Here's the story on Jack Wade.
Jack grows up in Dana Point, which in those days is a small beach town with a couple of motels, a few diners, and surf to die for. In fact, so many surfers actually die for the surf that the beach gets the nickname Killer Dana.
Jack's old man is a contractor so Jack grows up working. Jack's mom is a contractor's wife so she gets it: as soon as her little boy is big enough to hold a hammer he's on jobs with his dad after school, weekends, and summers. Jack's seven years old and he's holding the hammer for his dad until his dad reaches back and then smack, that hammer's in Dad's palm because little Jack is on the job. He gets bigger, he gets to do bigger stuff. Jack's thirteen, he's in there tacking framing, hanging Sheetrock. toeing in footings. He's sixteen, he's on roofs nailing down the shingles.
Jack works.
When he isn't working he does what every other kid in Dana Point does — he surfs.
Learns this from his old man, too, because John Sr. was one of the early guys out there on a longboard. John Sr. was out there riding a Dale Velzy ten-foot wooden longboard in the days when surfers were considered bums, but John Sr. doesn't give a shit because he knows he works for a living and bums don't.
This is what John Sr. tells Jack like maybe only a million times on the beach or on the job. What he tells him is, 'There's work and there's play. Play is better, but you work to earn the play. I don't care what you do in this world, but you do something. You earn your own living.'
'Yeah, Dad.'
'Yeah, yeah, yeah,' John Sr. says. 'But I'm telling you: you do the job, you do it right, you earn your paycheck. Then the rest of your time is yours, you don't owe anybody shit, you don't owe any explanations, you have paid your way.'
So Jack's father teaches him to work and to surf. Turns him on to all the good stuff: In-N-Out Burgers, Dick Dale amp; His Del-Tones, tacos carne asada at El Maguey, long-boards, the beach break at Lower Trestles, the old trailer park at Dana Strands.
Young Jack thinks it might be the most beautiful place in the world, this long ridge overlooking Dana Strand Beach. The trailer park has been closed for years; all there is now is a few decrepit old buildings and some trailer pads, but when he's up there among the eucalyptus and the palms that overlook the gorgeous stretch of beach that curves into the big rock at Dana Head, well, it's the most beautiful place in the world.
Young Jack spends hours there — hell, days there — on the last undeveloped hillside on the south coast. He'll surf for a while, then hike up the ravine that leads up the bluff and slip under the old fence and wander around. Go sit in the old rec hall building where they used to have Ping-Pong tables and a jukebox and a kitchen that put out burgers and dogs and chili for the trailer park patrons. Sometimes he sits there and watches the lightning storms that crash over Dana Head, or sometimes he sits up there during the whale migration and spots the big grays moving north up the coast. Or sometimes he justs sits there and stares at the ocean and does nothing.
His dad doesn't let him do a lot of nothing. John Sr. keeps him pretty busy, especially as young Jack gets older and can handle more work.
But sometimes when they've finished a big job they take the truck down to Baja and find some little Mexican fishing village. Sleep in the back of the truck, surf the miles of empty beach, take siestas under palm trees in the ferocious midday heat. In the late afternoon they order fish for dinner and the locals go out and catch it and have it ready by the time the sun goes down. Jack and his dad sit at an outdoor table and eat the fresh fish, with warm tortillas right off the grill, and drink ice-cold Mexican beer and talk about the waves they caught or the waves that caught them or just about stuff. Then maybe one of the villagers gets out his guitar, and if Jack and his dad have had enough beers they join in singing the canciones. Or maybe they just lie in the back of the truck listening to a Dodgers game through the crackle of the radio, or just talk to the background of a mariachi station, or maybe just fall asleep staring at the stars.
Do a few days of this and then drive back to el norte to go back to work.
Jack graduates from high school, does a couple of semesters at San Diego State, figures that ain't it, and takes the test for the Sheriff's Department. Tells his dad he wants to try something different from Sheetrock and 2 by 6s for a while.
'I can't blame you,' says his dad.
Jack aces the written exam, and he's bulked up from the construction work and the surfing, so he gets on with the Orange County Sheriff's Department. Does the usual gigs for a few years — serves papers, picks up fugitive warrants, does car patrols — but Jack is a smart kid and wants to move up and there's no spot in Major Crimes so he applies for fire school.
Figuring that if you know construction you got a jump on destruction.
He's right about this.
He rips fire school.
11
'Prometheus,' the little man in the tweed suit says.
Jack's like, Pro-who? And what the hell does it have to do with fire?
The lecturer acknowledges the blank stares of the class.
'Read your Aeschylus,' he says, adding to the general puzzlement. 'When Prometheus gave fire to mankind, the other gods chained him to a boulder and sent eagles to pick at his liver for all eternity. If you consider what man has done with fire, Prometheus got off easy.'
Jack had expected fire school to be taught by a fireman — instead he has this tweed-jacket professor named Fuller from the chemistry department of Chapman mumbling about gods and eternity and telling the students in a thick Irish accent that if they don't understand the chemistry of fire, they can never understand the behavior of fire.
First thing Jack learns in fire school is, What is fire?
Nothing like starting with the basics.
So…
'Fire is the active stage of combustion,' the professor tells Jack's class. 'Combustion is the oxidation of fuel that creates flame, heat, and light.'
'So combustion is flame, heat, and light?' Jack says.
The professor agrees, then asks, 'But what is flame?'
The class's reaction is basically, Duhh.
It's easy to describe flame — it's red, yellow, orange, occasionally blue — but defining it is something else. Fuller lets the class sit with this for a minute, then he asks a very un-professor like question: 'Are you telling me that no silly bastard in this room has ever lighted a fart?'
Ahhh, says the class.
Ahhh, thinks Jack. Flame is burning gas.
'Burning gases,' Fuller says. 'So combustion is the oxidation of fuel that creates burning gases, heat, and light. Which begs what question?'
'What is oxidation?' Jack asks,
'Full marks for the surfer dude,' Fuller says. 'What's your name?'
'Jack Wade.'
'Well, Master Jack,' Fuller says, 'oxidation is a series of chemical reactions that occur when an atom — that is, matter — forms a chemical bond with a molecule of oxygen. Now don't you all wish you'd paid more attention in Chemistry 101?'
Yes, thinks Jack. Definitely. Because Fuller starts drawing chemical equations on the board. While the chalk is screeching, Fuller's saying, 'In order for oxidation to occur, a combustible fuel — we'll talk about fuel in a few minutes — and oxygen must come together. This is called an exothermic — that is, heat-producing — reaction.'
