Angels I have heard on high

This is a shot of the research ship Pioneer pushing across the Pacific up by the Aleutian Islands with some large swells hitting us on the nose.

One of my old buddies, Milton, steering the ship. I never did get to do that!

Good old Mr. Peasly. He sucked in the gut when he saw me with my camera. He knew more about what went on in that engine room than anyone I knew.

In 1961 while working our way between Hawaii and Alaska on the Research vessel, Pioneer. you could tell when you got close to Hawaii. The smell of the islands are unmistakable. On the other end of the sweep, the Aleutian islands also have a smell of their own. Working in the engine room was a life all of it's own. We had huge blowers moving air down from deck level. In the engine room you had noise, lots of noise. You also had diesel fuel vapors in the air. But standing under the blower vents you could almost tell how far we were from land. We all took turns going topside for a few minuets of quite, fresh air, a bite of something to eat, or a restroom break. Our shifts at sea were four hours on, and four hours off. Around the clock.

I worked in the (aft) engine room. It had all its own controls, and also backup controls to the forward engine room. Both engine rooms had the twin diesel engines that could be engaged to the prop shaft one at a time, or both at the same time. The aft engine room also has things that the forward engine room did not. Aft, we had two generators that we would run one at a time to power up all things electric for the ship. We also had a steam boiler and an evaporator to distill sea water into fresh water. The engineer on duty would usually stay at the main control panel, but would cover any open spots for breaks that we all needed during our shifts.

Like I have said, the noise levels are way off the charts in the engine rooms, so we used hand signals, passed notes, or by holding your cupped hands over the other persons ear, you could yell and be understood. My engineer, Mr. Peasly was a huge man, tall with a beer gut over his belt buckle and had been a sea going man all of his adult life. He was somewhere in his fifties when I worked with him. He knew the ship inside and out, every valve, every pipe, and what was in that pipe. The ship was plumbed to carry everything we needed, from fuel, steam, sea water, fresh water, everything.

One of those long shifts in the middle of the night I was sitting in front of the steam boiler and evaporator distilling sea water, filling the fresh water tanks and supplying the ship with steam. Everything was looking right on target in the boilers. You have to balance the fuel to the boiler, the amount of sea water going into the evaporator, the amount of fresh water going into the steam boiler. Lots of tweaking valves to keep it all dancing to the same rhythm of the ship.

I had just gotten down below from a quick break and was tweaking everything back where I wanted it. In the few minutes I was topside, very little had to be done, just watched so nothing went too far out of balance. About a half an hour after my break, I thought I heard something, something that was not the normal noises that we all get used to. I looked over at Mr. Peasly to see if he showed any reaction to what I was hearing. I signaled him with a quick wave, and pointed to one of my ears, like, do you hear anything? He took a few moments glancing around and listening, looked at me and shrugged his shoulders, meaning, nope, nothing. I went back to tweaking and watching.

A short time later I thought I heard something again, only this time, all other sounds left me. It was just like when you go unconscious from a conk on the head, or you run our of air for whatever reason. This time I heard singing, beautiful singing. Way high pitched, like angels singing. Again I looked over at Mr. Peasly. I felt like I was in a fog, but I could see, and the only thing I was hearing was that beautiful singing. I waved again and motioned, pointing to my ear. Mr. Peasly did his best to hear what I was hearing, but, nothing again. The sound of the engine room came back and the singing went away. The whole thing lasted for maybe ten seconds. I went back to tweaking and watching all the gauges.

Once again, after a short time, I get goose bumps, this is new, my hearing changes and the singing starts up. Again I look at Mr. Peasley, nothing from him. This time I wave to get his attention. I signal him that I need to go topside for a couple of minuets. He looks over at my gauges and gives me the OK. I don't know why, but someone is telling me something. The third time is no mistake. I get up and into fresh air, its the middle of the night, maybe three am. I take my few minutes topside, take a deep breath of the cool night air and head back down.

