#126 Earning That Title

And I'm coming back and literally, guys, so a little background on me.

Before I actually got my first full-time fire career, fire department job, a career job, I worked in the oil field for several, several years.

I worked for my grandfather on the welding company that we did all the fabrications and repairs and everything on drilling rigs.

He's done that for 50-something years.

And so from the time I was 14 until I was about 28, I worked for him part time, full time, part time, full time.

Pretty much when I would need a job, I'd go back to work for him in the oil field.

And, you know, then when I was still working at the fire department, I would I would work for him on days off and did that all the way up through, you know, graduated high school, went to fire academy, want to be a firefighter.

That was during the recession, guys.

And there was there was no jobs.

You could literally log on to Texas Commission on Fire Protection, which is our big fire department governing body, government body, whatever you want to call it.

And that's where all the jobs are posted for the state.

There might be two or three cities that were posting that they were hiring.

And at the time, I'm 18, 19 years old.

And the reality was, man, most of these places that were hiring, there might be two or three of them.

But all they were doing was they were a civil service department that their eligibility list had expired.

And so you'd go there and you'd show up and you test, you go through the process.

And literally all they were doing is just building an eligibility list for the next 12 months.

Learn that lesson the hard way multiple times over.

And what that ended up having to do is, man, I had to earn a living.

So I ended up going in roughneck and I'd already been working on drilling rigs for a long time at that point.

I knew all about them, but I was like, hey, I need a full-time job doing this.

I don't really want to weld and everything.

So I want to be on a schedule and roughneck.

That way I can still try to do the fire department thing.

I had gotten put on at a, you know, hired on.

And I'm coming back and literally, guys, so a little background on me.

Before I actually got my first full-time fire career, fire department job, a career job, I worked in the oil field for several, several years.

I worked for my grandfather on the welding company that we did all the fabrications and repairs and everything on drilling rigs.

He's done that for 50-something years.

And so from the time I was 14 until I was about 28, I worked for him part time, full time, part time, full time.

Pretty much when I would need a job, I'd go back to work for him in the oil field.

And, you know, then when I was still working at the fire department, I would I would work for him on days off and did that all the way up through, you know, graduated high school, went to fire academy, want to be a firefighter.

That was during the recession, guys.

And there was there was no jobs.

You could literally log on to Texas Commission on Fire Protection, which is our big fire department governing body, government body, whatever you want to call it.

And that's where all the jobs are posted for the state.

There might be two or three cities that were posting that they were hiring.

And at the time, I'm 18, 19 years old.

And the reality was, man, most of these places that were hiring, there might be two or three of them.

But all they were doing was they were a civil service department that their eligibility list had expired.

And so you'd go there and you'd show up and you test, you go through the process.

And literally all they were doing is just building an eligibility list for the next 12 months.

Learn that lesson the hard way multiple times over.

And what that ended up having to do is, man, I had to earn a living.

So I ended up going in roughneck and I'd already been working on drilling rigs for a long time at that point.

I knew all about them, but I was like, hey, I need a full-time job doing this.

I don't really want to weld and everything.

So I want to be on a schedule and roughneck.

That way I can still try to do the fire department thing.

I had gotten put on at a, you know, hired on.