Page 335 - NIXBOOK

You ever see a woodchip truck on fire? It looks like a lot of smoke. The fire department guys got kind of excited about that; they
decided the best way to access the smoldering mess in the giant open top trailer was to cut into it directly from the side, spilling
out a few hundred pounds of wet and burned wood chips. Not too much of a tragedy though; wood chips aren’t worth much
and the thin aluminum sidewall of the trailer would be easily fixed.

I was not on duty though, the night that a garbage truck caught on fire. The driver noticed the smoke pouring out the back and
he made a smart move; he found the nearest big parking lot he could find in the WalMart, and in a big empty area he dumped
the entire load into the parking lot. The fire department had a great time hosing the fire out, and the garbage truck company
called for front end loader to clean up the mess. Which was way cheaper than losing a whole garbage truck to a fire.

Dispatch sent me out to a residential neighbor for a parking complaint. I did not want to go but I had to of course. The problem
was there was a ballfield at the end of the road and a junior league football game was going on; elementary school-aged kids
were playing on two teams, and all of their parents were present and the cars had overflowed out into the neighborhood into
posted NO PARKING areas. The residents went just about apoplectic once a week during the summer months when this
happened, and the police would be called. My solution was to show up and turn on all my emergency lights. Within a few
minutes most of the owners of the illegally parked vehicles would run over and move them to some other place. Any cars left
over got parking tickets, which I always felt a little bad about writing. I told one car owner that if I ever won the lottery I’d buy
a new ballfield for the league, in an area that had lots and lots of free parking.