"So here's this hot shower set up, there's a huge dining area set up, covered with not quite a circus tent, but almost. A lot of logistic radios. Just the biggest set-up I'd ever seen."
I went on to another fire at Jacobs Lake. This fire was 1,200 acres, and they had 600 people on it. There were crews from all over the country. It was a huge fire camp. All the other fire camps I went to, it was just a few crews. And here they've got—it almost seemed like a small city. We drove in to Jacobs Lake, and then down towards the rim. It was a clearing, but in this clearing there were (chuckles) there was a bank of, I think I remember that, first, of hot showers. I hadn't seen that at any of the other deals. So here's this hot shower set up, there's a huge dining area set up, covered with not quite a circus tent, but almost. A lot of logistic radios. Just the biggest set-up I'd ever seen. Different crews in different states: some of them were sleeping, some of them were just getting up and going. So again, this was twelve on, twelve off, twelve off.
That fire was different in that we would take the crew to wherever, and they'd send us back to camp. So in that case, we weren't isolated at all. There was eight of us there from Flagstaff. We had some cards, and we found out that there was a—I don't want to say a supply room. I'm not quite sure what the term was, but there was an area that was roped off, that you would just kind of walk up and ask for things, and they'd give them to you. So we asked for a folding table, and they had one. And so we had our little card game going, and that worked out pretty well. It got later in the evening, so we went over and asked them for a Coleman lantern. They gave us a brand new Coleman lantern out of the box. We were talking with the guys handing out the stuff, 'cause they weren't in Forest Service. I asked them where they're from, and the guy said, "I'm a lifer from Florence." So what they had done is gone down to the Florence prison (Kern, inaudible) and gotten volunteers. So I don't know what-all are life sentences here, but this guy seemed like a personable guy, he's probably in his sixties, that's giving me the lantern and telling me, "Oh, yeah, we got to volunteer, it gets us out of the prison, and we can come up here and do this." He'd give you candy bars and whatever. He told me that he was hoping that Caesar Chavez was going to be elected governor, because he was convinced he would get a pardon. I never asked. I don't know if you ask lifers, "Well, what are you in for?" So the lifer was just pleasant as could be, happy to be up there handing out whatever.
Then there were some other people behind the rope, and they had electrical tape and they were taping shovels. I asked them what they were doing. They said, "Well, we sharpen the shovels, and then we put electrical tape so people don't get cut." So a sharper shovel makes the digging go better. And these guys were just like some hitchhikers that walked in and said, "Can we do anything?" "Yeah, you can put tape on the shovel ends." So the Florence guys, the hitchhikers, the Forest Service guys, all the support. We did that for, oh, I guess we were on that one for three or four days again. And the fire went longer, but by that time, they decided that maybe they should mobilize the National Guard. So they brought the National Guard up with those deuce-and-a-half troop carriers, so they could move the firefighters around. So that meant we didn't have anything to do anymore, because they were being hauled by this big truck, instead of this big bus. I guess that was better. So then we all went home from that fire. We had a great time, and never did find out what any of the prisoners were in for, but other than that....
Oh, then there was the.... I guess it wasn't that fire. Another fire, we were just getting women in on the crews. And for some reason, the women that I met were all vegetarians. So they'd look at you and say, "Would you like to trade your baked potato for this T-bone?" So that was sort of the question that you would get at dinner. I don't know why they couldn't ask for more vegetables, but sort of like this was the set-up.