With 24 hours on duty followed by 48 off, it's easy for firefighters to moonlight–and "daylight"–and most of them do, say Randy Lawrence and Taylor Underwood, who came here as buddies from North Texas four years ago and signed on with the Killeen (Texas) Fire Department.
Others do various jobs, but Lawrence and Underwood are among two or three small groups of firefighters who do lawn and maintenance work when they're not at the station waiting for emergency calls. They started their home-based business, The Yard Dept., two years ago in time for a boom occasioned by the soggy spring of 2007. They've worried that the shaky national economy might scare customers away from outsourcing their landscaping, but the economic stability afforded by Fort Hood has assured a steady supply of work.
They grew up together in Seymour, about 50 miles from Wichita Falls. After high school, they were working out their life plans. One was in college when the other heard of openings at the Temple Fire Academy, and they entered together.
"It's hard to get into those schools, so we thought we should grab the opportunity," Underwood said. When they graduated in the fall of 2002, they found slots open in Killeen and came on over. Now both are paramedics in fire and rescue.
"One of the girls my wife works with came up with the name The Yard Dept.," Underwood said. They have a trailer with the name and contact information on a big sign, and the artwork on their business cards looks like typical fire department typography.
They advertise mowing, weed eating, edging, tree and hedge trimming, leaf blowing and gutter cleaning. They say they do other similar jobs, but all outside, and they do nothing that requires licensing.
More often than not, one is on duty and the other has to work alone. "It's nice when we can work together," Lawrence said. "Then we can work faster. We just flip a coin for who will do what, and off we go."