I had all sorts of good intentions to keep this thing rolling on a regular basis after coming home from the tour. Thought sure getting in the routine of writing every day while out on the road would get me in the mindset of doing it here too.
I suppose, technically, I could still post regularly with this start. Assuming by "regular" I mean once every three weeks...
Sigh.
So, off to the matter at hand.
This guy
retired last week. And as much as we'll all miss him,
we're all happy for him.
I knew this was coming, it was just a matter of time. He talked about it last year. And I certainly wasn't prepared for it then, I'm not completely convinced I'm prepared for it now.
But it's not my call to make.
Laz is happy with his decision, has been talking about what he's going to do for several weeks now, and ultimately, if he's happy, I'm happy.
So, in honor of his last day after serving our community for 31 years part time and full time, we all made sure he was kind of a big deal last Thursday...
The day started with a flag raising ceremony at our station. The honor Guard came out and raised a ceremonial flag in his honor. All the Chief's were present, in their Class "A" uniforms. It was nice. After that, we planned "Lunch with Laz" where we provided the food and all the on duty companies, and anybody off-duty, or retired guys, or friends, family or what have you, could come by and join us for an open house type lunch from 11-1. Fortunately the taxpayers co-operated and we didn't have any 9-1-1 calls.
We left to go down to Station 2, our headquarters, a little after 2. The Chief wanted to do an exit interview with him and after that, from 3-5 there was a nice cake and coffee reception for him at #2. His kids and grandkids came by, we showed embarrassing pictures and all had some laughs at his expense. As his last official act, Laz got to give our new guy "The Wolf" his badge, since he completed his probation.
From there, we went back to our station where, along with his family and some select friends, we had an awesome dinner with smoked turkey and a giant pan of home-made lasagna. It was just before dinner that we got his last calls out of the way, and his last EMS call was truly memorable...
"Engine 3, Medic 3 for the naked man in the intersection..."
Sure enough, when we got there we saw a naked guy sitting on the back seat of a squad car. The medics transported him and as we chatted with the cops on the scene we got dispatched for his final fire call, smell of something burning in a condo building. It was nothing though, very anti-climactic, on the heels of the naked guy call.
We went back and enjoyed dinner, and after the families left, we made a stop at dispatch so he could bid them farewell and then stopped at the hospital to tell a doc he liked good-bye. We got back into quarters and sat at the kitchen table, the five of us, talking til 11:15, about 3 hours past his normal bed-time.
His last shift concluded in the morning with the finish of the flag ceremony. The Honor Guard lowered and folded the flag raised the previous morning and the Chief presented it to Laz, with his thanks.
Finally, he was escorted to the village border and returned to the wild.
Pretty emotional day for a few of us.
For the last several years Laz took to admonishing the new guys "I'm not turning my Fire Department over to a bunch of a**holes" so my friend, I say to you now, you haven't. We'll take good care of it.
You take good care of you.
Congratulations on 31 years, I hope your retirement lasts twice as long.
Love ya!
and btw, Pink still Heals!
Peace
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