The recent fires burning around the state remind me of Bob Haulman and the days when I was young desk editor at KCBS Radio. Bob was the weatherman for the station. I assumed he lived an idyllic life. He had a ranch in the Sierra Foothills with real horses, and a beautiful young wife.
Better than that, he had a broadcast line into his house. I talked to him on the phone from the newsroom a thousand times. He decided that it was time I get out of San Francisco for a couple of days, and go visit him.
"Take the dog" he suggested. That meant getting on the Greyhound Bus.
So I took his advice. I took the bus to downtown Sacramento, then onto Auburn.
When I was a kid in New Jersey, Sacramento meant tomato juice.
That weekend Mr. Haulman and I and drank a lot of tomato juice, adulterated with imprudent measures of vodka.
His charming wife, Judy, raised horses, and that was clearly her passion. She introduced me to her favorite horse. I cautiously climbed over the fence into the corral. The beast immediately trotted right up to me and stuck his nostrils into mine. The low Sierra morning was very chilly. I still see that steam churning out of the horse's nose right now.
Judy said to me, "I've never not seen him do that before. He usually doesn't like strangers."
I wasn't so brave. I was frozen with fear. That's why I didn't jump out of the way.
Isn't it interesting how people think we're brave because we don't jump out of the way? There's something about the language of fear. The animals sense it, I fear.
As I mentioned, the recent fires around the state, particularly near Yosemite, remind me of Bob. Yosemite is not so far from Auburn where Bob was a volunteer fireman. He was a local hero.
Bob and I were were down at the Auburn American Legion Hall at 11 o'clock on a Saturday night, "Little Reno Night." I think the Nevada state-line is something like twenty miles away. "Little Reno Night" seemed harmless. Gambling in those days was not legal in California. The cash on the tables was Monopoly money. No one could take it too seriously, not with play money. Everybody was drinking up a storm. That's always serious business.
Bob suddenly shouted at me from across the room. I could not hear him over the din. He raced over and punched me on my my right shoulder: "We gotta go, Bellingham." He'd gotten a page from the fire dispatcher. Bob dragged me out the bar. Oddly, I still had my wits about me -- I wasn't quite sure about him -- but his exuberance was infections, in a perilous, reckless way. He got behind the wheel (we'd taken a fire truck to the Legion Hall), and we were off for an adventure. When we arrived, it was a terrible scene. Three teenage bodies thrown from a car crash on the bridge over the American River -- the result of drag racing on a Saturday night when the kids in the country are bored senseless.
The next day, which was a couple of hours later, he was dragging me up a mountain toward a brushfire where he made me carry a hose. A large man, he huffed and puffed, but never slowed down. We were being sauteed by the sun, hot enough for Icarus. I marveled and worried at the thought that he did this sort of thing all the time.
No, Bob never slowed down until a heart attack stopped him a few years later. Bob was a Jersey-born cowpoke who had a love for rodeos and chaparral and fire trucks. He was like a kid all of his life. He died way too young, never content to chase fire engines like most of the rest of us. He had to be at the wheel, dressed up as a fireman, and racing toward the smoke.
Bruce Bellingham is also a columnist for the San Francisco Northside, and the author of Bellingham by the Bay. He says the most notable heat wave to hit San Francisco was when the City burned to the ground in 1906.
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