Recap:
Last time, our storyteller shared her youthful encounters with bureaucracies. She wrote of the Forest Circus, where she'd been ordered to slaughter thousands of innocent seedlings. The experience compromised her ethically and rendered her an insubordinate thief.
She relapsed ten years later by taking a job with the Motor Vehicles Division. There, she was required to send handicapped drivers to the doctor to be recertified as 'still permanently disabled' in order to renew their wheelchair license plates. She left public service compromised, an insubordinate liar.
We rejoin our story in progress.
Report #3: Hysterical Contagion
I thought when I bought the auto parts shop that, since I was working for myself I would be in charge. My signature was all by itself on a breathtakingly huge loan and I thought that purchased me the right to self-determination. Seems like it should have. I told myself I was empowered and didn't have to let bureaucracy compromise my integrity ever again. I was in my early 40s and purchased the business to bail my mom out of it after my dad passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. The shop was housed in an ancient, wheezing building centrally located in a small town on Route 66. I had an enormous mortgage on a piece of history, my dingy old dog-eared auto parts shop was on the register of historical buildings.
A few years into my auto parts career, I was changing vendors, and needed to repaint my building exterior from gray and gold NAPA team colors, to team CarQuest colors, which were red, white, and blue. This transition was taking place, coincidentally, not long after the 9/11 tragedy. All of America was painting itself red, white, and blue. The Historical (Hysterical) Commission responsible for overseeing the integrity of the appearance of the Hysterical District, insisted I commission an architect's rendering of the building's new look (at a cost of thousands of dollars and weeks in delay), in order to obtain its permission for my red, white, and blue paint.
The lady who ran the Chamber of Commerce was also the chair of the Hysterical Commission. She was a fine artist, a painter, in her spare time. She was the one who delivered the Hysterical Commission's bad news to me about the architectural rendering. “Are you kidding me!!?” I ranted, “It's a greasy old auto parts shop, Donna! Sheesh, it could hardly get an uglier!”
But in the end I had to surrender, the authority of the Hysterical District overlaid my rights to independence as property owner. I buckled and hired the architect. The Hysterical Commission liked the architect's picture and gave its blessings to my paint job at last.
Unfortunately, the colors the architect proposed, and the only ones the Commission would allow me to use, were proprietary mixes available only at a certain paint store in Phoenix (I suspected collusion). That certain paint store informed me that the paint would have to be special ordered. It was going to take weeks to get, and someone was going to have to drive to Phoenix (150 miles away) to pick up the Blush Ecru, Batik Blue, Domino Black, and Lipstick Red paint.
I blew a gasket and went to the Chamber of Commerce office to bitch about it. Donna wrinkled her little fine art nose at me and said “Well, but, T, you know, some whites are so glaring and cold.”
I managed not to roll my eyes but thought Oh, this poor, fragile thing. I flew the short distance between the Chamber of Commerce and my shop on my broomstick. In flames.
We were already weeks behind with the changeover project owing to the Hysterical Commission/paint fluster cluck. I was about to snap under the pressure.
I paced and fumed and raged and cussed for a while to try and get my blood pressure back down.
“Okay.” I said, taking David aside for a private conversation. “We are SO done screwing around with this. Like effing paint is the most important thing we've got on our plate right now. I have yet to find the Champion plugs, and our customers are starting to cry about the good old NAPA days. It just won't do.
“Go to the hardware store.” I told him. “You have a half an hour till they close, Get the coldest, most eye-blistering white they have, vampire blood red, and the bluest of royal blues. 
Off the shelf colors, David, I want this job finished by Monday.”
“Yes Ma'am,” he grinned.
By Monday it was done. We got a lot of compliments from our neighbors on our bright new look, including one from the Chamber of Commerce lady, 
Donna, who found it refreshing and clean and said “See, it was worth the extra effort, wasn't it?” The Chamber of Commerce even gave us an award for our new spruced-up exterior. And there I was, a newly-minted insubordinate cheat, my right to self-determination tatters in the wind.
Report #4: The Blind Leading the Sighted
By my early 60s I had sold the auto parts shop. My feet and back were ruined and I could no longer run fast enough to escape the trouble that pursued me down the street in my own little neighborhood. I was out for a hobble around the block with my walking sticks when a neighbor ran me off the road into the bar ditch with his bright yellow Jeep. Literally. He held me hostage there. He wouldn't help me out of the ditch or move his Jeep until I caved and agreed to take a position on the fire district board. It would only be temporary, he promised. He only needed someone to sign checks, he said. I wouldn't even have to attend meetings, ever, he vowed. Although we didn't have one handy, he is a Christian man, the kind who are always up in your face about it, and I made him swear on a virtual Bible.
As soon as I was duly sworn in and my signature was officially on the fire district's checking account, he quit and dumped the whole mess on my head. It was the sleaziest thing that's happened to me since I quit drinking.