As I clear the second level of stairways, (ladders) I can hear the unmistakable sound of escaping steam, lots of escaping steam. As I clear the last few steps, Mr. Peasley is finishing closing the last valve to isolate the broken fitting. Like I said, Mr. Peasley knew this ship inside and out. No panic, no yelling, just calmly doing what he was really good at. Keeping the ship moving. Almost everything had redundant piping and valving, and this engineer knew all about it. We set about changing the problem steam fitting and putting the engine room back into ship shape.

Our shift was over and we were relieved by the next crew. We all went up topside for some air and discuss what happened. Mr. Peasley sat the three of us young guys down and started with me. What was I hearing just before that fitting had blown apart? I told him what I was hearing, but I didn't know how to interpret it, but the third time I had it in my head I felt like it was a warning of some kind. Mr. Peasley looked at me and said, "If you were in that seat where you had been, we would be calling a medical emergency and heading for the nearest port. It may not have killed you, but you would never have been the same person". Then he did something I would not have expected from an old sea dog like him. He leaned over real close and all but whispered "keep your eyes, and ears open young man, someone wants you in one piece for something". Old sea dogs don't talk like that very often, and I gained more respect for a man who shows very little emotion, but seemed to recognize when power from another source places his hand on someone and encourages promptings from above.

The power of prayer

Gwen and I are ready to be baptized.. The kids are really cute.

The Stake Center is really coming along.

Inside looking toward the stage.

Looking toward the Chapel side of the building.

The entrance to the parking lot is to the left. Just out of the picture to the left would have been the old fire station engine room.

My wife and I were baptized into the Mormon Church in March of 1978. El Dorado County members were part of a Stake in Sacramento County. President Sellers was our Stake President and Earl Bair was my Elders' Quorum President. Being new to the Church, I went along with programs that I was asked to attend. We attended our church services at Mormon Center in Rancho Cordova. We also went back and forth for each meeting back then. I would go to Priesthood and come home to pick up my family and go back for Sacrament meeting and so forth. It made for a long day.

I was attending a Priesthood session for Stake Conference and sort of listening to what was being talked about. I thought I heard something about the Church buying property in Cameron Park with the hopes of building a Stake Center. I then heard that because of a building moratorium, the County would not issue a building permit because they were not allowing new water meters because of a drought that had been plaguing the State. I asked President Bair about what I thought I had just heard and he confirmed what I thought I had heard.

Now let me back up a few years: I moved up to El Dorado County in March of 1969 to go to work for Cameron Park as the first fireman. The Fire Chief that called me and offered me the job was Herb Owen. He and I worked together in Alameda as firemen from 1967 until he moved early 1969. He at one time was the Fire Chief in Marin County. Together we set up a brand new fire department. A man named Richard Smith was a local land developer and owned some acreage off of Hacienda Road and Cameron Park Drive. He let us put up a mobile home and a 2 bay, wooden engine room for the 2 fire engines we would be buying. Well, a fire station needs water, so we contacted El Dorado Irrigation District and we put in a water meter. I had to hand dig the water lines myself. We camped out this way for about 2 years while we passed a bond measure and build the new fire station on Country Club Drive.

Now we are back in the late 1970's at the Stake Priesthood meeting.

After the meeting, I went up to President Sellers with Earl Bair at my side and told him" The property on Hacienda has a water meter in place." President Sellers looked at me and asked how I would know about it? I gave him the reader's digest version and he said "If you can locate it, we can start building a Stake Center." Earl Bair looked at me and asked when could I go look for it? I said I'll find it the next morning.

On Monday morning, I loaded some shovels and such in my truck and headed over to Hacienda Rd. "It's amazing how this County gets overgrown in just a few years. I looked around for awhile and decided what I needed to do was dig a trench across where I remembered laying that water line some eight or ten years ago and when I find it I could follow it up to the meter. At about one or two in the afternoon, Earl drove by to see how I was doing. I had a nice looking trench in progress by then, Earl asked if I needed any help. By then, the temperature was somewhere in the low hundreds and I was a little sweaty and a little covered in dirt. I said "you bet." About a half hour later, Earl's brother-in-law shows up. Casey Campbell had just returned from his mission and was a whole lot better in tune with Heavenly Father than I was.

Especially after a few hours of digging my trench.

