It's been a while since I've posted. While I doubt that many people (anyone?) have missed me, I apologize to anyone who did.
I don't have any good stories to share, or at least any that would be all that interesting to anyone not in Fire/EMS, so I thought I'd say a bit about the town I live in and the department I'm part of.
Riverton (not the town's real name) is like a lot of small towns in that it seems to be slowly emptying out. About 5,000 people live here, and most of those were born and raised within the county, if not the town.
Often, the most promising kids graduating high school are the first ones out the door. It's hard to blame them for that. Opportunities in small towns can be limited. The regional hospital and the presence of the county seat ensure that we have more than our share of lawyers, doctors, and RNs. The low cost of living here means that teachers, often among the least prosperous of professionals, can live solidly middle-class lives. But to enter that class, one has to leave town, at least for a while.
For those who stay, opportunities are limited. There simply aren't that many places to work here, and the jobs that are in town don't usually pay well. The plum jobs for kids without a college degree are mostly in the large city 30 miles to our west. There, a military ammunition plant and two large auto factories pay blue collar workers well enough to make the sort of middle class life that has ceased to be an option for many people in the manufacturing sector possible. People who spend years at those plants do quite well by local standards.
For all the lack of opportunity, the town has its charms. It's small enough that the odds are good you will see a familiar face at the grocery store, but not so small that everyone knows the minutiae of everyone else's life. Many of the homes in town date back to the Civil War and before, and most of those are still in good shape. Although the town is anything but booming economically, a drive down some of our streets leads through neighborhoods as nice as can be found in any wealthy enclave.
There's a bookstore downtown that offers a good selection of reading material and coffee. It's run by a woman who retired from a specialized construction engineering job. She's extremely intelligent and helpful, but has thrown at least one person out of her store for making stupid political comments. Pam came to town about the same time I did, and I was among the first customers through her door. I like knowing that her shop is there. I seriously doubt that I could live anywhere without a good bookstore and coffee shop. Pam's place combines the two.
I live in a small house with a large front porch at the end of a residential street. Although the house is near the center of town, geography, in the form of a deep, wooded ravine that hooks around two sides of the house and an old, sunken railroad right of way on a third side make the half-block of street that makes up my immediate neighborhood isolated and quiet. I like that. I live there, in something just under 1000 square feet, with my daughter. While it's certainly not the opulent house in the suburbs other people who grew up in my chronological and economic cohort have, I like it there. I don't have the land or the money to create the Japanese water garden I always dreamed of, but the vegetable garden I put in last year produced prodigious amounts of vibrantly colored tomatoes, peppers and okra. The marigolds I planted on one side of the porch grew thick and bushy, as did the herb garden I planted on the other. The porch itself has room for an outdoor dining table, a grill, and several chairs, which make it a perfect place to cook, eat, or read when the weather is not terrible.
Across the railroad right of way from me is a large cemetery, plots in which date back to before the Civil War. A walk through that graveyard can easily become a lesson in the history of this part of the world. Here, under a 20 foot tall stone plinth, lies the body of one of the founders of the Pony Express. And here, under these four identical small rounded stones, lie the bodies of four Union soldiers. They were pulled from a train by the notorious (and celebrated by some) Confederate Guerilla William Quantrill, forced to kneel down, and executed. About 100 uphill yards away, in a more central and sunny part of the cemetery, is a memorial to several fallen Confederate soldiers. Not far from that is the grave of an area Congressman who occupied a powerful position involving oversight of the military. On the day of his funeral, the sound of his 21-gun salute crashed and echoed against the front of my house, startling me and causing me to send my daughter inside before I realized what was happening.
Riverton is not the kind of place people often move to, unless they are buying a retirement home or attempting to set up a bed and breakfast. Yet it's a place I've come to and established a home, nearly 10 years ago. I never intended for that to happen. Upon arriving in Lexington, I planned to stay no more than a few years. But opportunities to leave have come and gone, and I am still here. While I wasn't looking, I became part of the community, and began to view the town not as a waypoint, but as a place to live.
For me, the heart of the community, and the center of my life outside the home, is the fire department. I joined the department almost as accidentally as I came to call Riverton home. I moved to town to take a job as a reporter, and that job put me in frequent contact with the Fire Chief. Chief Jones looks just how you want a fire chief to look: neatly trimmed moustache, short grey hair brushed straight back from his forehead, uniform always neat, and badge always shiny. Over the course of several meetings, Jones found out that I had been in the Marine Corps, and that thanks to my job as an Air Force reservist, I had some familiarity with hazardous materials and working in IDLH (Immediate Danger to Life and Health) environments. It wasn't long before he suggested that I come out and volunteer. I initially demurred. As a reporter, that could create a conflict of interest. And as a human being with nerve endings, I suspected that burning to death would suck.
On the other hand, working with the department would probably lead me to some great stories. And, the more time I spent around the fire department, the more I realized that I liked the people there. A few months later, I found myself at the weekly training, learning how to lock my legs around the rungs of a ladder and I handled heavy equipment.
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