Black and white photo version. A finger of smoke from the fire seemed to eerily follow me down to the creek where I drafted water to refill tanker 1-81's three hundred gallon tank. It thickened and lay like a dirty cloud over the truck as I slowly maneuvered my way on an old logging road for about a half mile, back to the fire. In order to make it easier to get out in a hurry, in case the whole thing blew up around us, I turned the truck around in the middle of the road where there was a fire line scraped out by a cat that tied into the road. I then backed up the cat trail about fifty yards to get to our hose line. While performing this extraordinary feat of skill, I managed to knock off the driver's side mirror. With these words, author John Meyers takes us on a twelve year journey, following his career as a wildland firefighter and a city department fireman. "Generally, firemen who fight wildland fires are called Firefighters and firefighters who fight city fires are called Firemen. I'm not sure what the difference is. I've done both and both are dangerous and the flames are just as hot and can burn you up in either environment." At times, the journey was exciting - The Lieutenant and I were on one side of the truck with a live reel (a rubber one inch hose on a reel that always stays charged with water) and a couple of guys were on the other side of the truck with the other live reel. The engineer was supposed to be watching both of us. He wasn't. He saw that the other guys got their part of the fire knocked down, so he shut off the pump. At times it was dangerous - I looked at Popeye on one side of me and Cowboy on the other. We didn't say anything, but we joined the rest of the crew in lying down in the middle of the line we had made. Maybe this was going to be the first time we deployed our "turkey roasters," but no word came about that either. We just laid there as the fire came roaring right up to us. And lots of times it was just plain humorous - I made my way back down a heavily covered slope, crashing noisily through the buck brush. As I broke out on the road at the bottom of the hill, a bear broke out about ten or fifteen yards to my left. He had been crashing noisily down the same slope and neither one of us had heard the other. We looked at each other with a great deal of surprise, we both grunted, and we both took off running in opposite directions! "Bear - Human! Aaaahhhhh!" John describes the danger and tragedy he faced at times and shares the joys of developing a comradeship with his fellow crewmen by taking you inside his experiences. 28 glorious full black and white photographs included.
About the Author: John Meyers worked for eleven years as a wildland firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service on the Plumas National Forest in Northern California, and one year for the Citrus Heights Fire Department, near Sacramento, California. His career started in 1967 right out of high school as a crewman on a Forest Service Fire Tanker. He worked his way up as a seasonal employee until he was a Tanker Foreman with a crew of his own, and spent one season on a Hotshot crew. While in college, he worked for the Citrus Heights Fire Department, learning the differences between wildland fires and city fires. He learned that the flames of fire are the same in either case and can burn you up just as easily in either location. John worked fires throughout California during his career. In 1980, John left the Forest Service and firefighting. He and his wife travelled, touring a two person Melodrama and Olio show across the western states for the next six years, then, when they landed in Humboldt County, California, he started an eighteen year career supporting adults with developmental disabilities. Now, in retirement, he has written a number of books about supporting adults with developmental disabilities, and his SNAP Curriculum is used by agencies and schools across the United States and three other countries. He and his wife, Sheryl, have also penned several fiction books (www.mosscanyon.com). He has no plans to leave retirement and fight fire again.