We’ve had an exceptionally busy month and it’s only half over. The capper to that is this is the Pennsylvania State Laurel Festival Celebration in our town. A week of runs. bikes, parades, carnivals, car races, and yes firemen. We get 50 or 60 thousand extra tourists in our first due and a concurrent increase in calls to boot. The nice thing is that we staff the station for visitor tours and have extra folks rotating in for stand bys and relief. I’ve met and compared notes with safety officers visiting from Rochester, chiefs from Maryland, and firefighters from ten different states. It really is reinvigorating to talk to these guys, share stories and compare departments. It’s all very similar to the interaction here on FFN, just up close and personal.

But back to the funnel cakes. We staff a food booth a the festival feeding the masses all varieties of carnival food from pizza to sausage and funnel cakes. I am an apprentice funnel cake maker this year. It is a lesson in humility. You can only make two cakes at a time fry them in hot oil, flip them, heat the other side and take them out for a quick sugar before the sale. Three bucks of pure heaven! At one point I was 15 cakes behind and MY guys were getting mad at me. Rookie cook jokes and the usual banter about another officer lost without his men. It was then that I realized that on so many levels this was a great opportunity to look to them for advice. The guy that tells them what to do, how to do it, and disciplines them when they don’t follow standards is now beseeching them to help! The turn of events was great for team building, having fun, and serving our community. All the things that our work should be for us. They got me through the four hours. I learned some tricks of the trade, I realized that they let me make some mistakes to learn, and that they were really covering for me by stockpiling funnel cakes in a warmer to keep up with the ebb and flow of demand while I was learning my trade.

If we translate that into our work we can’t help but get better as a company, shift, and department. Togetherness clothed in the work of charity. The young firefighters educating the old officer. The brotherhood getting stronger. Come on down if you want to see our two hour parade, our street of foods, or the juried handcraft booths. But if you do, stop by for a funnel cake and I guarantee you that you won’t wait for it!