Station 2 And The “Garlic” Attack

This took place around 1975 or so at Station 2 located at the corner of Walker & Richmond. This was the “old” #2 that resembled a real fire hall rather than the updated version that stands on the same location today and resembles somewhat of a bus station. Our “chef” at the time was Greg Reitzel and he had just finished cooking up a massive amount of spaghetti and garlic bread. That may be surprising as Greg’s last name is clearly that of Germanic descent and you would have expected more of a schnitzel recipe to appear on a plate than that of an Italian dish. Anyway, Chef Greg LOVED garlic and obviously must have held major stock options in the local garlic industry by the profuse amounts of garlic that he used during this type of feast. Most of us had at least three helpings of this stuff and consumed at least six loaves of garlic bread amongst the twelve of us around the table.

What I find remarkable about garlic is that if everyone eats it you cannot detect the odor of garlic on each others breath. Having said that can you imagine how much garlic fumes were hovering around station 2 after dinner? No one in the room was aware of how much “garlic breath” we all had.

We hadn’t even began to have our tea when the alarm came in for an emergency in our area. We were the first arriving crew when we got to this little two bedroom war time house. When we saw the nice pretty lady who owned the house standing on the front porch informing us that everything was alright we all “ratcheted” down somewhat and all the firefighters traipsed into the house including the vehicle drivers. This was the usual custom whenever a really pretty lady lived in the house.

I believe it took her about thirty seconds to become aware of the unpleasant smell that was now permeating the small living room area where we we’re all congregating. One thing you might not know about garlic breath is that it doubles its volume every ninety seconds. The twelve of us started to make small conversations with her. At that point she quickly excused herself and went to the washroom for about a minute or so and then returned. She politely told us that everything was alright and that we could all leave. But the Cap had to take a report. It seemed at the time that she was getting a little impatient with us but we had no idea why. It appeared as though she was trying to breathe through her mouth rather than her nose while at the same time she was trying to hold her breath. I found that really strange. She wasn’t smiling any longer either.

It was then that we realized what the problem was! We all glanced sideways at each other with a sheepish grin; you could see when the next guy realized what was going on. After the Cap’s report we all said, “good bye” to the nice pretty lady who ushered us out the door with no formalities whatsoever.

I should have had my first clue about this problem when I noticed her eyes rolling back in her head and I saw the whites of her eyes. It would appear that the old wives' tale regarding garlic keeping vampires at bay is a very true superstition. We didn't see any!