<Begin Segment 26>

JM: But anyway, in Pinedale, they even organized a... kind of like a, you're supposed to govern yourself, you know. So anyway, I ended up in the fire department, so did Tok here and several other people I know.

AI: Did you ever have any fires you had to deal with?

JM: No, no we didn't. We had a practice, or whatever you call 'em. And we had to make the rounds every... well, every night, or during the day.

TH: It's, 24 hours that, fire department.

JM: You had different crews. And we got acquainted with people who we didn't know. We got to be friends with a lot of people from different areas at that time.

TH: There was twenty-one members in that fire department, and we divided into three groups of seven each. And then it would rotate, this seven would take a eight-hour shift. And then from the next group would take the, and so forth. And then the following week, the one that was on this end would move up one, and this one would move up one, and the one on the end would come down. So it was fixed so that we were supposed to get the breaks, but as Joe says, we made a lot of friends because they took people from different areas. But our, we had quite a few Bellevue boys in there, though. Yeah.

JM: Those people who took the night shift, well that's, however you think about it is, had the best shift because, sometimes why, they could sleep. You could catch 'em sleeping, see. [Laughs] But, other way you look at it, why, it was kinda rough because you had to stay awake and you had to make the rounds. It was some fellas that they thought, Well gee, this, this is pretty good. It's cooler in the winter, in the night, so they'd sleep. But some people got reputation of sleepin' all the time. But that was one of the things that happened down there in Pinedale.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.