Saturday, February 2, 2013

NORWEGIAN FIRE DEPARTMENT

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 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, that little run-down fire engine roared right past all the newer sleek engines that were parked outside the plant.

Without even slowing down it drove straight into the middle of the inferno. Outside, the other firemen watched as the Norwegian old timers jumped off right in the middle of the fire fought it back on all sides. It was a performance and effort never seen before.

Within a short time, the Norske old timers had extinguished the fire and had saved the secret formulas. The grateful chemical company president announced that for such a superhuman feat he was upping the reward to $200,000, and walked over to personally thank each of the brave fire fighters.

The local TV news reporter rushed in to capture the event on film, asking their chief, "What are you going to do with all that money?"

"Vell," said Ole Larsen, the 70-year-old fire chief, "Da first thing ve gonna do is fix da brakes on dat focking truck!"
A family joke from a friend who is half-NorweigianI love it.

6 comments:

  1. Ha ha!! Wasn't expecting that :)

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  2. I've never forgotten the summer vacation we took to Minnesota when I was 15. We stayed a private campground at one point. I think it must have been owned by Swedes (Swedish-Americans). I say that, because I remember a cartoon on the wall in the camp office: a guy firing a gun into a toilet. Caption: "Norwegian shooting craps" *groan* [I think there were several more cartoons in this vein. A certain bi-national bishop of my acquaintance, Norwegian-American (well, he was then! ;-X) from Minnesota by birth, told me similar stories of Swedish/Norwegian joking antipathies in the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes...]

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    Replies
    1. Ha ha. Excellent. You should pass the joke along to the NRA.

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  3. Swedes and Norwegians have always made fun of each other. Sibling stuff, methinks.

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