Tuesday, July 29, 2008

The Chili Dog Effect

I've told this story to lots of friends and families but I thought I'd throw it up on the blog for fun.

If you didn't know firemen are superstitious. We do some silly things around the firestation like wear lucky shirts, do fire dances, and set fire to pieces of paper in ashtrays. All to try to bring some action to a slow day at the station. Now I will say we don't want your house to burn down, we just want to be there when it does.

So with that said I will tell you about Chili Dogs. It all started one fateful february day when we were shopping at Price Chopper. The youngest guy at the station Eric who is also our pickiest eater and cook most of the time was having an argument with our Captain Ryan Harris about lunch. Ryan was demanding that we have chili dogs. Now Ryan is a lot of fun and was mainly giving Eric a hard time because he knows how much he hates chili dogs. Eric in his defense hands Ryan his cellphone and makes Ryan talk to Eric's mom. Eric's mom tells him he better not make his son eat chili dogs. Which of course meant we were definitely having chili dogs that day.

After loading our cart with chili dog fixin's we hear a call on our radio's. Smoke from a restaurant in the Waldo area. Long story short it is a massive fire where 5 guys get burnt and Eric ends up spending 3 months in the hospital and another 3 months recuperating from his skin grafts etc.

Not fun at all, and you can see why we might have an aversion to chili dogs. Well several months later we decide to have them again and we end up at a fire that night where 8 guys fall into the basement of a burning house when the porch collapses. Luckily some twisted knees, sprained ankles, and stitches were the only outcome of that close call.

So that's the end of the Chili Dog saga right? Who in their right mind would ever make chili dogs at the station again. That would be crazy!!!

1 month ago after a drought of over a month (fireman speak for "no fires for a month") Ryan orders me to make chili dogs yet again. That night we arrive at a 3 story apartment complex fire with people jumping out of the windows when we get there. After that we have had a "working" (lots of fire) house or apartment fire every day besides 2 for the last month. Arsons, Electrical fires, Vacant houses set ablaze all over our district. It's been crazy and of course a lot of fun.

So I'm swearing them off for good. Not even a direct order will make me ever cook chili dogs again. I'll go home sick first!!! Well at least until we hit a dry spell again hehe

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I will never eat a chili dog again!

Sam Ransom said...

That is just crazy!!! That really stinks! Chilli dogs are so YUMMUY!!