Very long term readers might recall my many posts about my neighbor with a backhoe. I referred to him often as Mr. Backhoe. I wrote a profile about him and his wife in 2011 when he turned 80 but that has since disappeared from the internet (long story short).
He died today at age 91. It had been a while since I'd seen him I'm ashamed to say. He'd developed some variation of Alzheimer's or dementia that they think was caused from having to mix it up a few times as a law enforcement officer or possibly in the military. He had a tough exterior but I believe he was kind to his core.
A funny story. He and his wife were two of the first people we knew in Walker. Shortly after we bought our first cabin here the battery on our Cherokee crapped out. I called him for a jump but it was one of those situations where charging my battery would only work for turning it over. The car would only stay on if I was constantly giving it gas.
If you see in the picture below where he is driving the backhoe, I had to back up that driveway without stalling it, then turn it around to start driving into town to replace it. This was back when he was more tough in my mind, without know the extent of his kindness.
The whole time I was backing up the driveway and he was down below I was thinking he is going to slap me if I let this thing stall out. Somehow, I made it into Prescott, into the parking lot of what I think was an O'Reilly's and it stalled out halfway into the parking spot due to the dip in the lot, four feet short of where I wanted to park. Joellyn and I had a pretty good laugh over that.
Mr. Backhoe recruited both of us into the fire department in 2002. My wife stuck with it for three or four years and I am still heavily involved having been the fire chief for 11 years now and likely to be so for several more years and then involved in a different capacity after that. The fire department is a huge part of my life, huge, and he gave that to me is how I think of it.
A couple of fire department stories. In August of 2004, he and I went on about an hour long hike with one other firefighter looking for a lightning caused fire. He was 73 and still qualifying (3 mile hike, 45 minutes or less with a 45 pound pack) as a wildland firefighter. I was working hard to keep up as we looked for that fire. We worked on it for a couple of hours with a Forest Service crew who hiked in from the other direction. We got there first. There wasn't much flame but a lot of work for how much duff there was to churn up.
Then in June of 2007, so he was 76 and still qualified as a wildland firefighter, we had the Midnight Fire. This was a relatively serious incident, a fair bit of fire with several houses threatened. I think this was the first fire that was I the IC, incident commander. I actually called it in, driving home from an errand and then I was back first on scene on foot because it was close to our first cabin, I was able to size it up and start resources headed our way. Mr. Backhoe was on the first engine of ours that got there and he ran up the hill with the two other people on board the engine with him to start digging fire line.
I have no idea if I took this picture or not but it gives some perspective.
Somehow, I was able to get air support on this one. No picture but I will always remember the spotter plane flying through first and then the bomber-looking plane come in behind it looking like it was just a few feet above the trees.
Mr. Backhoe was obviously a great example of successful aging fighting wildfires into his mid-70's. The profile I wrote about them covered a lot of how the lived their financial lives too which was very smart and worthy of respect.
He along with Chief Jon Sumner, the chief at Walker Fire when I joined, both had big impacts on my life and I'm grateful to have known both of them. Being able to have a positive impact on other people's lives is a gift and both of them did just that.
In a sad coincidence, my best man died two years ago on the same date at only 54. I think about him often of course as I do Mr. Backhoe. Rest easy Brothers.
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