The first thing Casey asked when he saw me knee deep in a very long trench was" Have you kneeled in prayer and asked Father to help us?" You shouldn't ask someone who is hot, sweaty and dirty if he has prayed about it! Like I said before, we hadn't been members very long. So I climbed out of my little trench and asked Casey if he would offer the prayer. As we kneeled down, Casey offered a heartfelt prayer. As Casey was getting up, he placed his hands on the ground and felt something. As he brushed away the leaves, he asked, whats' this? I looked at him and said "that would be the lid to the water meter we have been looking for! Casey looked at me and asked "Do you need anything else?"

The building would have been built without my knowing about the water meter, we just moved it along a little sooner. With Caseys' help of course.

That young returned missionary taught me a huge lesson about how any project should be started, especially when your on a project that Heavenly Father just might have sent you on. His work will go on, its just nice to be involved.

Cameron Park Fire Department, the beginning.

This is the dedication plaque that was placed on the new fire station on Country Club Drive.

This shot shows the Chief's 57 pickup, 51 Dodge grass truck, 1956 P.G.&E. pickup, and the brand new 1969 Ward LaFrance. All in Herb's front yard. For the life of me I can't see why the neighborhood would complain!

Here I am loading hose in the back of the P.G&E. pickup. We had not acquired the other rigs yet.

The Chief's pickup in downtown Placerville, December 1969.

Cameron Park Fire Departments first fire chief, Herb Owen, moved up from the bay area a few months before he asked me to make the move to help start the fire department. I moved up on March 28, 1969. My first official day would be April 1, 1969. Who would have thought that I would start a new carer on April Fools Day! Oh well Ill worry about this in about thirty or forty years. When Cameron Park Fire Department board of directors signed a contract with The California Department of Forestry to manage the fire department in 1998, I saved some of the early logbooks, so the dates I use are accurate.

The first two weeks I lived at the fire station in El Dorado Hills, At 990 Lasson Lane. Herb and I finished a room at his home in Cameron Park that I would live in while on duty. It was seperate from the main house, and had an exit to the garage and to the fire equipment that we would be picking up soon.

After a few weeks I made the move to the chiefs house, 3870 Los Santos. We didn't have a fire engine yet, but we got started by equipping a 1956 green ford pickup that used to belong to the phone company. It had a utility bed and a covered pickup bed with a metal sliding top. We loaded first aid, and rescue equipment in the side compartments, and a hose load in the pickup bed. We would have to take every fire with a hose lay from a fire hydrant. No pump on the old pickup. We also had a 1957 Chevy pickup that we painted red and lettered up as the Fire Chiefs vehicle.

Within a couple of months Herb went to a California Fire Chiefs meeting in Sacramento. At these meetings a lot of vender's show up to sell there newest equipment. One of the vender's was showing a brand new 1969 Ford cab over triple combination fire engine. It was gas powered, 750 gallon water tank, a 1000 gallon per minuet two stage pump and ground ladders. Just what we needed and it was available within a few weeks. It still needed to be seen at two other meetings in other states. It was built as a demonstrator model for show and tell. Herb also placed other orders at the show. Things like air packs, hose, nozzles and turn outs for the firemen to wear. We needed everything that a new fire department would need.

Back at Herbs home I set to work placing 4X4 posts in front of the house and pulling canvas over a frame to keep the engine out of the weather. Herb also picked up a 1951 two ton Dodge truck that had been a Forestry unit way back when. on May 20Th 1969 I turned it back into a wild land fire rig. It looked a little silly, but it would really wet down the fire line. I put electric switches on nozzles under the front bumper, and had a one hundred foot, one inch reel line mounted on a 450 gallon water tank. At a military surplus store we found a self contained 500 G.P.M. pump and motor that I mounted behind the cab, with remote controls inside the cab. The new Ward La France engine was delivered on May 26, 1969. The last thing Herb found and brought home was a well used 1947 American La France fire engine from the Sacramento Fire Department. It had been Sacramento Engine #2. Sacramento was having a public auction and Herb picked it up for $500.00. We nick named it "smoky Joe" This is why I was here, to rebuild things. What fun, a 1947 American La France V12 motor! And I get to take it apart and put it back together.

