Allenspark Volunteer Fire Dept

It was in the early 1970's, I had just gone through a divorce and I decided to just take a few years off. I went to Allenspark, CO, I had an aunt there who owned some cabins and property there. She allowed me to use one of the cabins until I got myself settled in.

I had an old green 50's pickup truck and that was about it, besides my personal stuff. I set up my own business, I was the "Handyman". I did anything, thawed frozen pipes, wired cabins and fixed just about anything.

My good friend was the fire chief of the local Allenspark Volunteer Fire Department. It was responsible for a very large area. They had three fire stations with trucks and equipment. One of them was at Meeker Park. They had a genuine ancient fire engine, they kept it in good operating condition, it was beautiful.

We had regular meetings and CPR and advanced first aid training, but our fire fighting training wasn't so good, we pretty much had to do the best we could when faced with real fire fighting situations. Whenever there was a serious accident, the sherif would call us to help. We kept water reservoirs in private homes where people had swimming pools. We would haul the water for them and they would make it available to us if and when we needed it.

My greatest challenge came when we were fighting a house fire. All of our pumpers were doing all they could but we needed someone to go in and make sure everyone was out. I volunteered. I had my mask & gloves and heavy coat and went in the front door. Soon I could not determine where I was, so I dropped to my knees and started crawling real slow. Soon my hand felt the edges of a floor furnace. I put my hand on it and applied pressure, it fell through to the basement! Mercy! If I had stepped on that I'd been a goner. I worked my way around it and determined no one else was in the house.

Needless to say, my Guardian Angle has had a tough job. :)