Not St. Elmo's Fire, But Close

It was a warm spring night along route 1, and the work shift crew was perched on the picnic bench in front of the station watching the stream of college punks stagger “home” from a night of elbow-titty at the Vous.  It was the highlight of every weekend shift, and one of the best reasons we had the Alarm Unit to run bells calls on the campus; we didn’t want to miss our weekly show.  The steady stream of budding young adults with their pickled brains and overcharged libidos slurred past us toward the dorms as we rated their appearance on a scale from one to ten.  One lad in particular caught our eye.  He was walking alone (although walking may be an exaggeration) and we were convinced he had NO IDEA where he was going to be sleeping in about 20 minutes.  We would likely find out his name when we ran the medic local for the unconscious person laid out in the “M” of flowers in the traffic circle on Campus Drive.

A few minutes after he passed us, he returned, lumbering back toward downtown.  We wondered if he unknowingly spun a 180 or if he was getting a head start on tomorrow’s drunk fest.  Then he started drifting off the sidewalk in our directions…this was going be fun.  We loved taking every advantage of opportunity to taunt these travelers.  There was no way this guy was going to remember any of this anyway.  He struck up a conversation with our Captain, the least tolerant of the local college population:

Hey, are, are, are, are yoos guysh firemen?

            Yeah, you got a problem with that?

Well yous better get on yer firetrucksh, quick, kuz this building back here iz got FAR coming out all over the place.

            Right, pal, how about you move along…

Nooo, doood, im sooo sherious, yous better hurry, cause ders fire and smoke everywhere…

We poked fun at this guy for a while, and finally agreed to humor him with an “investigation”.  The five of us walked up the sidewalk, with this clown leading the way, to check out his hallucination.  The pace quickened a bit when we saw the ominous orange glow reflecting off the trees.

Then as we cleared the back of the station, there it was…14 Fraternity Row, with heavy fire showing from the third floor window!  The sprint back to the apparatus bay seemed like running of the bulls in Pamplona, and as we were donning our gear, the FART van was getting dispatched for the automatic alarm.  Needless to say, we got first water on the fire, and saved NONE for the other units on the box.

We looked for our Good Samaritan to thank him, but he was no where to be found.  We considered thanking him next weekend, but he would likely have no recollection of the event.