24 Hours at a Time: Life as a Dallas Firefighter-Paramedic info
I imagine life in a firehouse is a bit like life in a prison. You have a certain amount of time to kill before your sentence is up, and much of that time is spent swapping stories. Most yarns get told so often, both the teller and the listener are already painfully aware of each tiny detail.
Occasionally, someone will remark, "Somebody ought to be writing this stuff down," as if the worn-out tales are of such noteworthy substance, society at large would be the poorer if they slipped into oblivion. Taking the bait, I started writing-not all of the stories, only mine. After all, the only facts I could be sure of were the ones I was directly involved with, and thus, the only ones I felt I could share, with any sense of accuracy.
Just a few dozen of the thousands of events seemed noteworthy, so the vast majority of them remain un-chronicled, as they should. I usually wrote each narrative shortly after it occurred, while the memory was fresh and the i