucket.

That havin been said I must say Chuck Norris is a force of nature. Please go to this website, and if y'all have any doubts afterwards let me know. www.chucknorrisfacts.com

Cry me a river.

Sometimes in life we make compromises.

Last night was one of those instances. My sweety and I struck a deal, if I ran over to Gander Mountain to buy a new rifle, I would sit down and watch a chick-flick with her when I came home.

So, the gun was bought, dinner ate and it was movie time. Typical chick-flick material, story about three daughters with an insane mom.

When I was younger I'd have made snide comments like "Chick-flick huh? Better pass the kotex and Kleenex." or somethin along those lines.

Well, last night was different, I found myself enjoyin this movie, and recalled I liked the last few chick movies I saw. Made me so worried I went into the bathroom and checked myself from head to toe for one of my wife's hormone patches that must have gotten stuck to me.

So, what I'd really like to know is am I alone here? How many guys also enjoy these movies?

Always put the seat down.

We responded to a triple structure fire one august. This was in a rather fancy neighborhood where they had wooden shingled roofs, so the fire kept jumpin from roof to roof catchin everything it touched ablaze. Needless to say a single fire is a feat in incident command, and that day our problems were tripled. We try very hard to keep abreast of the situation and highly discourage men from freelancing or wanderin off with out a plan. We came to realize we couldn't find one of the other captains, so a search was mounted.

I grabbed a flashlight, radio and two rookies and was gonna show them a rapid V.E.S. (Ventilate, Enter, Search) We headed down the block to the most involved house and ran around back. I smashed the window, got a boost up and slid inside. I stepped down and realized my boot was stuck. Bout this time one of my two newbies got a runnin start and came crashin thru the pane onto me. I started hollerin for #2 not to come in since we were a jumbled pile of gear and body parts. Luckily he stopped short. We untangled, but I realized my boot was still stuck. The fire conditions were rapidly deteriorating, we just got a radio call my fellow captain had been found down the street unhurt, and my rookie was on the verge of panic. I was squintin, try to tell what had ahold of me.

The heat was tremendous, and I had to drop to the floor on my back since my foot was caught about two feet off the floor. My trainee kept feelin round, tryin to figure out what I was stuck in. He kept sayin somethin bout how smooth it was, what could it be? etc. Bout this time I was really startin to git nervous myself. Finally, he bumped somethin, and it made an unmistakable noise. Y'all have all heard it before, the sound of a toilet tank lid scraping on the tank. That's right Capt. KB was stuck in the toilet. We used an axe to smash the pot and jumped outta the window. I hit the ground and looked at my rookies and just said "Damnit" They were afraid I was mad at them, so they started apologizing.

I finally let em know I wasn't mad, just surprised my Mom was right.

You should always put the seat down when you were done usin the toilet - Never know who is gonna fall in!

Practice run

I've been tagged by Coffeypot since I'm obviously in need of practice here in blog land.

Guess what ya do is go to Wikipedia and type in the month and day of your birth. Then you write down three events, two births, one holiday, then you tag five others to do it as well. Well here we go:
Events:
1859 first conformation dog show held at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. (Leadin to a dog havin to look like something instead of just bein a good dog.)
1914 Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie assinated in Sarajevo, leading to the start of WW1.
1919 Treaty of Versailles signed in Paris, France, formally ending WW1.

Births:

1243 Emperor Go-Fukakusa of Japan born. (Somethin bout this guy's name just pisses off the Red-neck in me)

1891 Carl Panzram, American Serial Killer (Dadgum, and ya always hear how much safer and kinder the olden days were)

and of course in 1973 KB

Holiday:

Religious holiday commerating St. Vitus (Who also has a dance named after him, resembling the neurological disease Chorea, and a song by Black Sabbath)

My chosen victims are :

Cindy Dianne, cause she is here lookin at me
Biddie, Her indoors, Tod, and Angel, cause I don't have or know too many readers here.
Thanks Coffeypot, this has been fun.

Measure of a Man

I can distinctly remember the first time somebody I really looked up to called me a man. I was 19 and a Captain on a big city fire department, we were workin with, looked me in the eye and called me a man after a particularly hard fight. Sure it sounds like a small word, but it ain't.

I had been called a man for quite awhile, like when the ol' boys at the feed store I'd go to as a kid would ask me how "Little man" was as I walked in with my grandpa. There were countless other times as I grew up, but this time I had earned the title.

It felt really good, made me walk a lil taller, and mosey a lil prouder, mostly made me think of my Grandpa. Because of him I knew how to be a man. (My Grandpa & I will definitely be a whole blog or three.)

I couldn't wait to git back to the station and call him, like I often did when the day was long. We were deep into our conversation, when, in that quiet voice my Grandpa said "Well, today you are a man, welcome to it." At the time I didn't really know what he meant, just was thrilled to hear those words again.

As the years passed I learned. Bein a man has absolutely nothing to do with age. It is an awesome responsibility that you earn. I, for one, can think of nothin better to be.

Fireflies and floods

So, how many of y'all have done things so stupid that years later you cringe when ya recall the event? Lookin back, I have way too many of these events.

Take for example the time I flooded the elementary school in town by puttin down the out-rigger of our Quint on the 5" supply line. By the time I got the hydrant shut down, about 2500 gallons of water flowed into the cafeteria, down the hall, thru the music room and into the office. The really bad part was that this was durin fire prevention week, when we go to the schools and talk to the kids about safety. We were also showin off our brand-new, $285,000 Quint to the city council at the time.

Or how bout the time I lit a controlled burn and it got way too hot, and spread too fast resulting in blistered paint on the engine, flat tires on the brush truck, a call for help from two other cities and a very pissed off Chief.

Once, I even got bucked out of my boots by a lil pony. That's all I'll say about that day.

Or even more recently, the night my now wife and I had our first real date. I was starin out across the lake, and said "Hey, look at that firefly!" Only to realize I was seein an airplane.

I could go on for quite a bit here, but I don't want y'all to know that more often than not, I'm such a moron.

Howdy

Just want to welcome ya'll to my site. Been kinda compelled to start this site after bein drug into my wife's blog for a year or so now. Mostly just gonna write about stories that make me, me. Hope some good comes out of all this. KB