A memoir from a retired firefighter about firefighting, rescue calls and life around the firehouse.
It's not all about fire — that's lesson number one.
No, it's a collection of things: assisting an injured person at three o'clock in the morning, calming a child in a traumatic situation, saving the belongings of a family from the ravages of a fire, seeing people in every heartbreaking situation imaginable and trying to help them, while not losing yourself in the process.
And it's about the insanity found in the firehouse— to the author it's the Cracker Factory — and the politics and pettiness that try unsuccessfully to steal the joy from the job. This book is the blue-collared view of a career firefighter. The seventeen stories in Notes from the Firehouse take the reader on a journey with the everyday firefighter from his first days as a rookie, to his last fire that prematurely sends him into retirement.