There was a Firefighter at Station 39, Ol' Pete. We had quite a few funny things happen there. One time, we took the rig to the grocery store and I told him to go inside and get us some ice cream. He said he said no way, that he wasn’t getting off the rig. I told him again to go do it, and he still wouldn’t go. I asked him why he wouldn’t do it and he said that if he got off the rig, he knew we were going to leave him there. Well then I thought about it, and there had been several times where we did leave him at the store and he had to walk home. He was right!

I served with Pete in the 90’s, and by this time our fire engines had an enclosed cab with computers and headphones so that everybody could talk to each other. It was quite a modern rig. Once, we had a run and Pete had put shoe polish on my earphones so that when I put them on the shoe polish got on my ears. After the run, everyone was laughing. I had no idea what was going on, but my ears were completely black. So Pete got back at me that time.

A few days later, I had a female Firefighter who was working at the station temporarily. I sent Pete to the store and while he was gone I went and took his bed apart. I took it out, and I had the female Firefighter help me take it up to the roof of the fire station on the outside. Then we put it back together up there. We made it up and everything, so it was just a bed sitting on top of the station. She kept asking, “Why are we doing this?” And I said, “Nevermind, just do it.” Then I went back inside and waited for Pete to come back. I was looking out the window, and all of the sudden, a ladder goes up and this female Firefighter went back up onto the roof by herself. I went out there, and she was taking the bed apart! So I yelled, “Hey what are you doing?!” She said, “I’m taking this bed apart!” I asked her, “Why are you taking that bed apart? I don’t want it taken apart. I want it left there.” And she yelled back to me, “But it’s my bed!”

It turned out that Pete had switched cubicles with her, and I didn’t know it. She had actually helped me put her own bed on the roof, so she was back out there by herself taking it back down! That didn’t go over too well with her, but it was still funny.