It means spending one third of your working life away from the ones you love……………
It means missing Christmas dinner with the family, Birthday Parties, School Programs, your kid’s Ball Games, Fourth of July picnics with friends, and Memorial Day weekend campouts…………….
It’s coming to work to learn that a friend’s house is on fire and that he and his wife are in the house………
It means trying to find the words to console the little old lady in her kitchen while your crew tries to pump life back into her husband of 60 years in the living room…………
It means working so hard carrying hose up the stairs that you think your lungs will start on fire…………
It means staying up all night during a thunder storm trying to reset the alarms, check out the power lines down, and put out the lightning strike fires………….
It means going out in weather when everyone else is going down into their basements………………….
It means jumping nearly out of your own skin when you are shopping at Younkers with your wife early in your career as you hear the stores PA system tones beeping………………………………..
It means not even flinching towards the end of your career when you hear those same tones and beeps while shopping with your wife……………………………………..
It means lying in bed staring at the ceiling for the first few nights you are on the floor, waiting for that first alarm, wondering if you will know what to do……………………
It means lying in bed staring at the ceiling the first few nights you make driver, captain, or battalion chief wondering that same thing, will I know what to do when we get an alarm……………………………………
It means working for several hours to prepare a nice meal at the station, then have an alarm go off just as you are about to take the first bite………………………….
It means waking up from a dead sleep with the speaker system blaring information to you at full volume while you are still wondering where you are at and what is going on…………………………
It means you don’t sleep soundly for three nights out of every nine nights………………………..
It means your wife doesn’t sleep soundly for three nights out of every nine nights………………..
It means hearing sirens wherever you are and wondering where they’re going and who they are going to save………..
It means a brotherhood and sisterhood that cannot be explained unless you have lived it………………..
It means trying to explain your work schedule to someone without going into a long explanation involving calendars and charts………………
It means waking from a sound sleep and standing on the end of a driveway just three minutes later listening to someone screaming into your ear that there is still a girl in the living room as you watch flames dancing in the windows of the living room…………………..
It means pulling up to a fully involved house and watching your crews get ready to fight fire while a man is yelling to you that his wife is still inside on the second floor, knowing your guys will do their best, but not knowing if they will be able to get to her before the smoke and flames do…………………………
It means returning to the station with tears streaming down your face after you have spent an entire day searching for a missing little blonde two year old boy whose body you just watched your guys carry up out of the Sioux River where he had been found…………………………
It means tucking the end of a funnel into the top of your pants on a dare to see if you can catch a dime placed on your forehead………………….
It means wearing wet pants around for an hour or so and feeling pretty red-faced for falling for that one……………
It means crawling to the top of a set of stairs in a burning house with your captain right behind you, wondering what the hell you are doing in a job where you are starting to feel a lot of heat through all the gear you have on as you are crawling closer to the cause of that heat……………………….
It means driving down the street in a big red truck with red lights on and sirens blazing grinning from ear to ear because you are living every little child’s dream…………………..
It means working with the best bunch of people you can imagine………………………..
It means having the best job in the world!!!!!!!
Battalion Chief Jim Jarding
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