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Not to be overly dramatic or anything....(besides, I did this same thing last year...)
December 17, 1968, a day that lives in my own personal infamy...
51 years ago today, it was also a Tuesday that year. I was a Freshman in high school. My brothers were both home, so was Dad. They all got out okay. Brothers' bedroom was upstairs; destroyed with the rest of the top floor.
After the salvage/mop up was complete, we were rescuing whatever could be saved from the downstairs. There was a pile of burned and unburned debris in the dooryard, from the library upstairs. Sitting on top of the pile, in almost pristine store-bought freshness, was an edition of National Geographic Magazine from Dad's collection (mostly destroyed in the fire)....the cover article: "Forest Fire: the Devil's Picnic".
Until that day I wanted to be a city/urban fire fighter. When that particular issue of that magazine had a blazing forest fire on the cover, and the feature article was about forest fires....and was the sole survivor of an extensive NatGeo collection destroyed by a fire...I took it as a sign I was to go in a slightly different direction. Which I did.
(At least, that's the folklore I have carried with me to this day, to explain (to myself?) why I chose to go fight "vegetation fires" as I've heard them called 'down under', rather than follow my dream into a city station...)
December 17, 1968, a day that lives in my own personal infamy...
51 years ago today, it was also a Tuesday that year. I was a Freshman in high school. My brothers were both home, so was Dad. They all got out okay. Brothers' bedroom was upstairs; destroyed with the rest of the top floor.
After the salvage/mop up was complete, we were rescuing whatever could be saved from the downstairs. There was a pile of burned and unburned debris in the dooryard, from the library upstairs. Sitting on top of the pile, in almost pristine store-bought freshness, was an edition of National Geographic Magazine from Dad's collection (mostly destroyed in the fire)....the cover article: "Forest Fire: the Devil's Picnic".
Until that day I wanted to be a city/urban fire fighter. When that particular issue of that magazine had a blazing forest fire on the cover, and the feature article was about forest fires....and was the sole survivor of an extensive NatGeo collection destroyed by a fire...I took it as a sign I was to go in a slightly different direction. Which I did.
(At least, that's the folklore I have carried with me to this day, to explain (to myself?) why I chose to go fight "vegetation fires" as I've heard them called 'down under', rather than follow my dream into a city station...)
You have shared this story before and always glad to read it again - first thankful that your family all survived and secondly that through it and that old National Geographic magazine you were guided to the career that you were gifted to do! Glad you are here Blair and so enjoy all that you share with us in the apparatus bay (and other threads!).
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