I had managed to happily avoid bureaucracies for almost 20 years and now find myself running a tiny little government—just 94 acres of 'nobody else gives a shit.'
The fire district job situates me, who doesn't know squat about managing a fire department, (nominally) in charge of managing a fire department. I'm now supposed to supervise people who have lifetimes of professional experience with it. This is bureaucratic intelligence at its finest.
When I complain about the illogic of this to one or more of the several fire chiefs I work with now, I ask them to recognize that none of us on the board (me least of all) has enough information to supervise any of them. They are polite and deferential as they explain to me that this remove is institutionally intentional. My board and I are theoretically the degree of separation between the county, 
which collects the taxes, and the fire department, which spends it. It is thought that this degree of separation puts board members like me in a position to be careful with taxpayer money.
Sigh. Yet another room full of policy makers somewhere in the draconian bowels of the fire district world who clearly haven't thought it through. If anything, I'm in greater danger than anyone else of wasting taxpayer's money because I don't have the first, teensy, tiny little clue how the money would be best spent.
I was recently required to write into an employment agreement that the independent contractor my little government was hiring would agree not spend her taxpayer funded wages at any business boycotting Israel.
“Who is going to enforce this?” I fumed at my attorney, who is counsel for the County. “I promise you it's not going to be me. Do you have a list of approved businesses? Does my new hundred-dollar-a-month secretary have to submit receipts for approval? The district will be in violation of this contract from the outset, right? I'm extremely reluctant to sign this.”
“Oh,” the County Attorney says, “It's just one of those quirky little things. You know, a feel-good thing. Nobody expects it to be enforced.”
“Well why write it as a law then? If it's just a 'feel good thing' let's send her a greeting card. I'm taking this quirky little unenforceable feel good clause out of the employment contract. It doesn't make me feel good in the least.”
“No, you can't do that. State law demands that clause be in all contracts with all levels of government.”
“I thought you told me the law requires the board to take care of the taxpayer's money! This is a Catch 22. You're requiring us to sign something regarding expenditure of taxpayer money we know to be unenforceable. Is someone at the state level going to vet every business where our secretary might spend her money? What if the only grocery store in town is on the verboten list? Is the state going to pay her extra to drive to another town to go to an approved grocery store? Our tiny little district doesn't have any extra money to pay for travel. This is Big Brother stuff and it's terrifying! How can you be so casual about it?”
“Nothing will come of it,” the County Attorney says, “and I will defend you if anything does.”
Small comfort.
I butted heads with my attorney for a few more rounds, but I'm old and soft-headed now, while she has youth and legal certainty on her side. We soon discovered that she had the harder head.
My purpose here is not to throw stones at any of the excellent people who work in and around fire departments, but rather to point out the fundamental flaw in the basic bureaucratic structure of fire districts. The structure that elevates me, yet again, to a level of incompetency. The structure that places the cart in front of the horse. You can just call me Peter (principal).
So I try my very best to be a good sheep now with this 'volunteer' position. I go placidly where I'm led and sign where I'm told to sign, a newly-minted insubordinate cynic.
MoonLit offers this second installment of three in a series that takes a gander at bureaucracies and how they function—or dysfunction as the case may be. Be not afraid, this series is only political in a tangential sort of way. The series hopes we can retain our sense of humor as we navigate the minefield that American bureaucracies often represent.
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To the Life in Pieces writing circle for reading an early draft of this.
Terryl is extremely grateful to Chief Trotter and everyone at High Country Fire and Rescue, for their valuable assistance in navigating the administration of a small fire district. Thank you for your many kindnesses great and small, and your clear-eyed understanding of the work you do. You're worth your weight in gold, each and every one.
Terryl and Al are both deeply thankful for the people who read our work. You are what make it worthwhile. We love hearing back from you, and are ever so grateful to you for sharing our efforts with your friends and family.
Terryl Warnock is an eccentric with a happy heart who lives on the outskirts of town with her cat. She is known as an essayist, proof reader, editor, maker of soap, and proud pagan. A lifetime student, she has pursued science, religion, and sustainable communities. This, plus life experience from the local community service to ski instructor, from forest service worker to DMV supervisor, from hospitality to business owner gives her a broad view on the world.
Terryl is the author of:The Miracle du jour, ISBN-10: 0989469859, ISBN-13 : 978-0-9894698-5-2
AJ Brown, in a past life, was an embedded systems engineer (digital design engineer). He worked on new product designs from hard disk controllers, communication protocols, and link encryptors to battery monitors for electric cars.
A few years ago he surrendered his spot on the freeway to someone else. Now he is more interested in sailing, building out his live-in bus for travel, and supporting the idea of full-circle food: the propagation, growth, harvest, storage, preparation, and preservation of healthy sustenance. He is a strong supporter of Free/Libre Open Source Software[F/LOSS] and is willing to help most anyone in their quest to use it.
Together, we are MoonLit Press.