Brownwood, Texas – A Band-Aid adorns the back bumper of fire truck E1-61, a beautiful white vehicle with low mileage and a 400-gallon tank. The firefighters change it when bad weather rots it or if it falls off in the middle of a call.
The first time the truck went out on call, dispatch radioed about a roadside fire near Merkel. Some old railroad ties were burning. An engine company with a handful of trucks arrived on scene. Wind cut across the Texas plains and shot flames back toward the truck; the driver of E1-61 jammed it into reverse and backed it right into a bridge pillar.
The dent eventually rusted into a scar, the sort every fire truck needs to explain where it’s been and what it’s seen. Often, those stories are too much for the firemen themselves to repeat. Their job is to live horror. No sense in waking the past.
Except this story is too good to keep to themselves; it was funny when Shannon Stone smashed that new truck. As much as they try not to tell stories about Stone, sometimes the men from the Brownwood Professional Fire Fighters Association just can’t help themselves.
Read Jeff Passan’s full articleHERE
