Excerpt:

As soon as I got home tonight I settled into my chair in front of the computer with a bowl of corn chowder my wife had made much earlier in the evening. As often happens, I left for drill before I had a chance to eat dinner.

I opened up Internet Explorer where my home page is literally my home page: www.tigerschmittendorf.com and I clicked on the FireEMS Blogs icon in the upper left hand corner to see what my fellow bloggers were up to tonight.

I was drawn to a blog from the "Raising Ladders" site that caught my eye, titled: "Finally, a first due job... and a pretty good one, at that." I didn't think much of the title when I first read it until I got into the rest of the story. It was the author's first real working fire in his career.

His story, along with my story telling experiences earlier in the evening, got me to thinking: "I remember my first time..."

I honestly don't know if this story is truly about my first working fire, but it's the first memory I have of really fighting a fire. I often quip that my memory is receding with my hairline, so if you've ever seen a photo of me not wearing a hat, you know how much trouble I'm in.

I have friends who say: “Of course that’s his real hair. Who would buy a wig that looks like that?” Fortunately, to combat that memory loss, I still have my precious log book.

If recollection serves me correctly, it was a warm summer night and we were dispatched to a mutual aid fire on Old Lake Shore Road near the beach bars that dot our shoreline on Lake Erie. As I only lived around the corner from the firehouse, I responded on the first engine out of the barn.

Read the Rest of the Story at: http://runtothecurb.wordpress.com/2010/01/27/i-remember-my-first-time/

www.runtothecurb.com.