Firefighter’s dance

The Sparta volunteer fire department needed a new pumper truck. They have it – thanks to the dancers at the Racers Premier Gentlemen’s Club. The dancers encourage weekend patrons to donate for the truck which is being paid off with the patrons’ donations. Meanwhile the ever-ready-to-serve fire crew has done nothing to raise the money for the fire truck payments.
To those who question the truck’s funding source, the fire chief’s reply is, “Some people say it’s a disgrace to the firefighting industry, but unless somebody else can tell me right now how we can come up with the money, what choices do we have? … We wouldn’t have the truck without the girls.”
Shades of Marmeladov in Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”!
Marmeladov spent his days deep in his cups at the local taverns telling his fellow drunks about his self-sacrificing daughter, Sonya, who prostituted herself to raise money to feed his family. Using Sonya’s money, Marmeladov drowned his sorrow at having forced her into such a life while he remained completely clueless as to what he could do.
Similarly, the Sparta fire chief stands helplessly by accepting the dancer’s help, while declaring himself and his crew impotent to come up with even one idea for raising money. Even worse, according to the fire chief, the degradation of the women is not his fault. It is the fault of everyone else in the entire country who can not tell him immediately another way to raise money and quit the department’s dependence on the dancers at the club.
This is one fire chief who needs to stretch his mind and practice considering half a dozen impossible things every morning before breakfast as the White Queen did in ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’.
The fire chief did not consider any ideas before breakfast, after breakfast, or at any other time. According to the him, his department, unlike thousands of volunteer fire departments across the country, could not find any other way to raise money for new equipment.
One wonders, was it that the volunteer firefighters could not think of any fund raisers . . . or that they didn’t want to do what it takes to raise the money? Before declaring the impossibility of raising funds for the new truck, did the Sparta fire chief seek a temporary tax to fund the department? Contact a professional fund raiser for ideas?
Consider emanating other volunteer organizations and working through the tedium of fund drives, bakes sales, entertainment nights and raffles? Did the volunteer firefighters each commit to working a second job with the intent of donating their wages for the new fire truck?
The Sparta volunteer fire fighters rush to quench any flame threatening area homes, but where are they when the women are dancing? Standing by, watching and burping in their beer? In their apathy, they blind themselves to the reality that while they are save the houses of Sparta from fiery infernos, the flames of degradation are destroying their community’s moral structure.
Sparta has its fire truck – no thanks to an apathetic volunteer fire crew hiding in their corner of excuses.