The Wreck of The Edmund Fitgerald Part IV

Evidently, we have fans again for this trip.  I apologize for the long story, but it was such a long trip. Such a long trip.....

  I'm listening to Van Halen's "Hot Summer Nights" as I write this, and what irony.  The big complaint last year was way too cold, this year not enough cold. Not enough snow.  But as Van Halen says, "We celebrate when the gang's all here!"

Van Halen

  So here we sit, on the side of the road thanks to me.  Danny, Edmund Fitzgerald already in my ears..... Grandpa!!!  Danny! What do you need?  Danny, I need you to shut that song off, and go run into the woods.  Go play hide and go F*&k yourself!  A single mile from camp, and here we are.

  A single effin mile.  I got this, "new" build on this sled, coolant hose rubbing up against something it shouldn't.  Jerry rig, LET'S RIDE!  I know we have Curtis 2 miles through the windshield, I'll fix it then.  We roll into Curtis like we own the place, but by then I'm already overheating again.  I just needed 2 miles, and here we are.  Got my two miles, got more problems than I anticipated. Still, not a problem, I have a swiss army knife and a gas station, I can fix the space shuttle here if needed.

  Eddy jumps in to help, that's just how he is.  I run inside, buy a gallon of antifreeze and two gallons of water, As Eddie and I are fixing my little cooling problem, minor engine mount problem. We got this,  We're in Curtis, on sleds!  Wait a tick, it becomes painfully obvious that I still see no snow....... Pat walks up "Have any of that antifreeze left?  I tried to peel some snow off of the bank with the right ski, it didn't work."  My XCR is down for the count, Pat's Edge is SCREAMIN hot.  Well, shit....

  12 hours from home.  It's gonna take more than this to bring us down.  Before ya know it, we're ready to roll forward.  As we're leaving the gas station in Curtis, we happen upon riders heading back in.  "You have about 3 miles of crap before you see rideable snow."  Well, SWEET because we only have another mile of dry blacktop between us and the trails.

  I'm hot, Ed's Hot, Pat's hot, So are our sleds.  Two ways to go about this.  Slow and conservative, try and get snow off of the banks with the right ski. Or just get there quick and dive into a snow bank.

  Fueled up, looking at a stop sign.... "You Assholes ready??"  Got the OK from the crew.  Look left, look right.  Anticipating how long it will take 10 sleds behind me to get through this intersection.  Wait...wait....  BOOM.  They all know I don't "do" conservative.  Giddy Up!

  In one instant, with the best interest of our group in mind.  Look left, clear.  Look right, clear.  Look down between my legs and the XCR is ready.  With a handful of throttle, the XCR set us off on a path of speed, destruction, ghosts, mayhem, and friendship that none of us expected.  Helmet on, Edmund Fitzgerald playing in my mind, skis not on the ground, nothing but sky in the windshield, and the smell of 2 stroke Polaris..

  At that exact moment, in Curtis Michigan, my right thumb grabbed more Polaris than was expected.  The XCR threw me down onto my seat, and made damn sure I knew who was boss.  I wasn't sure how long she would last,  Pretty sure with the way she wanted to dislocate my arms she didn't know how long I would last.

  Let's find out..... 1 mile of blacktop, then 2 miles of slush.

The Lostpital

  Taking a detour from the Edmund story, because this one just fell into my lap.  A little research, a little reaching out on the interweb, and I was just handed a wonderful story about the place we call home, The YO.

  Youngstown, Ohio.

  I'm really not sure how this whole story got started, but that's OK because that's how the best stories usually start!  I think a friend of mine, Phil, found a pic. This all started with a single pic.  Something about ghost stories and abandoned buildings on a site that was completely unrelated to YO or EMS.  It was a photography site, and the pics I've seen (with a little research) are INCREDIBLE.  These guys take AMAZING pics!!!  The photographer was obviously in for the pic, but when "we" got a hold if it, we wanted to know more.  We're "ghetto medics" in Youngstown.

Let's start with the original picture:

How COOL is this???  Thanks to a couple of photographer "Sean's" Paramedics in Youngstown have some history to dig in to.  Which is exactly what I did.  And what I found out is amazing!

  This is the page I found the pic on, I'm not stealing anyone's thunder.  These guys are almost as good as a photographer I know near Cleveland, but that's a different story.

  Amazing?  Pic is, but THIS in Youngstown? No, not really.  In Youngstown, "amazing" was normal for us.  We built Steel. Ice Cream. Bread. Cars. Rail Roads. Coke. Coal. Automobiles. Movies. There was nothing Youngstown couldn't do.  So why wouldn't we have hospitals?

  I reached out to both Sean's responsible for this photo, Sean Gailbreath, and Sean Posey.  I heard from Mr Posey this evening and that was all my brainus needed,,,,,,

  According to Mr. Posey, this building was the hospital for General Fireproofing.  He wasn't sure of the location, as it had been some time since the photo was taken.

  "Bill, this was from the old General Fireproofing plant. Sadly, it has been torn down,"

  With a little research, I determined that Youngstown, OUR Youngstown was also a pioneer in metal office furniture.  With a factory on Logan Ave.  Abandoned factory buildings on Logan near Gypsy, more specifically the area on Logan that's south of W Dennick.  It's all open land and vacant now, which has become the story of our "YO".

General info on the company:
General Fireproofing

And again, because I'm pretty proud of all the rust I see in this city, I did a little more research, and came up with a current day video of where The Lospital once stood......

The Lostpital


  We built steel.  That steel made more factories, one of which  that simply made metal office furniture.  That factory made more jobs.  More jobs to the point that General Fireproofing built their own Hospital, creating yet more jobs in the medical field.  The need for more jobs, built schools and educated people that wanted to learn. Which, created even more jobs. All of a sudden we needed teachers, professors, factory workers, police officers, firefighters, engineers on the railroads we built, truck drivers, store clerks, accountants, bankers, car salesmen, car builders, butchers, bakers, movie makers.

  What the hell happened to us?