So
yesterday I stopped by a coffee shop owned by another retired Firefighter my
buddy Eric. Eric I don’t think started off wanting to own a coffee shop http://www.coloradocoffeemerchants.com/ he
just hated fire house coffee.
Firefighters
for the most part are really cheap when it comes to pitching in on shared
expenses at the station. So the cost of stuff like coffee, creamer, anything we
deem a “staple” is split evenly across all firefighters.
Eric hated
cheap coffee and cheap cigars so he began bringing his own coffee to the
station many years ago. He was way ahead of his time for his enthusiasm of
coffee. I don’t believe there was a Starbucks in Colorado Springs at the time
but I could be wrong.
Anyway he
was the very first coffee snob I ever knew, he used things like a French Press
when no other firefighter even knew what one was. He set out to find the finest
coffees he could and if you were lucky he’d share a cup with you in the evening
while he smoked a cigar on the ramp outside the station.
Now as a
smoker I must admit my palate was rather dull when distinguishing the subtle
differences in the coffees he drank. I mean he was like one of those wine
maniacs that bore me to death with all their knowledge of wine. Not that Eric
bored me with his knowledge of coffee, it wasn’t about the coffee, it was the
down time shared with a friend.
So Eric’s
love or some might say obsession with coffee turned into an actual coffee
roasting business. He opened a little coffee shop and I mean little, it had as
I recall three tables. The rest of the space was taken up by an enormous coffee
roaster.
A special
roaster, I learned most coffee was roasted on a big flat hot plate, where as
Eric’s coffee was roasted in a big noisy fire breathing machine that looked
more like a clothes dryer than a coffee roaster.
This thing
generated two things, first it produced as much noise as a full alarm of fire
trucks and second it made great coffee. He began to import his very own beans
from all regions of the world and soon word spread.
Many firefighters
began buying his coffee me included I love Sumatra; don’t know why I just do,
and his little business grew. That was more than eight years ago, his shop has
increased in size and in popularity and the huge beast of a machine has been
replaced by a newer one, that still makes more noise than coffee, oh well.
From the
outset of his coffee business he offered firefighters half price on his beans
and once again the thrifty firefighters showed up. Why not when you can buy
fresh roasted pea berries for the same price as Folgers? You would be crazy not
to do so.
Since I
retired his shop has become a regular stop on my daily route, he even hosted my
very first book signing at his store and has carried my book there since it was
first published.
So yesterday
I stopped in as usual and to my surprise he was actually seated at a table
having a conversation with a patron, you must understand he is the hardest working
business owner I know, he is in constant motion. I mean I feel bad when I stop
him to chat, so most days I say hi, shake hands and leave him alone.
So it was
amazing to see him sitting down and looking relaxed, then I realized who the customer
was, he was a retired lieutenant I had only seen one time in the past 10 or
more years.
This lieutenant
had been a mentor to Eric and I both we had both learned much from this man,
not all of it politically correct. The Colorado Springs fire department had
never had what is now known as a “dedicated truck company”, in others words a
ladder truck that was staffed only by specially trained firefighters
Before this
time the firefighters that road the ladder truck were the guys who got to work
first and this, for many was because the ladder truck went to very few calls. So
if you wanted to be less busy that day you got on the truck.
With the
first dedicated truck that tradition ended. So now on this one truck in the
whole city a test program was begun and it was headed up by this lieutenant,
Lord knows why, maybe it was because Scott was indeed a rebel and those that
followed he became the same.
Truck 8,
the Night Owls as they came to be known were the very first of their kind to
perform this kind of work for the CSFD, true pioneers that have been long
forgotten. But at the time it was pretty heady work, long intense hours of
training in many unknown disciplines to the average firefighter.
Now, years
later it is a desired position by many firefighters and competition for a spot
on a truck is intense. But not back then, it was so much work and with Scott it
didn’t end at 5 PM like most other jobs on the FD. No Scott had stuff to do at
night as well.
So anyway
there sat Scott and Eric, I had to barge in, I had to, I couldn’t help myself
and what a treat it was. The longer you are retired, the farther away the memories
become and the only way to access them is in a setting like this.
You see
what we did has been forgotten by the firefighters working today, but when a
few old dogs get together the memories begin to flow, one story leads to the
next and the next and the next.
If anyone
dared to do the stuff Scotty did as an officer today they would be fired in an
instance, but he and Eric were two officers that knew how to lead and that my
friends was by example, not by book knowledge, but by standing side by side
with the men they worked with, a rare commodity.
