You're in good hands with these firefighters
The thought of a school bus in our area being involved in a serious accident is one we prefer not to consider.
But area firefighters can't ignore the possibility.
They undergo extensive training for such an occurrence, emphasizing which tools are best on which parts of a school bus if extrication was ever needed.
Those of us who are not called upon to save lives in our daily jobs might make the assumption our emergency personnel just shows up at an accident scene and starts hacking apart vehicles to aid trapped victims.
"That's what you see in the movies and on TV all of the time," said Joe Schelstreet, an assistant fire chief and 21-year veteran of the St. Charles Fire Department. "But there's a tremendous amount to think about at an accident scene, with safety being the first, making sure the vehicle is not burning or leaking gas."
Schelstreet said it is common to think firefighters "just yank people out of a damaged car," but that is never a safe option because the person could have a serious back injury.
"We actually remove the vehicles from people," Schelstreet said. "Our heavy rescue truck is outfitted with any extrication tool you can imagine.
"We have tools for all different purposes, and we have the knowledge of where you can or can't cut, because different vehicles have different power cables and such in different places."
The word "emergency" calls for a sense of urgency, but not a chain of chaotic reactions.
"It takes a lot of training," Schelstreet said.
Nostalgic decoration: It looks as if we will surely add another St. Charles Heritage Center Christmas ornament to our tree this year. The ornament on sale at the history museum features the Mount St. Mary all-girls high school that was in St. Charles through the early 1970s.
And why will that be earmarked for our tree? My wife graduated in 1969 from that "school on the hill" where ViewPointe homes now sit.
Playing the oldies: If fans at last Friday's Class 7A playoff game pitting St. Charles East against Geneva couldn't grasp how long it had been since the teams last met, Geneva public address announcer Kurt Wehrmeister had the solution.
He played songs popular from the 1970s during pregame activities. Or, as one observer put it, maybe he was just making us listen to his ancient music collection.
In either case, it did bring back memories of 1978, the last time the teams played each other.
Timing works out: The fact my family was taking the train into Chicago last Sunday to visit the Lincoln Park Zoo and make sure my son hasn't made a shambles of his apartment near the DePaul campus, it seemed certain the threatened mass transit "doomsday" would unfold the second I stepped on a train.
As is often the case with a state-funding crisis, the talking heads in Springfield figured out a way to hold off on creating chaos in Chicago -- until another day and another train ride.