The neighborhood started to take notice of the new hobby that Herb took up on Los Santos. One of the family's in the house behind us was a Realtor and developer in Cameron Park, Richard L.V. Smith. He had a piece of property just off Cameron Park Drive, on Hacienda Road that had been set aside for a Middle School sometime in the future. It had several acres on somewhat flat ground. At the end of October 1969, deal was struck, a Mobil home bought, and with the help of our volunteers we put up a two car garage to keep the engines in. One of the El Dorado Irrigation District guys, Curt Wiesenhunt and I put in a water meter and service to the mobile home. P.G.& E. ran power to a pole we put in. I was driving through Folsom and saw a Shell Gas Station being bulldozed and I grabbed the overhead doors for free. We now had a fire station to call home until we could float a bond to build the station on Country Club Drive. We would camp out on Hacienda Road for about two years.

Within the first few months we had handed out emergency phone stickers and put in the "HOT" line for in coming emergency calls. Cameron Park had an agreement with Shingle Springs Volunteer fire department to respond to all emergency calls until the new fire department was in place and prepared to respond. Chief Owen had his hands full setting up a new department and training me as well. I was very new to the fire service. I may have been a good mechanic, and had put my service time in the Army, but now I needed to be taught a whole lot in a very short time. I was good at first aid, but fire science and tactics I was lacking in. Herb was very patient with me, and we got lots done in a very few months. I have a lot to thank Chief Owen for.

Herb had picked up a radio monitor so we could listen how El Dorado County ran their calls. If something was dispatched in Cameron Park, we would also respond. What we found out was, we were always the first one to arrive, even though Shingle Springs was dispatched. This was because we were at our station, listening, and ready to respond. Shingle Springs was still a volunteer department.

The first call we self dispatched to was a grass fire on Hampton Lane and covered eleven lots in all. The first official emergency call we had was a furniture fire in a structure on December 10, 1969. Little girls and candles caused bedroom fires on a regular basis. From April 1, 1969 to June 30, 1970 we had 38 emergency calls. We have more than that in any week now. Thank goodness it was quiet so we could get everyone trained and equipment built. We put out the word for volunteers and had about six men sign up for training. The problem we had was very few worked very close to Cameron Park. We had two gas stations, Sams Town, and a little hamburger joint called the Burger Soloon. Gravel parking lot and all. After hours we could expect some men to respond, but during the day it was all but zero response from our volunteer force.

My first few months were spent clearing, flow testing and mapping every fire hydrant in and around Cameron Park. Many hydrants were not visible from the street. They were ether covered over with brush and grass, or buried under dirt with, maybe the top visible. Lots of shovel work, and lots of swing blade work. My evenings were spent putting together a volunteer training schedule for evening drills. With Herb training me as we went. I was about as green as you could get. Both Herb and myself were certified in first aid and C.P.R. from being in the fire department in Alameda. We would find out very soon that we were the only two in the whole county that were certified in C.P.R. No one did that function! No pulse, and you were dead. It was as simple as that.

El Dorado County used the mortuaries to transport patients when the need arose. It was handy when there was no pulse. Finally the county hired one ambulance to post itself in and around Placerville. Foothill Ambulance had two men that did basic first aid, and transported patients. Pollock Pines built there own rescue van that had a gurney,ropes, and spair fire equipment, but in the early days only transported in there own fire district. In the late sixties there were eighteen fire districts in the county. El Dorado Hills and Pollock Pines were the first to staff stations. We all had our own emergency phone numbers, so we all needed to have someone sit by a phone. The answering service in Placerville filled in that gap for several districts, and dispatched out the volunteers by radio, and phone trees.

Herb and some of the other fire chiefs started fire training nights for training officers so we could all do the evolutions of firefighting the same way. This was something new for all of us. I ended up being the Chairman for the American Red Cross for a few years. I taught the first aid, and C.P.R. class's for most of the county. We finally got a few more instructors in some of the stations, so I only had to clear the paper work and issue certificates for some of the fire districts. I think school bus drivers were trained better than fireman in first aid back in those days. I had a ton of first aid background from the department in Alameda, and from the Army before that.

