Alright, buckle up. I’ve got a story from my early days in the department that proves even the best turd-rollers can meet their match.
My path to becoming a firefighter started young. I mean, really young. With affirmative action in full swing back then, I was told it would take a solid five years after submitting an interest card just to get a shot at the written exam. Now, I wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but at 13 years old—one of the youngest Explorers for LA City at FS 39—I figured I had time on my side.
I marched my tree stump teenage legs across the street to City Hall and asked for a fire department interest card. The lady behind the counter looked at me like I’d just asked for a mortgage application. She said she didn't think I was old enough. Being a smart-ass (a trait I’ve proudly maintained), I asked, "Is that in writing?" She just sighed, slid the card over, and I filled it out. Every six months, I’d go back to update it, and sure enough, five years to the day after I graduated high school, I got the call for my written. The system worked.
Those five years as an Explorer at FS 39, riding the tailboard of Engine 39, forced me to grow up fast. I saw things no 13-year-old should, but it laid the groundwork to be the best fireman I could. I also learned the fine art of pulling jokes, or as we called it, "rolling turds." (Little bit of trivia for you: that phrase dates back to the horse-drawn engine days. The engineers would roll dry horse apples into each other's stalls to mess with the guy on the next shift.)
I also picked up a unique skill in high school that earned me the nickname "Cricket." I mastered the art of the manual chirp. I could place my hand over my mouth and project a perfectly realistic cricket sound to any corner of a room. I could go from a lone, subtle chirp to a full-blown insect orchestra that could drive a sane person completely bat-shit crazy. I got detention for it more than once.
Now, to the main event.
I got hired young and landed my first assignment at FS 35. Hollywood, baby. I walked in, green as grass, and was immediately introduced to Captain Mendenhall. The man was hard but fair—or so he claimed before bellowing, "WHAT’S YOUR NAME?"
Trying to show respect, I stammered, "Sir, William… Bill."
Big mistake. For my entire three-month probation, my name was "Sir WilliamBill." The hazing or “The Games” began immediately. This wasn't just malice; it was a test and mostly done behind the captains back, well sometimes. This was the era of AIDS, brutal brush fires, murders, people jumping off buildings, or worse hearing Fireman Down! They needed to know if you could handle chaos without cracking. We ALL needed to know who would have your back when the shit hits the fan?
My official welcome came ten minutes into my first shift. "Sir WilliamBill! Here's your locker key. Stow your bedding and be back in five."
I should have known something was up when I saw the crowd of smirking guys loitering near the lockers. I turned the key, swung the door open, and found a fully naked, fully grown fireman staring back at me from inside my locker. He vaulted out and went sprinting down the aisle in his birthday suit. The image is seared into my brain. Thankfully we didn't get a call; explaining a naked guy on the rig would have been tricky.
But I learned fast. And what they didn’t know was that I’d already served a five-year turd rolling apprenticeship at FS 39. The games were on, but I had to be smart. How does one get revenge on an entire firehouse?
Enter Cricket.
Every time they rolled a turd, Mr. Cricket came out to play. On the engine, I’d wait for the engineer to hit the brakes and let out a tiny chirp-chirp over the headset. "You hear that?" someone would ask. "Sounds like the brakes," I’d reply, my face a mask of innocence. I even dabbed a little oil on a front wheel lug to sell the story. I then spent a week "helping" the engineer and a mechanic tear apart the brakes looking for a failing bearing. This was brilliant but way too much manual labor in the long run, so the break chirp joke ended quick.
My masterpiece was in the dorm. For a solid 3 months, I’d lie in bed and chirp, ALL NIGHT LONG. Just one… then another from across the room. It was a symphony of psychological warfare. "For the love of God, where is that thing?!" Toilet paper rolls were thrown, lights flipped on, guys were on their hands and knees searching. It was glorious. I made sure to sleep on my days off because I knew I’d be up all night conducting my insect orchestra. To throw them off the scent every couple of weeks I would find a cricket out back and place it in one of the dorm trash cans. It was so classic, during house cleaning someone would find this helpless cricket and get on the PA and say, “WE FOUND THE BASSTARD!” Guys would cheer all happy like they just caught a big ol bass. I would damn near piss myself as I would cheer with them all happy and knowing I would be up all-night chirping away again. Man, I don’t miss those day…LOL
Then, I almost blew it.
