Notes from a Rookie Firefighter...December 22, 2008

Yesterday was our Santa Run, when we load up the ladder, engine and a pickup truck and drive around Morris Township and hand out candy canes to people that come and greet the trucks or are in their doorways. We also hand out dog biscuits to any dogs that come out. This picture is the view I had most of the day, sitting at the back of the Santa sleigh attached to a pick up truck.

It was such a pretty picture yesterday since it had snowed the day before. At first it took awhile for people to come out, but by the afternoon many families came out to say hello or waved at their windows giving us the thumbs up sign.

I did the Santa Run last year when I just joined the Fire Department. It was so much more fun this year, just because I felt I accomplished something within the past year. I drove by streets we made calls on, but funny thing is I didn't think "Oh that's the house we were at." Maybe because the Santa Run is only what it is intended to be - showing the neighborhood that we care right back at them.

I thought it was awesome that people gave us plates of cookies and stuff. One family even asked us to take food to the poor. Santa patiently held cookies, unwrapped on a plate, until we either were able to put them somewhere they didn't get jostled around so much or until we got back to the station.

It was a long day. We stopped at someone's home along the way, where they had the most beautiful Christmas decorations I have ever seen, and the best desserts. I thought of my pitiful tree with only about ten ornaments on it, and thought NEXT year my tree will be like that and I will have the mental energy to decorate the inside of my house.

When we got back to the firehouse, one of the guys made us dinner and we all sat down at a round table and ate like a family talking about the funny things we saw along the way. We saw one of my instructors from the Academy, my kids and my husband, my son's friend's mom following us in her car, and some of the largest decorated trees I've ever seen.

When I lived on eastern Long Island there was a Santa Run every year. There probably was one in Union when I lived there also, but yesterday I kept thinking about the ones I've seen on the Island, probably because many families had little kids yesterday and at the time my kids were little.

And of course Santa was a big big hit. The letter to Santa we got...that was the coolest gift of the day.