Day 1, C-shift

Where does a 4 day break go? Holy cow this one flew by! Our last day was Halloween night and luckily, we didn't have any fires but did catch a bad looking MVC. Single vehicle, with major impact, and a high MOI (mechanism of injury...my Doctor term for the post). Luckily, and just as unbelievably, the driver walked away..literally walked away as in left the scene and returned later. Anyway, here's a shot of what happens when you run a Lincoln into a steel I beam.


Scariest part was the child safety seat buckled into the passenger seat .. glad the driver was alone. Anyway, that wound up last cycle. Today is our first day of this cycle and it's been busy busy all day. Tyrone has the day off hunting so at least it's a little quieter around here at the house. We started the morning helping out a good friend of the Melrose Misfits Roy Lane. I've posted several times about Roy and his work with the Kazim Temple's Fire Brigade. Well, they recently acquired a new Ladder truck for their fleet and needed a place to temporarily house her. The truck came from Clifton Forge, Va. and is in GREAT condition. What's even better is that she's an Oren! Chief Tartaglia and our Dept. graciously agreed to let the Shriners park the truck in our Historic Station #1. I had the honor of driving her down and backing her into the station and it wasn't until we were done that we realized exactly what we did. You see, their new ladder is an Oren, station #1 also houses our Local's 1937 Oren as well as a retired piece from our City fleet, Squad 1 which is ALSO an Oren. When we finished up, Station #1 had 3 Orens in her, nose to tail. I know some old Jakes who would love to see that. Oren has a pretty rich history here in Roanoke and most any of our retirees hold fondly a few stories involving one of the "Grey Ghosts". Anyway, we didn't get a picture of all 3 together (we'll post one soon) but did manage a few shots of us getting em in. I'll add too that Rhett has been corresponding with a retired Brother from Richmond, Va. (Tommy Herman)who is just completing a book about Oren Fire trucks. He said the book contains some really good photos from Roanoke and as soon as I can steal the link, we'll get it up. So, here's a few shots of the Temple's new ladder and Old Squad 1.



Here's a pic from Tommy as well. I'm not sure if this is one that made his book or not. It's one of our Grey Ghost sitting in front of "The Deuce" aka Station #2.

I'll do more on the Orens soon and I'm sure Rhett will have a piece on one of his sites in the near future despite the fact that you heard it here first ;-)
Ok, so after taking care of Roy and our Shriner brothers, it was normal runs and house work. Later in the day we had one of our bi-annual "cluster meetings" with our Chief. No real surprises other than getting to see Chief Barker in a tie. I made the Misfits wear eye protection just in case one of those buttons cut loose LMAO

Our War Wagon is still sick...think she has that pig cold or whatever it is going around, either way, it ain't good. One of our little fretters from over at the Hippie Hotel sent me this pic of her on the operating table down at the City garage today. Them County boys done her in good...Poor girl....hope we get her back soon

That's about all for tonight. Sitting on 6 or so including a GSW and kitchen fire out on arrival. Oh yea, we check our stats pretty regular (you can too at the very bottom of the page) and we notice the hits from Iraq (click the "view my stats" then find "map" in the left hand bar). We have 2 guys over there that are close to C-shift. Gary "Fish" Fisher who resigned from the Department to go and my future son in law (David Downing)who was pulled from VMI for his 2nd tour. Here's a shot David sent me the other day of him in a Black Hawk. We wanted them to know that we see them checking in on us and that our thoughts and prayers are with all the men and women over there fighting for our freedoms. THANK YOU, keep up the good work, stay safe and hurry home guys!

I'll close with the note that we are working on adding some fancy high tech "RSS' or LMNOP feed thingy or something so that you guys can follow us on "picture book" aka Face Book and that chirp chirp thing... twitter or whatever it is. Anyway, hopefully we'll have it up soon, Coon says it's "the bomb". Stay safe and in house, we're back on Saturday.
Capt. Wines

C-shift returns for Mon, Wed, Fri cycle.

Ah Mondays! Gotta love em. Been a so so day thus far. Opie made it home from the beach but was farmed out to Lucky #13 today. Opie returns and Wheezy heads for sand. Popping tops and drowning worms no doubt. He traded some time so he could be off and somehow tricked little Sweeney into working. Both of the Sweeney boys work in the Department following their father's footsteps ( John Sweeney, now retired ). Ben has worked with the Melrose Misfits before and did a fine job other than darn near eating us out of house and home. Brad on the other hand has been a mess. I assigned him 1 task today...ONE and well..he failed! All he had to do was keep an eye on Tyrone. Keep and eye on him and keep him out of trouble and / or harm. I had no more than assigned the order than Tyrone was up to shenanigans. The good news was that Brad didn't eat us into the poor house. I'm not sure if it was because he just doesn't eat like his brother or due to the meatloaf fiasco that yours truly ruined. It was bad. All kidding aside, Brad did a fine job today and is welcome back. Here's his mug shot

We've kept him semi-busy today, wires down over an occupied vehicle, an MVA, a few fire alarms, a dumpster fire and stabbing (with a fork). Here are a few pics from today's action



We had a few other visitors today as well...well kind of. Battalion Chief Dave Bishop came out to ride on our part time Medic Unit #101. Back before gold badges and take home vehicles, Dave was once assigned here at #9. He's got a little age on him now, but he handled himself very well today and fit right back into the mix. Kaylor was his partner and they had the task of precepting 2 nursing students for the tour. I didn't get a pic of the Chief, but we did catch one of Kaylor and the students

Other news for the C-shift Mis-fits is that Coon sold his house. Now starts the task of buying land and building a new home...WooHoooo. The bad news is that he needs somewhere to live until he can build. Well, all you loyal readers know that all of us here at #9 are givers SO, the boys have been hard at it searching for the perfect temporary nest for Coon and the family. I think they found some pretty good options, here's our 2nd and 3rd choices..


BUT...as good as these two choices are, we found one even better. The only problem here is that the previous owner is included in the sale... they could always put him on the fold out sofa LMAO!

We can't wait to be invited over for our annual fall cookout,cornhole and horseshoe tournament..

OK OK that's enough for tonight. I'll end on a serious note. We have several Brother's out on sick leave and at least one in very critical condition. We want Dave and his family to know that they are in our thoughts and prayers. Rhett has a short post listing most of the men off (add Capt. Mutter from #6-C), check it out here
Here's to hopes for a quiet night, be safe and stay in da house. Captain Wines

Melrose MVC

03:40 am, the wind is STILL blowing and it's COLD. Of course, as the Capt. says.."it's February, it's supposed to be cold". The wind is another story. Capt's electric blanket is set on "broil". The blinds on the bunk room windows have stood straight out all night and the wind coming in from around the windows has blown Coon's covers off twice. Guess we're gonna have to do a little caulking work on the windows. No electric blanket for him, but the good thing for Coon is that he's sleeping in his footy pajamas tonight, otherwise he may have froze. The pics above are of a MVC in the 2900 blk of Melrose. No injuries, handled with Medic Unit # 4. Going back to bed!