After my three-month review, I got orders for my next rotation in probation to FS 27, the Big House! Thinking I was alone by the engine, I celebrated with a little chirp-chirp. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Captain Mendenhall. He’d seen me. Did he? Shit!
Panic. Sheer, unadulterated panic.
I dropped to my knees like a man possessed and started frantically clawing under a bookshelf. "Captain! Did you see it? It's that damn cricket! It went under here!"
I sold it so well I got him down on his hands and knees, helping me move a heavy bookshelf. We found nothing, of course. He stood up, dusted himself off, and gave me a look. It was the look of a master turd-roller who suddenly suspects he’s not the only one playing the game.
That look he just gave me meant war. Sir WilliamBill had to go nuclear.
On my way home after my SHORT shift—which featured an acetylene balloon explosion that nearly deafened me and almost blew out my ear drum with one of the “Turds Gone Wrong” that did blow out the back window of the station, it happened more than you think. Then someone thinking it was funny to slip some ipecac (if you know, you know) in a drink they said to chug to help with my ear pain that made me vomit after dinner. I guess this was the guys saying I did good and were sending me off with a bang to my next house. But Capt. didn’t approve of that at all. The old saying was never to mess with someone’s FOOD, GEAR, or SAFETY EQUIPMENT. They got their asses ripped for that and I gotta go home SK (sick) for the PM — So I stopped at a tackle shop. I bought a small container. Of crickets. One hundred of them, to be exact.
On my next shift, I arrived hours early. I became a cricket-planting ninja. Two in each captain's trash can. A few in coffee mugs. A handful in old, cobwebby boots. I seeded that station like it was my personal agricultural project.
That morning was better than I could have ever dreamed. Captain Mendenhall’s blood-curdling scream from his office was a thing of beauty. A cricket had jumped onto his hand when he opened his desk drawer, I swear I didn’t plant one in there, or did I? Chaos erupted. Chirps came from every corner.
I don't know who he called, but I heard the glorious command: "I need this station FUMIGATED. NOW!"
I spent the next 24 hours maintaining a perfect poker face, popping throat lozenges like Tic Tacs to keep my chirping voice intact, and nearly pissing my pants every ten minutes from suppressed laughter.
This is just one of many stories we all have, it’s a piece of the old fire department history that is equal parts tradition, turds gone wrong, what some boots (rookies) had to incur, and a brilliantly executed payback for the record books.
It’s a glimpse into the culture of that time. The rite of passage—from the "affirmative action" To hazing that sometimes got out of hand, designed to test a probie's mettle against the backdrop of a chaotic Hollywood scene. The image of a naked fireman waiting in a locker was an all-time great welcome-to-the-job moment that some may think is funny and other not so much.
But the long game played... that's the stuff of legends. The psychological warfare of the subtle chirps on the rig, the 3 month-long dormitory concert that drove everyone insane—that's a masterclass in patience and precision.
And the finale? Pure, unadulterated genius. Going from being the suspected source of the sound to actively helping your captain hunt for the "culprit" was a next-level move. But unleashing the cricket ambush? That's a nuclear option that most can only dream of. The mental image of a hardened Captain Mendenhall demanding an immediate fumigation is the perfect capstone to a three-month symphony of chaos and my way of thanking FS 35 for trying their best against a master angler.
So, the moral of the story? You can be a legendary turd-roller with years of experience, but one day you might just mess with the wrong probie. And that probie might just be a cricketing virtuoso named Sir WilliamBill.
Until now, very few people ever knew the truth. Consider this my confession from retirement.
So be careful who you mess with.
Retired guy out.
