Mike Curran

When I was a wee lad, park rangers built big bonfires, led marvelous sing-alongs and in Yosemite — and I am not making this up — dumped massive amounts of burning embers over Glacier Point. Ah, those were the good ol’ days. Or not, especially with today’s kindle-dry wildfire conditions. But closer to home and a half-century ago, Orange County rangers worked their keisters off rushing around and doing everything from maintenance to animal control to helping control floods.