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...)
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