Thanks to Chris Simpson for refreshing my memory.

In 1984 I was a 17 year old Junior firefighter in Aledo, Texas. Now in the '80's we still went in as juniors. Things have changed and today Aledo has Paid guys from 7am- 7pm and vollies fill out the service. But back in the day, it was all volunteer and not that many of us in a small town of about 800.

So on a winter day in early 84 I was a teachers aid in the Kindergarten building. Out of the cold a teacher came in…

So having been in the fire service since the mid 80's, I have always envied the IAFF guys and their window decals, hell they have about 30 of them now. Irish, diamond plate...you name it, and they all look good...even the god awful gold ones.

OK so they are get out of jail free cards...right. How many times have you been stopped with one on your window and gotten out of the ticket???

So since my department is atached to an AFL/CIO Union I cant…

We are so far beyond spoiled today. I just finished watching the end of the Cowboys game in the dayroom at Station 2 and there were 3 of us in there jumping around, yelling at he 60" bigscreen TV. Sounds great huh...well, it wasnt long ago, at least 10 of the 11 guys in the station would have been in there. And at least 2-3 would have been cheering for the Bills, never mind we are oh 2000 miles from upstate NY. It's just how it used to work, there had to be the…