Tales From the Station

Just before spring in the latter days of winter, the sap starts flowing and the sugar shacks start up. You can see people gathering sap all around the woods where the maple trees have been tapped. This is a time honored tradition steeply bound in the land.

One year while out and about in our Mule UTV, my son and I noticed our neighbor boiling sap in the demonstration sugar shack down the road. We stopped in and he was getting worried about his wood supply. I said I could help him out and we headed to the woods. I got my brother involved and we cut a couple loads of wood and delivered it to the sugar shack.

We unloaded the wood and visited while the crew was there boiling down sap to make maple syrup. They suggested that my Mule might be better at collecting the sap buckets than their cobbled together trailer and four wheeler. I said “sure” and we headed into the woods where I immediately got hung up on a rock. They got me off the rock and I tried a different route where my big machine got pinned up against a tree.

We got the Mule situated again and I tried going all the way around where I got mired in the mud and had to be pulled out. This last time we all conceded the four wheeler did a better job. My brother and I started hinting around that we wouldn’t mind some syrup for our troubles. My brother inherited my Dad’s ability to convince people and we were promised two quarts of syrup.

Sure enough I heard the door knock one day and I was greeted at the door by our neighbor and he had two quarts of fresh made syrup. He had a little snifter of syrup for my son who was thrilled and immediately toasted some frozen waffles and used it all up at one sitting. For the rest my Brother and I had plans for it and this involved my Mom making homemade pancakes at the farm.

We had the day set and the whole family was going to the farm to eat a homestyle breakfast complete with fresh maple syrup. It was a beautiful spring day and the sun was shining, the birds were singing, insert some other lame spring cliché here. I walked in with the syrup and my Brother had started setting the table when our pagers went off. The pancakes were coming off the griddle and we eyed them and listened to the call. It was a trailer fire on a road that we were sure didn’t have any trailers.

We looked that direction and saw the column of smoke and took off with blue lights flashing. We showed up and it was fully involved. The fire was deep seated and we began to ventilate while dousing the fire with tons of water. This effort was a lost cause because we cut a hole in the roof and found another roof. The trailer was inside a house that had been built around it (hence the reason we didn’t think there were trailers on that road).

The fire was well attended and I thought of skipping out to go eat breakfast, but then I saw my brother running the pump on one of the trucks. I couldn’t just leave knowing he would be stuck there with the truck for the duration. The whole time I was fighting that fire all I could think about was the breakfast I was missing back at the farm.

We put the fire out as best we could but the home was gutted and a complete loss. We got things wrapped up and were heading back to the station when I saw my Brother talking on his cell phone. I didn’t like the look on his face and I asked him about it when we got to the station. He said Mom had to go somewhere so we had to get back to the farm and pick up the kids.

It looked even more discouraging when we got to the farm and saw the cats and dog feasting on a pile of pancakes and other breakfast foods outside. Mom was standing there purse in hand waiting for us to get back and immediately left to go to some function we made her late for. My Brother and I had been anxiously waiting all week to eat some home made pancakes with fresh maple syrup and smacking our lips at the prospect. We were at the fire for over two hours and they ate without us and then fed the leftovers to the pets! Oh, the price we pay to be firefighters.