toon80 said:
-Hey, up front!
-Yeah?
-Kill the Twinsonic, I gotta use the defibrilator!
That reminds me of something that actually happened to me late one Saturday night c.1971. My friend Henry Jackson, who was the first black cop at Texas Tech, grew up around a funeral home ambulance operation. He started working with my vol. ambulance service when it was still part of a REACT organization when we got the local racetrack's old ambulance in 1970. Henry had a nice red Ford wagon that we used as a backup unit. But about that time it was getting hard for people in the predominantly black part of town to get an ambulance quickly, so Henry bought a nice old '61 lwb Pontiac ambulance from the then-private ambulance co. in Clovis, NM. The rig came with triple beacons and a roof-mounted Q. But to this Henry added: a 77GB Federal doubletone siren to the rt. fender, twin blue lollipops between the Q and the front beacons and twin r/b Fireballs over the rear door. And to top if it off, he added a Federal Director with a speaker on the left fender. When the REACT club folded in '72 the ambulance service became totally mine, as I had procured a nice '63 Pontiac Consort ambulance from Summers Coach in Duncanville. On weekend nights that Henry got stuck on police duty at Tech I would pick up his Pontiac ambulance and take it to the races. I just loved driving that big rig! Well, one Saturday night while working the local short-track motorcycle races a kid fell and was run over by three or four other motorcycles, but his were the only injuries. We loaded him up and by his parents' directions we started in to the old West Texas Hospital in downtown Lubbock. Coming in I had the ambulance lit up but with light traffic I was only using the Director siren on yelp. But when we got into traffic I let loose on the Q, and the whole ambulance suddenly went dark....and stayed that way for a minute or two. A friend of mine who was a news photographer for one of the TV stations was with us that night and was up front with me. He stuck his big "sun gun" out the window and that bright light quickly began to clear traffic. Once we had cleared major traffic I was able to let up on the Q, and a minute or so later all the warning lights came back up. But the next time I had to use the siren, out they went again. So that Sunday we all converged on Henry's place to find out what was wrong. Turned out that all of the wires from the switch panel had been brought to a junction under the dash, twisted all together and shoved up on a hot spot on the fuse block. I don't know if that' something that Superior had done at the factory, or if a previous owner had done some wiring themselves. We spent the afternoon running the wiring outside to a junction that went to the battery, with a fuse block for the lighting. Never had a problem again, but it sure gave me some tense moments!
