I was working at Engine 7, located in the oldest working firehouse in San Jose. It was built in the early 1930s as a federal work project. It was a small Spanish-style house with 2 bedrooms, a small galley kitchen, and a living room. The basement had weights and a T.V. but this was before cable. The older firemen working when I came in went back to WWll and did not watch much T.V. They were great card and cribbage players.

Station 7 had walls about one-foot thick and in the summer we would close it up and it would stay fairly cool ( before firehouses had A.C.). The bedroom was tiny and had 6 beds. The Captain had his own room and both bedrooms were joined by a small bath. I spent most of the 11 years I was there sleeping on a couch with the mice in the basement as, if one guy snored, it would rock the house. E7 was a tailboard engine, that and our first in area kept me there. We caught a bit of everything as we were near downtown but also had low income and expensive houses to respond to.

The downtown area gave us some strange runs. We got called one night to a apartment by a guy who said his roommate was acting strange. We arrived with one P.D. unit. The cop and I went up and found a shirtless person babbling. His eyes were spinning and when the cop tried to cuff him the struggle started. This guy worked out and anyone who has tried to restrain someone knows it is not like T.V.
We all went to the floor and my partner and the cop had the guy's arms and I had his neck.

When we finally got him in cuffs we all stood up. As we were talking, I looked down and the guy was doing a lizzard thing to my boots. His tongue was darting in and out. Either he liked the struggle or he was on P.C.P. which was very popular back then.

Dusters (P.C.P. users) have a thirst issue that sometimes manifests with the tongue movement. I never looked at my boots the same again.