Fire Lover Read Online Free PDF Page B

which was near the bottom of the pay scale for the fifty-five fire agencies in Los Angeles County.
    Glendale was a city of 160,000 and encompassed 32 square miles. There were 9 fire stations and 160 firefighters, and it bordered that area of Los Angeles where he'd been raised. He knew Glendale, and he would gladly settle, if they'd take him.
    He breezed through the written exam and was called for the oral interview, very fearful of explaining his rejection by LAPD for psychological reasons, and his washing out of the LAFD academy
    He sucked it up and boldly told the oral board that the L. A. Fire Department's academy was "rigid," but diplomatically added that he should have adjusted to their rigidity. He then explained that his failing marriage had been disrupting his focus and draining his energy while he'd been at the academy.
    The oral-board members seemed to appreciate that he had been a U. S. Air Force firefighter, and they actually counseled him on his marital problems. He later claimed that he was more open to these men than he ever had been with the woman he had married. He soon received a letter of congratulations upon being accepted as a recruit in Glendale's first formal fire-academy class.
    On March 1, 1974, John Orr, number one on the hiring list, began his training, and eight weeks later, he and twelve others graduated. He was sent to Station 6 as a full-fledged fireman. Job hunting had ended. A real career had begun at last.
    It will never be known if the LAPD psychologist had left that file open to mollify the distraught applicant, and it's uncertain if his diagnosis was even in the file at the time, but if it was, the applicant never admitted to seeing it:
    Non-acceptable applicant. Reason for rejection based upon his past history and test results. Currently having marital problems with separation. Recently walked off a job, gave no notice. Supervisors gave him poor evaluation, described him as goof-off, know-it-all, irresponsible and immature. The testing reemphasizes this. Rorschach showed him passive, indecisive, with problems with women and sex. The MMPI confirmed this and showed a schizoid person who is withdrawn from people and may have sexual confusion in his orientation. Very non-objective.
    Diagnosis: Personality trait disturbance. Emotionally unstable personality.
    After his final examination, in February 1975, John Orr was no longer a probationary rookie. He was one of them, an unconditional firefighter, and nobody could ever again say he was "unsuitable." He grew a mustache during the decade when cops and firemen wore fiercer "stashes" than Turkish hammer throwers. Winning his spurs hadn't happened a moment too soon. He was sick of training manuals and knot tying.
    On his off-duty days, hearth and home bored him silly, so he took a part-time job working as a clerk at a 7-Eleven Store.
    With the extra bucks he bought an old Ford pickup with a camper shell for his hunting and camping excursions. At the 7-Eleven, he worked with another restless employee, who was on her third unhappy marriage. And the two young people impulsively decided to get out of dreary wedlock and take an apartment in Glendale as platonic, rent-sharing housemates.
    Like his mother before him, John just got up one morning, left a note for Jody, and bugged out. The next day he drove to the Department of Public Social Services and asked how much child support he should pay for his two young daughters. And after they set up housekeeping, he reported that the platonic relationship "lasted about twenty minutes."
    He began taking college classes in fire science on his G. I. Bill allowance, and despite his stated dislike of cops, with their machismo and bullying ways - cops, he felt, never showed the proper respect for firefighters - he also took police science courses. He said it was because he wanted to "explore the conflicts" between the two emergency services, but also for the report-writing experience. Firemen wrote little, cops