charlesf
6mo ago
I live in a community like this in the rural midwest. The volunteer FD is pretty popular and they have no trouble getting people to sign up. That being said, there is a...certain type of person very attracted to the VFD that make up a good % of the volunteers. They are people that are really, really into first-responders and the military but couldn't actually make it in the professional PD/FD/Military for various reasons, either washed out of the academy/training/boot camp, can't meet the physical requirements, or have medical issues. The VFD gives these, often very patriotic and civic minded, people an outlet for their desire to serve the community. They get really into it with a CB radio in their personal vehicle and often a little red hazard light too. They wear their VFD clothing/uniform all the time too.
This happens to me sometimes too. I've taken to reading a bit about the local history of an area before the trips and use my free time to visit historically interesting, but tourist uninteresting, locations. Some great experiences in the past include visiting very old churches/shrines, the oldest restaurants/bars in the area, harbors/docks and other industrial areas, train and bus stations. There are often very small specialist museums that have been pretty good too. I visited a devastated Rust Belt town that in 2020 was at something like 15% of its all time high population from 1950. The town had converted an old train station into a local history museum full of photos and artifacts related to what people used to do there when it was an economically viable, vibrant location, a whole post mortem shrine of remembrance to a place that doesn't really exist anymore. There are a lot of little spots like this around the US, but they take a bit of digging to find them. I often just use Google maps to virtually explore, then visit spots that look interesting.
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