The fire service in those days used radio codes instead of what we use now, clear text. When we got our new engine, I installed the county fire radios, and I asked the Placerville answering service for a radio check. In Alameda we called that a (signal 1000) so that's what I asked for. The answering service said (10-4) Cameron Park. For the next few minuets tone after tone went off letting every department around us know that I was asking for a (signal 1000) This is when I found out that the code I used for a radio check is what this county used for an aircraft down. I figured out what was going on very quickly and cancelled everyone. We laughed about this one for a few years.

The Chief and the board of directors put a bond vote together for the voters of Cameron Park. With lots of foot work on our part, it passed. We had secured $100,000. to build the fire station on Country Club Drive. Some residents called it The Taj Mahal. It was also mentioned, how can anyone spend that much money on one building? Wow do times change or what? Herb and I worked with the builder so we could run all the wiring we would need for radios, speakers, bells, and such.

Chief Owen filed for an O.E.O. Grant. (Office of Economic Opportunity) and with that grant we were able to hire two brother's, Pete and Leon Misamore. They could earn a living, and keep going to school at the same time. This was a super opportunity for the two of them. They were 16 and 17 years old when they started with us. With their help we poured concrete until the entire station was circled with driveways, walkways, and patios. I lost count of how many yards we poured, but it was lots. Leon stayed with us for several years and then moved on to something else. Pete on the other hand stayed with us until about 1999 and left on an early retirement.

Because of the low response from our volunteer force during the day, Herb started the (RESERVES) an all female volunteer firefighting force. My wife, Gwen was one of the first to help fill this gap for daytime response. This was something new to the fire service, and worked very well. We had some very memorable calls being backed up with the reserves.

In 1972 our board of directors changed fire chief's. For me it was a huge loss. The Chief was a good friend and mentor. The new Chief was brought out of retirement from the Sacramento City Fire Department. Our new chief was Lewis Cassaglia. Talk about someone with tons of background. Lou started with the McClellan air field during the Second World War and after the War was hired by Sacramento City Fire Department. Lou did several things that changed our direction. One of the programs Lou started was a building plans review for commercial properties. Lou also contacted another government program, C.E.T.A. (Comprehensive Employment Training Act) .With this program we had several young men at a time show up for training in all things related to the emergency service. At one time we had 21 young men to equip and train. Quite a few went on in fire service career's. A few that I remember; Matt Jenkins retired as a Unit Chief with Cal Fire. Henry Ogg, retired as a fire Captain with Sac Metro. Bruce Prender, out with an injury as fire Captain with Cameron Park. Jack
Royal retired on a medical. Bill Sanderson, retired with an injury from Cameron Park. And Lou Motto retired as an Engineer from Sac Metro.

Our board of directors researched a better way to administer the fire department, and came up with a solution. We went under contract with C.D.F., now called Cal Fire. This didn't go over well with some of us, but in the long run it was best both for the district and the employees. It opened lots of doors for any of us that wanted to try another type of fire service opportunities. I went to work in Georgtown at a fire camp. After some training that covered working with State Inmates, I ran fire crews that fought fire with nothing more than hand tools all over the State. I got to hike mountains that I had never heard of. Too bad they were all on fire. It could have been a nice walk in the mountains.

I was there for the building of the new station, and years later I was there when it all but burned down. I had stopped by to see someone and was standing out in the back talking with a fire captain that had his inmate fire crew doing some maintenance work. The district had hired a company to hot mop the roof. While I was visiting, a man came running down from the roof speaking in Spanish. One of the inmate crew members came up to me and said "Capt, he's telling you that the roof is on fire." I yelled over at the station captain about what was going on. I was in shorts and flip flops. As the firefighters were gearing up, I moved an engine into position, set the pumps, and while I was setting up ladders, the inmate crew started pulling hose lines and getting a water supply ready for the firefight.

Additional engines were called in from surrounding departments, and with all that help the fire still worked it's way from the roof, through the mansard siding into the lower levels of the building. It was a long hard firefight. The only blessing from all this loss is, Cameron Park has a wonderful new building that they can be proud of.

I will add to this post as I find other pictures.