"Kind of Big" Fire Protection District celebrates a retirement

I check out Joe Schmoe's blog regularly. Great stories and insight from the other coast.

If we are to believe that tall-tale telling Willie Wines, today is Schmoe's last day on the job.

Hey SCHMOE !

Back in May, Willie spent a couple of hours with Schmoe in Los Angeles. From the Iron Firemen post:

I ran into a celebrity. The famous Captain Joe Schmoe from Report on Conditions !

HOLLY COW … what an honor!

The Capt. and I have been following one another’s sites for some time but could have never imagined that we would actually meet one day.

Turns out, Schmoe was in the LA area this weekend as well and as fate would have it .. we ended up in the same bar.

How cool is that ?? !! ?? He could hardly wait to point that big fancy camera at me ….. Yea .. Schmoe’s is bigger than mine …LOL

We had several beers and some GREAT conversation. It was like we had known each other for all our lives.

He was everything I had expected and more …. our evening together was the highlight of my trip (2nd only to seeing and spending time with my baby sister).

There is so much to write about from our get together but this post has turned into kind of a long one already.

Schmoe is a post all in himself.

I will extend my thanks to the Capt. for suffering through several hours with me.

Hell, I even got to ride in his jeep!

It was another lesson about REAL firemen and brotherhood …. Schmoe is without a doubt a GOOD JAKE.

from the May 09, 2011 article: Ironfiremen.com back on the East coast

Retured but not leaving

Joe is staying involved in emergency services, including fire photography.

The captain is also teasing us with revealing where he practiced his firemantic craft.

Click on Closest to the Pin contest :

It's contest time here at Report on Conditions.

In celebration of my retirement, I will be giving away my back-up Pelican Products "Big Ed" 4C flashlight.

It is used, but only slightly so. It has never seen fire, my primary Big Ed has never let me down so my back up has never been used at work.

It is an awesome light and comes completed with my true name and ID number scrawled on it with magic marker. True desert rat labeling!

The coveted Big Ed will go to the first reader who guesses what agency I actually work for.

In the event that no one guesses correctly, the one who guesses the fire protection agency geographically closest to mine will be awarded the prize.

Each reader is allowed one guess and ALL ENTRIES MUST BE RECEIVED BY 1930 hrs Pacific time on Sept. 4 2011.

Entries must be submitted via the comments section for this post. The winner will be announced in the evening of Sept. 4 and will be announced by a post on this blog.

Here it is folks, a chance to win a piece of Schmoe firefighting history. Use it at work, keep it in your car or keep it as a collectable.

I appreciate your readership and I wish you good luck.

PS Sorry Willie, I gotta exclude you, you know too much.You too Rhett. Statter, I don't know.

Congrats to Captain Joe Schmoe!

Mike "FossilMedic" Ward