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As in most small communities, my hometown had a volunteer
fire department. This was in the days before pagers and mobile phones, so in the
centre of town, on the top of the highest building (three full floors), there
was a siren. If there was a fire, the siren would begin wailing, and all the
volunteer firemen – among them Mr. Cooper, the bank manager, Mr. McCall, the
pharmacist and Mr. Reed, who was the school janitor – would leave their jobs, jump
into their cars and speed to the fire hall. But they weren’t the only ones racing
to the fire hall. Imagine that siren going off in the summer, when we kids were
out of school and at loose ends.
You got it.
That siren went off, and every kid in town jumped on his or
her bike and peddled like mad for the fire hall. It was like a mass evacuation
in reverse. We kids were often at the hall before the men were. With our feet
half-stuffed into our running shoes, we speculated gleefully over whose house
was going up in smoke right now; Ricky
was sure he’d seen smoke over the west side of town. Wesley thought he’d seen
smoke coming from the baseball diamond. Michele had smelled something burning
as she came down Hill Street. Our excitement grew. Could the fire be... could
it be... could the fire be at the school?
By the time the firemen arrived we kids were practically vibrating. Within
moments, the big doors rolled up, and the fire truck was revealed, its flashing
lights sending us into a fevered cheering. Kids scattered off the driveway. Mr.
Kell, fire chief and owner of the ice cream parlour, was at the wheel. He
maneuvered majestically out of the hall, sounded the big horn, BLAAAAAP, and acknowledged
us with a salute. By the time the truck’s siren came on, every one of us had
jumped back onto a bike. We followed the truck down the main road, feet
spinning, streamers streaming, until we got to the highway and couldn’t keep up
anymore. First one kid would drop back and then another; then someone would say
it was hot, and the whole gang of us would retire to the local pond for a swim.
Then came the summer I was twelve: the siren at the corner
went off, and my brother, who was ten, went to the hall without me. He told me
all about it, of course. The Stoddart’s abandoned pig barn had burned to the
ground, but it wasn’t as exciting to me as it had been. I stopped hearing the
siren soon after that. I assumed I had outgrown it, but then I figured out that
no one heard the siren anymore. The volunteers were all wearing pagers, the
siren had been disconnected. There had been complaints that it was disturbing
the peace of the village. Now, by the time the kids knew the fire truck was
rolling out, it was already gone. No more excited meetings outside the hall; no
more frenetic post mortems at the pond.
I found it sad.
A few months after my husband and I moved from Etobicoke to Flamborough, I was out in the
garden and heard something I hadn’t heard in over thirty years. It was very
faint, just a ghost of a sound, but unmistakeable. In Flamborough, a rural area
with notoriously bad mobile coverage and iffy phone lines, the Freelton Volunteer
Fire Department, seven kilometres from my house, still relies on its siren. As
I listened, I imagined men and women dropping what they were doing and heading
for the fire hall. And I imagined every kid in the village doing exactly the
same thing.
I wanted to join them.
I have images of you out on your bike chasing them down (and I mean the adult you). And then you'd invite them all back to your place for a drink.
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