"Hot Diggety Dog!"
Written on October 22nd, 2021
By Doctor Ricky 1024
Copyright �© Fanstory
'All Rights Reserved'

"Ladder company 10"
And, Engine Company 10.
"The Ten House"
'Is located at 124 Liberty Street.'
(Yes, across from the World trade Center)
'And, my name is Mike.'
'Mike Driscoll.'
...
'Now of course fighting fires goes Way, Way, back.'
'Yes, to "The Great Chicago Fire 1871"
...
'It burned thousands of buildings!'
'Yes, and sadly enough?'
'An estimated 300 people lost their lives that day!'
'Causing over 200 million in damages!'
'My great-great pop Ezekiel Driscoll died in that fire!'
'And, they believe that it might have been human.'
'But others think it was a meteor.'
'But this is my story!'
'Damn it!'
...
'Yes, fighting fires and forest fires goes back over 150 years in our family.'
'When I was a child we lived in central New Jersey in a small town called Sewell.'
'Back then you didn't come home from school until dinner time or when it was dark.'
'And, you better not be late or you would get the switch!'
'My problem was never being late!'
'Yes,it was being in the wrong place at the right time!'
...
'When I was about nine years old.'
'I went across the railroad tracks to do my thing and I noticed forest fire!'
'It had just started and the flames weren't really that high.'
'But they were high enough that you couldn't just stomp them out!'
'So, I took off my t-shirt and started whacking on it!'
...
'Shortly afterwards, the fire company showed up.'
(somebody must have called them)
'They asked me if I had started it!'
...
'Many years would pass.'
'I would quit out of high school at age sixteen.'
'Yes, to help Mom because we didn't have much of an income.'
'And, dad had died.'
'Dad was primarily a forest firefighter.'
'And, that's exactly what got him.'
'The damn flames!'
'Damn it!'


"Hot Diggety Dog!" II
'Time went by and I forgot about the firefighting thing.'
'At age Fifteen, I started working as a box boy in a small supermarket.'
'My job was once a week at 4:00 in the morning to bring the produce load in from the curb.'
'I was also shopping cart collector.
By age seventeen, I was frozen food Manager.'
'Yes, and we had become a part of a major supermarket chain called Foodtown Markets.'
'Our warehouse was in Edison,
New Jersey.'
'And, the Winter months were very quiet.'
'We were only doing about $40,000 a week.'
'But that first Summer of 1972?'
'We got a taste of what it was like to be a major Supermarket, doing more than five times.'
'Yes, what we were doing in the Winter.'
'Since it was a seasonal area.'
(Long Beach Island)
...
'Yes for the next 36 years?'
'I would work for a corporation called C&A Enterprises of Ocean County Inc.'
(DeFiglio Markets)
'The next several years?'
'I would become the Grocery Manager.'
'I had already had been packing out the grocery department previously for a year and a half.'
...
'Mr. DeFiglio started me out originally at a dollar an hour but that following Summer?'
'Yes, when business exploded?'
'I was putting in 75 hours a week.'
'The following Summer?'
'Mr. "D"
'Realize my worth and was calling me "Richard the Lionhearted!"
'Yes, and I would go on a salary at $150 a week.'
'This was not bad for an 18-year-old back in the early seventies.'
...
Note: 'As previously stated earlier.'
'During that time period, I'd quit school.'
'Yes, to help out at home with Mom.'
'But now I was slowly building a career job!'
...
'Finally after overworking myself?'
'Yes, In 1983.'
'I would have my first nervous breakdown!'
'Only a raging forest fire would have slowed me down?'
To be continued.
24.