Eric Johnson pays tribute to firefighters -- especially his dad
By Eric Johnson
Published: Sep 16, 2015 at 9:15 PM PDT Last Updated: Sep 17, 2015 at 8:53 AM PDT
The weather has changed and we're all relieved. We now have a grip on the wildfires in our state that have haunted and tormented us throughout this fiery summer. But the fires are still out there, aren't they? Here, and elsewhere, moving and changing and consuming and destroying. And breathing.
Just like the men and women we send out to smother and choke them until they die.
My Dad was a firefighter. He was a Captain on the Spokane Valley Fire Department. I grew up around firefighters, watched them, learned from them, idolized them.
As a boy I thought it was such an exciting thing for a man to do. When other kids talked about what their dads did for a living, I would puff out my chest and say proudly, "My Dad's a fireman."
He was badly burned when I was a baby. A Harley blew up in his face and he caught fire and was running across a field because, as he told me, "Yeah, you're supposed to roll on the ground but when you're on fire like that, trust me, you run." A bus driver jumped out at a stop light and ran across the field and tackled him, saving his life.
In the hospital, half dead and all bandaged up with a tracheotomy, he whispered to my Mom, "Anything too tough for anyone else is just right for me."
Those words will live forever in our family's lore.
But, of course, he kept pulling on his boots and fighting fires. It wasn't until much later that I realized the guts that must have taken.
Once when I was in high school I said, "Dad, I've though it over and I think I'd like to be a fireman like you."
He looked up casually and said, "You think you can whip me?"
I was stunned, and said, "no..."
He said, "Cuz you'll never be a fireman as long as I'm standing. You'll do something better than that."
He thought otherwise, but the truth is I DIDN'T do anything better than that. Nobody does anything better than that.
By the time he retired his nerves were shot, and when the phone would ring next to him he would jump a foot out of his chair, eyes wild for a moment until he realized it wasn't an alarm at the station, just a phone in the kitchen.
But he was also very proud of being a fireman. He told me once a couple years before he died that, in some strange way he never felt more alive than when he was in the fight, battling a fire.
I wonder if that's why so many strong, brave young men and women volunteer to go out and fight fires. Wild fires. House fires. Doesn't matter. Maybe instinctively they're seeking that elusive feeling my Dad was talking about. Maybe that's the same reason Vikings waded into battle joyously and boxers box and cops strap on their guns and some people put on wing suits and jump off mountains. I don't know.
But I know this: I'm glad they do it. I'm thankful they're out there in the muck protecting us with shovels and hoses and the kind of grit they don't brag about to their kids or talk about at functions.
Right now, as I jot down these thoughts, there are still thousands of men and women slogging around in the dirt and brush of our state, and California, and so many other places, fighting the thing that consumes and breathes and destroys and kills.
We lost three of them here in our state. Andrew Zajac, Richard Wheeler and Tom Zbyszewski. Others have perished elsewhere. And those left behind keep pulling on their boots and fighting on, just like my Dad, because the fires don't stop, so neither can they.
I'm sure that many of them feel invincible, full of youth and guts and grit. I'm also sure that those feelings fade as their careers carry them into middle age, replaced by a solemn respect for the fires, and a dutiful, stoic sense of resignation.
And that, I believe, is where the real courage lies, somewhere between youthful chutzpah and inevitable fear, a place where duty overrides instinct, a place that my Dad and so many others understood.
I'm glad they're there, and sometimes I wish I would have disobeyed Captain Jack Johnson, just that once, and become a fireman.
Because nobody can do anything better than that.
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