SS: I had friends in the fire department who wanted me to come and join them at the fire department. I'd worked with the fire department for a little, a few months before that, so I knew them. Anyway, they said they'd be happy to have me back at the fire department again, so I joined them. Well, one of the reasons I joined the fire department was, as a fireman you went on duty for 24 hours, you slept at the fire station. So in that 24 hours you put in three days of work, you see. So by going 24 hours, I had two days free, and I got the same pay, so I was much better off with the fire department. The, on those fire department trips, I had a few times when I was really, I really felt happy because I saw places I would never have seen otherwise. Fire struck, most of those fires in the summer were light-, struck, started by lightning. And being wartime, the interior department office and neighboring large town, Twin Falls, they didn't have enough men to put on a fire line. So they used to come into camp and ask us to volunteer to engage in firefighting. And for doing that, we got fifty cents an hour. And on top of that, they liked our work so much they said, "You're the best firefighting crews we have ever had." So they gave us a merit raise of 10 cents an hour. [Laughs] The high point of the day was, if it was a one-day trip, on the way home, they would stop at the town close to camp and let us loose so we could go into stores and buy whatever we wanted. Those stores were fully stocked. Now, in the co-op stores in camp, we were always short of merchandise. We were a new store, of obviously short duration, as long as the... and we knew, so the wholesalers were reluctant to sell us very much. So we used to use those firefighting trips as an opportunity to get out and do some shopping for ourselves. I enjoyed that.

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