More memories…

Having been fishing this past week has me thinking about old friends again.

This time I’d like to tell you a little about a guy who was very good friend of mine, Larry Flint. NO, not ‘the’ Larry Flint, actually that guy spells his name ‘Flynt’… anyway…

I don’t remember exactly how Larry and I first became friends. I’m pretty sure it was as a result of us both being in the North Bay Fire Department, and probably involved us getting our hands dirty in some mechanical repair on one of the trucks, or the facilities, but we became friends all the same.

It turned out we had a lot in common. We were both very ‘self-sufficient’ type guys, took pride in our ability to fix nearly anything, and yet recognized that often the task was made much simpler by having a friend to lend a hand.

I have some interesting memories of working on Fire Trucks late into the night and fighting fires, especially the night the ‘Old Forest Hotel’ in Sylvan Beach burned… It was the middle of winter, colder than cold, and that old place was a 100 year old tinder box.

I’d just come home from night school, probably around 11:00pm or so and had driven by the place on the way. I remember thinking as I came through the Beach and could feel the wind off the lake driving that cold air into my car that I hoped it would be a quiet night.

About twenty minutes later, as I was sitting down to a late dinner of a ham and cheese sandwich I heard the Sylvan Beach Fire Chief on the scanner. “…en-route to a reported structure fire, Old Forest Hotel…”, I remember thinking it must be a false alarm as there had been no sign of anything when I drove through.

Less than five minutes went by and I heard the Chief tell the dispatcher to: “Send me everything from North Bay”. I knew this was going to be one of those get there in time, or we’d be there all night kind of things.

Larry and I were the first two guys at the Firehouse; we crewed up the truck and headed for "the beach". I dropped the hammer on that truck and I didn’t ease back on the throttle until I saw the fireball from the hotel blowing out over the bridge. It was too late, the wind was fueling that fire and the old hotel was fully involved, we were going to be there all night.

We fought that fire, and managed to contain it that night, despite having to cut through three foot of ice in the canal to draft water, bringing in fuel trucks to refuel the fire trucks and having the hoses, equipment, everything really, buried in nearly a foot of ice by daybreak. It was a shame to lose that old landmark, but a miracle we managed to save the adjacent properties. I remember calculating with Larry the next day that there had been in excess of a million gallons of water used that night, and that was a conservative estimate!

It was also one of those evenings that you find out what you and your fellow firefighters are made of. The wind chill that night had to be in the -25F range, all of us out there were volunteers; we were there all night and into the morning, only to have to clean everything up and get ready for the next call. I still remember laying out the hose to dry and repacking the front line trucks with dry equipment from the older trucks almost the entire next day. Is it any wonder I still think they were some of the best people I've ever known?

Larry and I did a lot of things like that; we’d volunteer for just about everything, especially if it had to do with the NBVFD (North Bay Volunteer Fire Department), or even with some neighboring departments. I recall that I wrote an entire piece of software to generate statistics for a ‘Rural Water Supply’ seminar Jack Cotett from Cleveland, NY put on. It was a ‘one off’ deal too as we never ran the seminar again.

Larry’s gone now, died from brain cancer around 18 years ago, I lost touch with his wife Jet, and the two kids Todd and Tammy shortly after that as they all moved away.

There were some great times while they lasted, we rang in a few ‘New Years’, celebrated Memorial days, 4th of Julys, Labor Days, pretty much any excuse to get together and have fun… and I said my goodbyes to Larry at his funeral… I didn't get to talk with him before he died, because once he knew he was ill, he simply dropped off the radar, not wanting anyone to see him weakened by by the disease. I was angry about that for a while, but, eventually I just chose to be saddened by his passing… yet remaining aware that my life was far richer for knowing him.

I’m sure I’ll be writing more about Larry in the future, we shared a lot, far too much for one simple post.

Now an entirely different topic…

Breakdowns….

It’s funny, I seem to just get up to speed set the ‘cruise control’ on my life and then, just when I’m getting comfortable, all of a sudden I’m slowing down again!

I wrote in the last post about what a great weekend we had. What I didn’t write about was the ‘terrible’ beach weather, as in cool, rainy and foggy (until the morning of our departure!). I snapped that ocean view picture as we were packing to depart, it was so foggy most days you could barely see the ocean!

We had another major set back when, as we pulled into a little diner for breakfast we noticed a considerable amount of smoke/steam rising up from the front end of the Tahoe. A little closer inspection revealed we’d suffered a ruptured heater fitting. A call to Triple-A, a tow truck ride, a cab ride, a few hours and $110 later we had the truck back.

Today, as I’m working on the setups for a fairly large client (that I should have been on site at today) my laptop battery dies, and one of the RAM sticks ceases functioning!

I’ve got parts ordered for the LT, they should be here tomorrow and as long as I’ve got a power connection I can limp along, but damn, that’s a lot of speed bumps for just a couple of days!

The weather… well it didn’t really matter to me. I was more interested in RL and I getting away for a couple of days and relaxing and we certainly accomplished that!

The truck problem, well, I was very impressed with how reasonable the repair was. I mean I was at a resort area, stuck, and they were closing at noon on Saturday. Not only was it done in time, but the part and the labor charge were all well within expected ranges, maybe even a little less than you’d expect. It wasn’t their fault that a different problem stranded me once again today!

The LT? Well it’s a computer, and one that really takes a beating. It goes nearly everywhere with me and has for several years now. I should replace it, it’s definitely paid for itself many times over.

Am I the only person who hates getting a new computer? About the time I start considering that I should get a new one, is about the same time I’ve finally got the one I have ‘tweaked’ just right, so it works exactly the way I’d like it to. Has the right mix of software and utilities, all the ‘connection’ information, and that it’s truly now a productivity enhancing device, and has become as comfortable as an well worn pair of blue jeans.

I bought a replacement PC last fall for one that failed, and yet today, several months later it’s still not 100%. It’s close, but just not yet there yet!

Am I the only one?