Sunday Morning Redux! Summer is here. Record temperatures above 100 for the next few days. And, of course, that brings the afternoon thunder storms to our area…with lightning to start wild fires in the bone-dry hills and mountains around us. Some, like the one Friday night, carry enough water to put out their own fire, but many just strike a big match and move on, leaving us to clean up the mess. By “us”, I mean our firefighters, who have already had their share of fires this year, the men who draw a line in the dirt and dare the fire to cross it. So far this year they’ve stood up against huge fires in California, Arizona, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, New Mexico. And let’s not forget the Black Forest fire in Colorado where hundreds of homes were destroyed just a few weeks ago. There are some special trained firefighters. They’re called “Smoke Jumpers” and the Forest Service only has about 270 of them. It takes guts to jump out of a C-47 (We called it a Gooney Bird in ‘Nam.) and into a forest fire. Their job is fire suppression. Get to the fire quick, hopefully before it gets too far out of hand. In 1949, 15 Smoke Jumpers parachuted into the Mann Gulch fire in Montana. 13 firefighters died in that fire, 11 of them were the Smoke Jumpers. The Smoke Jumper Foreman, R. Wagner (Wag) Dodge, survived by setting a fire ring and getting in the middle of it, similar to the way plains Indians used to escape prairie fires, but he couldn’t get the rest of his crew into the ring. He died 5 years later of Hodgkins Disease, but, he talked about the Mann Gulch fire just before he died. James Keelaghan wrote this tune from Dodge’s story. It’s fire season. It looks to be a long one. Thank you, Smoke Jumpers and, indeed, all firefighters in advance for what you will do for us this year and moving forward. This edition of Sunday Morning Redux is for the firefighters. This version of “Cold Missouri Waters” is one of my favorites. youtube/watch?v=4zYQmyGAXFg
Posted on: Sun, 30 Jun 2013 11:20:06 +0000
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