Over the years, I’ve written about selling copies of my colonoscopy on DVD, urging my 8-year-old to start paying rent and having my 3-year-old arrested. Shortly after hitting the send button on these masterpieces, I just knew people would be gathering pitchforks and surrounding our office the following day, but to my delight that never happened — until last Friday.
Last week, a column ran under my name about sirens at the Pink Hill Christmas parade. Although the majority of the article praised firefighters for the unpaid risks they take to keep us and our property safe, the bit about the level of noise at the parade is all anybody seemed to focus on.
I took time away from my usual Friday evening activity — Labradoodle rescue — to check in on Facebook and was greeted with enough vitriol to raise the Titanic. If that wasn’t enough, the people that can’t handle the sirens are also now mad because they know the siren quotient will now grow exponentially.
The kicker is I didn’t even write the column — but more on that later.
Most of the posts were of the “if he doesn’t like noise, he should stay his *** home” variety. One person said if he got the call that my house was on fire, he’d take his sweet time getting there.
A fireman sent a detailed note explaining the damage sirens can do to people’s hearing, while one of the parade organizers threatened to hit me in the head with a Blow Pop. The Blow Pop threat was purported to be a joke, but I did wear a helmet for a few days as a precaution.
Of the 45 private emails I received, about 30 were written by people who were upset over the column, while the remaining 15 — three of whom were current or retired firefighters — were written by people who agreed with it. To a person, everyone who wrote in saying they liked the column asked that their names not be made public.
One guy who agreed with the column said if I made his name public he’d sue me … and his name is (censored by The Free Press).
No matter your opinion on the subject, around 70 percent of the people who responded publicly and privately were in favor of the siren/horn displays at the parades, but more importantly, around 95 percent of the firefighters who wrote in were in favor.
As it turns out, the Pink Hill parade is different from other parades throughout the county. No one told me (but sweet Lord I know now) the Pink Hill parade brings in fire department representatives from all over the county.
All I’ve ever experienced in La Grange or Kinston parades is a truck from the local department that would let out a siren or horn blast every hundred feet or so, which would keep even the rampant alcoholics in the crowd awake and alert.
The Pink Hill parade is a totally different thing altogether. From what I can tell, the siren/horn display in Pink Hill is the equivalent of throwing beaded necklaces from the balcony during Mardi Gras or having the giant balloons at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. In short, it’s part of the deal.
If the people that run into burning houses to save children want the sirens, then sirens they should have. In fact, I think it should become mandatory that every float, marching band, vehicle, and horse in every parade be outfitted with a Sterling Model Jr. 6-volt siren.
If you really want to do it right, the spectators should have little air horns so they can respond to the fire trucks — sort of like that classic scene from the end of “Close Encounters of The Third Kind.” Some entrepreneur can sell earplugs to the minority that can’t handle the sirens, thus generating more tax dollars for the fire department.
Everybody wins.
I mentioned earlier that I didn’t even write the column in question. This happened because the night before I was to write my Tuesday column, I stepped on a rake and ended up with a bruised schnoinkel. The doctors said it would be fine, but I was to stay off of it for a few days.
I called my editor Bryan Hanks and told him of my predicament, and he asked if I wanted to run a “best-of” column in its place. I didn’t want to disappoint people, so I suggested we let our high school intern Michael Gagliano ghost-write my column.
“Jon called and offered me a chance to write a column under his name, so I jumped at it,” Gagliano said. “I’ve been trying to jump into the low-paying newspaper business for a while, and I considered this opportunity to be my big shot.”
When Mike asked what he should write about, I told him to write about the Pink Hill parade. He asked me how it went, and I said it was much larger than I’d expected, and that it opened with about 15 minutes of fire trucks. Little did I know Mike had no business writing about fire departments.
“The truth is I’ve tried out for my local fire department several times over the years,” he said. “I was afraid of heights, so that meant ladders and bucket trucks were out of the question. I wasn’t a very good ax man because I was afraid of getting a splinter, and once during training I accidentally filled up the back of the chief’s truck with a few hundred gallons of water.
“If that wasn’t bad enough, the girl I was dating at the time dumped me for a fireman when I was unable to blow out the candles on a birthday cake.”
Someone as biased as Michael Gagliano should never have been allowed to write about a fire department-sponsored event. He’s no longer a member of the intern program and is reportedly seeking employment as a hydrant painter.
If you’d like to give Michael a piece of your mind, visit his website at mikegagliano72.wordpress.com. He may act like he doesn’t know what you’re talking about or even go so far as to say he doesn’t know me, but trust me: this is the guy you’re looking for. He might even try to convince you that I set him up and that he’s never even been an intern at the paper.
Shoot, he may even say he’s never set foot in the building, but just ignore him. It’s the only way he’ll ever get better.
Even though that controversial column was written by an unpaid intern that should have to slide down a fire pole in his birthday suit, I still want to make amends since it had my name on it.
To that end, I’m offering the services of myself and Bryan Hanks to the Pink Hill Volunteer Fire Department during their next summertime fund-raising event. You guys supply the dunk tank, and we’ll supply the dunkees. With all the hate and bad blood generated by Sirengate, I believe people would line up around the block just for the chance to drop us into a vat of what is — hopefully — regular drinking water.
Also, Bryan agreed to sit for the first hundred dunks if I’d sit for the second hundred. Just wanted to get that in print before next summer.
Jon Dawson’s columns appear every Tuesday and Thursday in The Free Press. Contact Jon at 252-559-1092 or jon.dawson@kinston.com. Jon’s new book, “Counterfeit Sauerkraut & the Weekend Teeth,” will be available for order on Thursday.