Adding Some Spark to Our Lives

Our longtime friend Dave is staying with us a few days. Yesterday he went to a family birthday party and stopped to see a friend who had built a new house. He got the full tour. When the guy opened the door to the attached garage, Dave was surprised to see he had a fire truck. The homeowner likes vintage vehicles. As Dave retells the story, the guy had about 13 too many beers and went shopping on eBay. He put in a bid on a fire truck. The next day he was notified he had "won" the bid. I don't think he felt like a winner. I think he wondered what the H... was he thinking when he drank that much and went eBaying. Demon rum or demon beer. The outcome is the same. Drink too much and live to regret it or maybe don't live to regret anything.

Now he has a fire truck in his garage. He occasionally takes it to parades.

We speculated what we would do with our own personal fire truck. He paid $5900. We could probably buy it for at a fire sale price. I don't think he is happy with his purchase. Of course, we could also enter it in small town parades. Or, we could do the Cruisin' thing on Friday summer nights at the vintage car show in Jon's home town of North St. Paul. I haven't seen a fire truck there, but it might be interesting. We would have room for a cooler of Coke and ten or twelve friends, although I don't know if we have any friends who would want to be a spectacle cruisin in a vintage fire truck. Then it hit me. We could become volunteer fire fighters in some of the surrounding townships. They pay higher homeowner insurance rates in the countryside because their homes are more likely to burn to the ground. We would amend their fire fighting protection. Keep that baby's tanker full of water and ready to go and wear a beeper. Off we would go, being good citizens.

My dad was on the volunteer fire brigade for a few years when they lived in the hamlet of Riverton, MN. He was at 62 yrs old. They never had a fire when he lived there. Probably a good thing.

One problem remains with owning a vintage fire truck....it wouldn't fit in the garage. Could we park it on the street? I know there are covenants about what you can and cannot do in our neighborhood, but am not sure if the planners addressed personal firetrucks. Another problem is how to keep the water in the tank from freezing in the winter. Too bad. It might have been fun. Maybe we would have to put it up on blocks in the winter and park it in the yard, but that would rule-out having some of our neighbors as friends who would go cruising with us.