RIGHT, LEFT, AND ACE: THE UNBEATABLE COMBINATION
BY CARL F. WELSER
Euchre is my game. Bold, quick, and sometimes nasty. Just 24 cards; exactly half a pinochle deck, but plenty enough for action.
Nothing jumpstarts the pulse of a euchre player quicker than sweeping up the first three cards the dealer sends him and finding two jacks and an ace, all the same color, staring him in the face. In euchre, we call that special combination Right, Left, and Ace. As long as you have the privilege of naming trump, this is the unbeatable team. With a hand this good, you can freelance all you want and still be sure of winning, with no help needed from your partner.
Nothing jumpstarts an incident commander`s pulse quicker than checking in the first-due engine and spotting Ace in the driver`s seat, with Right and Left in the crew cab, already suited up in bunkers and SCBA. On the fireground, this is the unbeatable combination. If the situation is manageable, this team will manage it.
There are no doubt dream teams in every fire department in the nation, just as there are dream hands in euchre and probably in every other card game ever invented.
But a euchre deck also contains four nines and as many 10s, not to mention an assortment of faces, some looking at you, others shyly looking away. Each card has its own value and capability. Rarely do any of the lesser cards match the impact of Right, Left, and Ace. But they all came to play the game.
It may be possible for career fire departments to cull their personnel until every crew on every shift adds up to the unbeatable dream team of Right, Left, and Ace. Volunteer departments should be so lucky. At 10:00 on a Thursday morning, you get what you`re dealt. When luck is not fully on your side, you`ve got to know the game inside and out if you hope to apply any winning strategies.
Every volunteer fire department observes an unevenness in training and ability among personnel. When you spot a severe weakness, the knee-jerk reaction is to declare a general housecleaning. Purge the nines and 10s. Discard them. Begone, and good riddance!
But this is real life, and that`s not the way the game works. The new two-in/two-out rule imposes a vivid reality on the inner workings of dream teams, especially for volunteer departments. It`s not so much a matter of “Who`s going in?” as it is of “Who`s available to go in?”
But we still dream.
All of us suffer from a need to recreate our institutions in our own image. We feel safer and more powerful when the organizations we support reflect ourselves and our values; when everyone on the team walks like us, talks like us, and thinks like us.
If we are big and macho, then we work best–albeit sometimes abrasively–with other macho types. Those whom the macho-types dismiss as different may tend to align themselves with the guy whose shirt pocket protector always sports a row of sharpened pencils and an old slide rule. The more we can surround ourselves–especially under pressure–with people like ourselves, the better we feel. Diversity tends to make us nervous. That`s natural. Nothing abnormal about it. There is nothing more comfortable to us than what is familiar.
But here lie the roots of intolerance. And who would ever guess that something as normal as gut-level intolerance would end up being so problematic.
Once we decide that our fire department must look like us, the next step is to dictate that all the people who staff the department must also walk, talk, and think just like us. What a heck of a hand you could deal out of a deck of cards made up entirely of aces! But it`s not likely to happen. Nor would it make for much of a game. And you can bet your life that someone would soon change the rules and invent another game where aces are low.
The subject of diversity in the fire service has become a sociopolitical football for many reasons–most of them historic, many deeply embedded, some truly ugly. Issues of color and gender make the headlines. But the lack of diversity is a more complex matter than a few obvious markers. Size, shape, culture, and personal inclinations also count.
There`s more than one tragedy wrapped up in our ongoing lack of diversity, and the local volunteer fire department is as adversely affected as any other organization by our inborn need to limit the diversity around us.
Diversity is valuable, because diversity generates versatility. That makes diversity downright indispensable.
A little nine-of-trump–skillfully played–can create an amazing effect in the critical moments of a euchre game. Side aces often fall prey to a lowly nine. It is equally amazing how the most ordinary, unlikeliest-appearing people from the community– given the right training, equipment, and motivation–will rise to serve the emergent needs of their friends and neighbors. And do a creditable job, too.
If the volunteer department can`t consist entirely of heavy-hitting trump cards, then it must learn how to play with the whole deck. There are dozens of cards of differing value in every package, and each has its place in the game. So, too, are there people of differing talents in every organization who can be rotated to the forefront at the critical moment to play their part as needed.
But tolerance is tough to teach. Prejudice in all its forms comes naturally to us. There is pretty good evidence that tolerance must be learned from the inside out. Sometimes it takes a painfully conscious decision for any of us to allow diversity.
Our childhood literature is filled with stories of the success that springs from diversity. The tale of “The Little Engine That Could” is one overworked example.
People who have a difficult time accepting diversity might do well to consider the marvelous diversity of the hands that hang at the ends of their own arms. Our hands are fitted with five digits, each of a different shape. People who lose one or more digits on either hand through a birth defect or an accident gradually learn how to make do with fewer than five. But there is nothing to match a full complement.
We recognize four of our digits as fingers, each of a different size and purpose; for pointing, for ring-bearing, a vulnerable little pinkie, and even a finger for impudent gesturing if the owner is feeling antisocial. Opposite our four fingers stands a thumb that most domesticated four-footed creatures carry only as a vestigial claw high on the backside of a flat forepaw. But we humans own a genuine thumb that can squeeze awkward objects against our fingers. Acting under the guidance of anything more than half a brain, these five digits handle the tools and other devices that build the homes that shelter us; the machines that convey us; the instruments that feed, entertain, and heal us; and, eventually, the blazing ladders that will hurl our children`s children to the stars.
That`s a big gain in versatility from the simple diversity of four unique digits and an opposable thumb. Such versatility comes from diversity, and only from diversity.
You may have already noticed that four fingers and a thumb also work well for sweeping up the first three cards–hopefully, Right, Left, and Ace–dealt by the euchre dealer. But don`t forget the pair of nines still on the table. It takes five cards, as it takes five fingers, to make a full hand. n
n CARL F. WELSER is a 30-year veteran and training officer of the Hamburg (MI) Fire Department, Inc., and a member of the Fire Engineering editorial advisory board.
