Fantastic Firefighting

One dark night outside a small town in Minnesota, a
fire started inside the local chemical plant and in a
blink of an eye it exploded into massive flames. The
alarm went out to all the fire departments for miles
around.

When the volunteer fire fighters appeared on the
scene, the chemical company president rushed to the
fire chief and said, "All of our secret formulas are
in the vault in the center of the plant. They must be
saved. I will give $50,000 to the fire department that
brings them out intact."

But the roaring flames held the firefighters off. Soon
more fire departments had to be called in as the
situation became desperate. As the firemen arrived,
the president shouted out that the offer was now
$100,000 to the fire department who could bring out
the company's secret files.

From the distance, a lone siren was heard as another
fire truck came into sight. It was the nearby
Norwegian rural township volunteer fire company
composed mainly of Norwegians over the age of 65. To
everyone's amazement, the little run-down fire engine,
operated by these Norwegians, passed all the newer
sleek engines parked outside the plant and drove
straight into the middle of the inferno.

Outside, the other firemen watched as the Norwegian
old timers jumped off and began to fight the fire with
a performance and effort never seen before. Within a
short time, the Norse old timers had extinguished the
fire and saved the secret formulas. The grateful
chemical company president joyfully announced that for
such a superhuman feat he was upping the reward to
$200,000, and he walked over to personally thank each
of the brave, though elderly, Norse fire fighters.

The local TV news reporters rushed in after capturing
the event on film asking, "What are you going to do
with all that money?"

"Vell," said Ole Larsen, the 70-year-old fire chief,
"da furst thing ve do is fix da brakes on dat truck."