The podcast I’d been listening to, a Bad Faith episode about social isolation, in general, and the epidemic of male loneliness, in particular just as I arrived home from last night’s DoorDashing shift. The discussion, featuring guest Gabor Maté, was not uplifting. I pulled into the Town Office parking lot across from Pen and Plow Farm (my own little slice of heaven) and sat in the darkness of my Subaru and connected to the public wi-fi. It’s a weak signal, and sporadic, but I can check my e-mail and occasionally send this newsletter if the bandwidth gods are kind. Immediately, the first responder app on my phone alerted me with a tone.
I’d been looking forward to the can of shit beer I’d picked up and whatever leftovers I had in the cooler. The kittens would be looking forward to their half can of wet food each and would be pissed I’d been out so late. I thought about texting my superiors to ask if this was a real call. Since joining the volunteer fire department back in May, I’ve boogied twenty minutes across town over the mountain a couple of times for false alarms. The temps had already dropped down close to the single digits, the roads were slick as snot, and my tire are dangerously bare.
Then came the audio comms. “Smoke coming from the basement. No visible fire yet.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity fuck. All my extravagant plans would have to wait. Dispatch was requesting tanker trucks from Hawley, a ladder truck and ambulance from Colrain, and all available units from Charlemont, where the incident was occurring. Not a false alarm, not by a long shot. I put Sookie in gear and scootched back down the snowy route I’d traversed exactly 60 seconds earlier.
I was the second unit on scene after an engine from Charlemont. A young woman was acting as incident command and directed me to her chief, who was assessing the situation from just inside the garage.
“Are you packable?” he wanted to know. He was asking if I could suit up and strap on an air-pack, also known as a self-contained breathing apparatus.
“Sorry, I’m a newbie — not certified yet,” I apologized, though I was quietly grateful for my inadequacy. In full gear, wearing an air-pack, a firefighter goes in on all fours, laying down hose, or following one, through smoke and sometimes intense heat. I’ve done drills, and can attest that the experience gives you an idea of how a turtle feels, but far less graceful.
“That’s alright,” he reassured me with a smile. Go back and check with Amber, and see if she has anything for you to do.
She did. The basement’s bulkhead door needed to be shoveled clear, and a path needed to be dug out from that location all the way through the yard to the driveway where the engine sat rumbling and ready. The house sat on a wide plain exposed to the wind, which had drifted the twenty inches of snow that had dumped on Sunday to depths of almost four feet in spots. I had just shoveled a three hundred foot path at my place from my camper to the road the day before, so I was primed for the task, but did wonder where the hell all the younger, in-shape guys on my department were. I was joined by a Charlemont responder in his sixties who was remarkably spry and we attacked the task with gusto. I didn’t mind the work, but have never had to shovel out a path at speed as if a house was on fire, which, it seemed, this one might actually be.
By the time I’d finished, all requested units were on scene, parked along the road in front of the residence. The combined trucks, ambulance, and personal vehicles lit up the night with flashing lights in a way that seemed oddly festive. For long moments, I tried to make out why the assembled units filled me with such a sense of peace. Tallying up the men and women suiting up, talking into radios, and gathered together discussing potential plans of attack was what gave me my answer.
I was part of a family, a very special family. Though I knew only the Hawley firefighters on scene, had I been able to enter an “engaged structure” and gotten into a jam, every single responder there would have been willing to go in and drag me out. A powerful bond. That I could have such a connection with so many courageous, capable experts, volunteers, on such a ruthlessly cold night felt humbling in a strangely reassuring way.
Just as a Colrain firefighter joked that it “looks like half the county is here,” we were given the orders that we could stand down. The furnace in the basement had been shut down, the fire had been suppressed, and the smoke was being sucked out with powerful industrial fans. Charlemont had it under control.
Retrieving my gear bag from the garage, I said my goodbyes to the remaining crew, who thanked me repeatedly for responding. Walking up the long drive back to my car, it’s own hazard lights blinking, I watched as firefighters un-suited and climbed back into their trucks and cars. I drove up the road looking for a place to turn around. After a quarter mile, I found a suitable driveway and then made my way to join the column of emergency vehicles heading back to stations and homes. And probably more than a couple beers.
As I headed up the Mohawk Trail, my thoughts drifted back to a delivery I’d made a couple hours earlier to a trailer park in North Adams. As I handed a couple pizzas to an affable young fellow in his mid- to –late thirties, he said, “Thank you, brother. I mean it.” We chatted briefly for a couple minutes, and as I got back in my Forester, he bid me, “Stay safe out there, alright?”
I was still thinking about what it means to recognize your family in such varied circumstances as I lit the kerosene heater, still wearing my firefighter’s coat in the icebox that is home. Do you see your sister in your coworkers? Your brother in the guy bagging your groceries? Is the little old lady sitting next to you in the doctor’s office one your many tribal grandmothers?
Loneliness and isolation are very real, very serious plagues here in this late-stage capitalism hellscape. But there are antidotes. A preliminary dose might be for us to start narrowing the social psychological gap between ourselves and the people we encounter throughout our day-to-day routines. Replacing the roles people fill—as service providers or recipients— with an idea of a relationship with someone who has a place somewhere in our extended family can help erode the hierarchy so carefully maintained by constant status conditioning. This attitude shift costs little in the way of effort, but has the best chance of injecting warmth into our interactions.
The second dose is a somewhat heavier lift. Be a joiner. Join a group, club, or organization that is likely to contain people with different experiences than do you. You don’t have to volunteer for the fire department (although they’d likely be thrilled if you got involved). Just a place away from social media, out of your house and out of your comfort zone. I know, I know…not everybody likes to rub elbows with strangers. It can be awkward, uncomfortable, even anxiety producing. But interacting with people outside your clan over a shared interest brings them in to your clan, little by little.
Not every encounter or event will be smooth, and sometimes, the juice isn’t going to be worth the squeeze. But that’s family, you know?
Notes from the Road is an occasional dispatch from behind the wheel, behind the scenes, and sometimes out in the cold—where work, chance encounters, and community intersect.
With all faith and affection,
Jay “the mongrel” Velázquez
