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

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALEX !

Ok folks, by now everyone knows I'm long....errrr...winded yes, long winded and today's post may be a record setter. So, If you want to know what the C-shift Misfits have been up to today, go get a drink and snack, sit back and continue to follow along. If you could care less and / or don't have the time, check out these sites for a shorter, less entertaining read ... here here or here. Ok, today was kinda all about one of our beloved part-timers, Alex Helms. Today is Alex's birthday and he decided to pull a tour and spend it with us ( ain't that special??) He even brought T-bone steaks in for dinner. He brought em and wouldn't let us pay for em (his other job is as a meat cutter). All he wanted was for someone to fix em...and that we did! T-bones, baked potatos, corn on the cob and a salad. We waited, slowed things down, then sped em up trying to get everyone here between calls and, have all the food done at the same time... it worked. Everything done to perfection, on our plates, the blessing said, forks in the air and.... you guessed it "ding ding ding". Out the door they went. Poor fella. The good news is that we're keeping it warm for him and we didn't cut the "special" cake the boys made for him. Until he made it back that is...Here's a few pics (the cake blurred out...ask him about it LOL) Just like all of our part timers, Alex does a great job and we are proud to have him run out of this house. He currently has his application for full time and should take the C-PAT in a week or so. Good luck and HAPPY BIRTHDAY Alex, I hope you enjoyed the day. Well, I say I "hope" he did but actually know he did. You see, being it was a sunny and beautiful day (despite or wonderful local weathermen's forcast) we had a little pump drill. We had Medic 101 tag along and Alex and John both got a little nozzle time. Soaking wet (accidental of course) but grinning from ear to ear. Here's the pics and a short video of the boys laying in..
That's Alex in the 2nd pic from the top.. bet that's the biggest thing he'll have in his hands tonight, birthday or not LOL. I guess I should have started out with the happenings from this morning rather than jump straight into the afternoon events. We had a couple visitors first thing. Roy Layne from the Shriners stopped in (as he often does) bearing gifts. A whole box of candy bars donated from our local shriners. We've posted on Roy and the Shriners before ( a must see post here) and have a really great relationship with their fire unit. If you are not involved with or don't know what the Shriner's do for our children's burn hospitals, take the time to look it up or contact your local Shriners unit. Here's Roy and the boys We also had another nursing student. OK today was more like a ride-a-long rather than a student. And just when we thought we were on to something here... they sent a guy! Yep' the exact oppisite of last day's students. Of Course Kaylor didn't mind, he jumped in the pic just like with the gals..here or here. OK, so we're having a litle fun today. This ride along (John) was from one our local hospitals (LGH). They send their new hire nurses out for ride alongs with Fire/ EMS so that they can see the other side of the incident or where their patients come from and what we have to do to get them to the ER. John was a good sport today and Im certin he'll be an asset for all our local medic units when he begins work in the ER. Speaking of fun.... well you know us misfits, we try to squeeze in a little anywhere we can and today was no exception. Even while training, we sometimes break the tension. Today, I was able to combine the two. I've been talking alot about the development of a local FULL CONTACT football team and at least here at #9 we take these things serious. So, our training has already started, and we're working our way towards 2-a-days. We managed to toss the ol pig skin a little and Bugg even shot some video (sneaky bastard) of yours truly. They thought it was funny that I was wearing a helmet and a pink one at that, but I explained...hey, make due with what you have and practice like you play ..LMAO.. Just look at them boys...ATHELETES!


Now I've tried to explain that I will be a running back and NOT a receiver but they still don't seem to understand. They laugh, giggle, mumble something about me in a hospital bed and things like that. The most recient jokes are because I've found some of my old High School equipment. Like they've never seen high top Puma cleats! They snicker and mumble something about a leather helmet and even made a new screen saver for our computer...
I still don't see what's so funny and look damn good with that head of hair. Wait till we hit the field next year...THEN we'll see who's laughing ;-) OK, to wind it up here..and oh yea, thanks for hanging in. We check our blog stats fairly often (click "view my stats" at the very bottom of the page, just below the stat counter) and have noticed several regular out of town, state and even country readers. Now, the out of country comes from Iraq and we figure that to be one of our previous firefighters Gary "Fish" Fisher or my soon to be son in law "Little Dave". The others, we're not sure who they are but are glad they're reading. Anyways, we wanted to say THANKS to ALL of you and ask if you have any requests or if there is something you'd like us to post about. You know, a loyal reader pic, a link for your personal or dept. blog, a practical joke video that we'd need to top, if there's something about the station, our department or members in particular you'd like to know about or see. I guess in short I'd say, give us some imput and feedback.
To close (I know...make it quick) we posted here on Charlie "Chuck" Fotchmans retirment and although he's WAYYYY behind, Rhett has added something on his "feel good" site here. We wanted to update you on Palmer in that he made it through some more surgery but is still not able to receive visitors. Keep Dave, BJ and the kids in your thoughts and prayers. And, it's with regret that we'll add the passing of William G. "Stick" Walters. Rhett also has a post on Sticks death here. Please keep his family in your thoughts and prayers as well.
I would think that's enough for tonight, thanks again for looking in on us. Stay safe and in the house. Capt. Wines

YOU'D BETTER SIT DOWN

If you're not sitting, you may fall from laughing. Today has been one of those days. To begin with, both Wheezy and Coon are off so we needed a "fill in" for the shift. It was supposed to be a man from #13 but the capt. banged out sick. Rumor has it that he may be a little bit of a hypercondriac. The story continued that last day, they ran an EMS call where the pt had gout. He must have gotten too close or, gosh forbid; even touched the pt. That said, they're not sure, but the boys at #13 think the Captain must have "caught" the gout. HaHaHa are you kidding me? You CAN'T "catch" it....all kidding aside Capt. get well soon, see ya next cycle. So, now a man from #13 was out of the question and the Battalion had to back up and punt. A couple calls were made and the result was us getting a man from the South side. I guess I should narrow it down some and say a man from "The Big Show" aka station 1. I always wondered why they call Alex "smiley" but it didn't take long into the shift for me to figure it out. Check out this pic.ALL SMILES! I think he's having a little too much fun up here. A few routine runs, a trip to Food Lion for the day's meals and then to class at 13:00. After class, we stopped by the Shriners Fire Brigade building to help them load a little hose in preparation for Saturday's St. Patrick's Day Parade. Here's a picture of the boys hard at work. I should also mention that we took a few minutes before going to work to visit old station #3 which is under HUGE renovations by its new owner. I'll post more on that visit in the future. Anyways, as most of you know by now, the Melrose Misfits not only work hard, we play hard too and, I'm a little afraid that we may lead poor "Smiley" astray.... see below

WAIT.... it gets BETTER. Watch the videos..

Now, I know it doesn't look that dangerous BUT, we are talking about Tyrone here... when he says "out of the way!" you'd better run. ENJOY!

Did you hear him say..."Oh did ya see that?" Almost like a "hey yall, watch this" Is that BEAUTIFUL or what?? Well it's time to get the cornhole boards out and make a little more ice cream... flavor of the night..pineapple. Stop in for a bowl.