Monday, March 09, 2009

Sparks a memory....

Came across THIS in my files and I remembered as if it were yesterday.

It was 1958.

Highway 17 South, between Camp Lejeune, NC and Charleston, SC.

A fellow Marine (he a Sgt, me a Cpl.) and I were headed down to my hometown to drink some beer and have a good long "non-military" weekend.

As we sped past a house by the side of the road he commented "that doesn't look right." I braked, turned around and drove back.

We both had seen what looked like a bright yellow glow in a window and we ran up on the porch, banging on the door, yelling "Get out! Your house is on fire."

Bob pushed open the unlocked door and we both ventured in still shouting. And now, coughing.

It was empty so we scooted back out as the flames grew and we could hear it roar.

I reached in the car for my camera and started clicking as the fire quickly consumed the entire house.

A few minutes later a volunteer fire truck pulled up so we continued on to a weekend of cold beer.

Your throat gets awfully dry yelling inside a burning house.

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Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Now THIS rings a bell....




Before YOUR next trip to San Francisco, go online and arrange to join a group of 12 other zany visitors to put on firemen's coats and ride across the Golden Gate Bridge in a shiny red 1950s restored fire engine. The husband and wife owners even live in a former firehouse.

They keep ringing the bell, hit the siren (once) and you wave and smile at all the people waving and smiling at you as you rumble up and down the streets of San Francisco then race across the bridge, looking up at the fog shrouded towers.

After a stop in Sausalito to take pictures with the bridge in the background - fog permitting - you come back across the bridge and eventually end up back at the embarcadaro.

We even passed a REAL fire engine and the crew stopped rolling up hoses for a moment to give us a friendly wave.

I'm still downloading pictures I took there, in Los Angeles and in Denver and soon will have albums set up online to give you ideas for planning YOUR next vacation out west.
(Click on pictures to enlarge for detail.)

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