Fire department woes

The story in Sunday’s edition of the News Express concerning the six fire departments in our area that are getting federal grant money is good news, indeed. There are few jobs as difficult as the one running a rural fire department, but when you find yourself constantly in need of funds, the job is made exponentially more difficult.

I am not at all surprised to see that several departments are using these funds to purchase new trucks. The fire truck is, after all, the most important tool in the department’s arsenal, and I’d bet that many departments are in the same boat as the one here at Feds Creek, in that their fire-fighting apparatuses are getting a bit long in the tooth, to say the least. Feds Creek’s main pumper is a 1978 model Chevrolet, and its back up is a 1978 GMC tanker.

If you want to know how much area departments are hamstrung by these older pieces of equipment, compare any 1978 car or truck to their newer counterparts, and you will see how far technology has advanced in the interim. The same thing is true of fire trucks, and anything newer would see a vast improvement in the fire protection that the departments could offer this area.

There is a Kentucky law on the books that allow fire departments to establish a subscription fee for their service areas. This fee, payable once a year, is usually $25.00 for residences, and $50.00 for businesses. The only hang-up is that the fee is not a mandatory one, like the property tax that is also widely ignored in this county, so that most departments that have instituted this fee still find themselves short of funds.

The need for fire protection, alas, is lost on most people unless it is their home that is burning. Thus the fire services are often neglected. Of course, the fee system mentioned above is an absolute bargain if the return is viable fire protection, yet many find even this pittance too much to pay, but there is a way to help fund these departments to the fullest extent possible.

Instead of the afore-mentioned subscription fee, if some well-meaning legislator from our area would propose a bill that would set a fee of $2.50 per month ($5.00 for businesses) to be added to electric bills, and then passed on to the area fire departments, no local department would have to depend on the odd federal grant to keep its financial house in order. Plus there would be the added incentive for area residents to attend each fire department’s monthly meetings to see how their contribution is used.

Speaking of another bane to our existence, there is the little matter of those rapidly rising gas prices. There is very little one can do about them, because, no matter what, you still need to drive in order to get anything done anymore.

But this does not mean that you are altogether powerless when it comes to buying three dollar a gallon motion lotion. And I have found one area where I was able to completely stop buying gas, and yet still do the job that I had been doing beforehand. I speak of the job of keeping my lawn cut.

This year, after having killed yet another power mower, I decided that I’d had enough of pulling cords, changing oil, yadda, yadda, yadda, so when the time came for me to buy a new mower, I invested in a push model. And no, this isn’t your Grandpa’s lawn mower. For those of you who will inquire, you’ll find that the push mower has entered the 21st century, with a whole litany of improvements over the older, heavier push models some of us old-timers once played with, or had inflicted on us, many moons ago.

I purchased my new mower from Sears, where I had those good people order a Craftsman that I found, much to my delight, to be lightweight, and easy to operate. In fact, with my small lawn (these mowers are better suited for smaller lawns) I can actually mow my grass quicker than with my heavier, more cumbersome power mower.

So for those of you who would like to draw the line somewhere, and if your lawn is sufficiently small, consider one of these throwbacks. What with gas approaching $3.00 a gallon, and with every possibility that it will make it there, this purchase could very well pay for itself…well, before you know it.