Every firehouse has at least one clown; in my 34 years in the fire service I’ve been located in only 2 fire stations; my first one was a pumper company tucked away in the quiet northeast corner of the village which I spent the first 20 years of my fire career; the second house was a combination of companies including an Engine Company, Fire-Police Company and Rescue Company; a rather messy combination if you ask me. But the common denominator in each case was that there was a clown (aka knucklehead) in each house. As a matter of fact there was more then one clown at times.
My first house had several clowns over the twenty year period I was based out of there; the one that really stood out to me was an old crusty New Englander whom we’ll call Moe. Moe probably had the worst people skills of any fireman that I’ve ever known. I affectionately called him “Peaches” much to the humor of the various members of the company. Peaches was always prone to criticize anyone and anything that wasn’t done the way it was done when he was the Chief of the Department. Peaches was also the part-time janitor of the fire house and woe to those who left any scrap of paper out of its intended place. One time I was upstairs eating pistachio nuts and I dropped a half of a shell onto the floor. I got down on my hands and knees and searched high and low for the offending shell but alas, I couldn’t find it. But Peaches found it; and at the next company meeting there was hell to raise over this nefarious shell that was found and the captain addressed the offending firefighters and reminded us of our duties of cleaning up after ourselves. One time when he was sitting in the can dropping a deuce, I mistakenly shut off the lights in the bathroom; well you’d have thought I’d castrated the old buzzard and he caused such a stink I swore never to walk into the men’s room when he was in there again. He and I butted heads at various times while I was a member of that company, until his passing some 15 years later.
At my second and current house, We have several other firefighters who, through their actions, have other company members scratching their heads in disbelief over some of the antics that have taken place. At times suspensions are the rule of the day, mostly involving younger firefighters, aka "Young Turks" or "Knuckleheads".
I’ve often wondered what causes these kinds of people to enter the fire service; is it to perform true community service? Or is it some personal agenda that they have? I wish I knew the honest answer.
