Chasing fire engines
When I was in my early twenties, I worked two fulltime jobs while awaiting trial for a crime I did not commit. I would arrive at South Shore Bank at 8:00 AM, leave at 5:00 PM, arrive at McDonald's at 6:00 PM and work until 1:00 AM.
I also worked on Saturday mornings at the bank and some Saturday nights at the restaurant.
During these two years, I dated a girl named Christine who was attending Massasoit Community College during the day and working at a restaurant across town at night. She would leave work about the same time I would and return to school the next day around noon, making her schedule similar to my own.
As a result, Christine and I spent an inordinate amount of time between the hours of midnight and 3:00 AM together, eating in diners, hanging around at the 24-hour bowling alley, driving around in my car and parked in various parking lots around town. She was nineteen and living with her parents and I was sharing a room with a goat and a guy named Rick in the home of a family of Jehovah Witnesses, so we didn't have any other place to go.
And one of our favorite ways to spend those early morning hours together became following fire engines to house fires.
We would park in the lot across from the fire station, and when the fire engines took off for a late night fire (and there seemed to be many of them in Brockton, MA during those days), we would follow closely behind, acquiring an ideal vantage point upon arriving at the scene.
We were witness to some spectacular pyrotechnic displays over those two years, and some of the firefighters even got to know us by name. Parking across the street and out of the way, we would sit on the hood of my car, watching the real life drama unfold before our eyes.
Fires shooting out through rooftops, collapsing chimneys, windows exploding, homeowners and (more often) pets being rescued in the arms of sooty firefighters.
I didn't own a television during those two years, but these dramas were far better than anything on TV.
Christine and I eventually broke up. She was about four years younger than me, and while that difference doesn't mean much when you are thirty, it's a lot more to overcome in your early twenties.
And with the end of the relationship came the end of my fire engine chasing days. Shortly thereafter I was found not guilty in a courtroom and was free to leave the state for bigger and better things.
But every time I see a fire engine fly by, sirens blaring and lights flashing, I experience this instinctual need to turn around and begin chasing it, a feeling I suspect is closely akin to a dog's need to chase cars.
And while I refrain from following the fire engines of today, I hope to someday find myself sitting on the hood of my car, bathed in the orange glow of a fire, watching firefighters battle the flames, with my daughter sitting beside me, slowly acquiring the same animal-like instinct for following fire engines that her father still possesses.
