Marco spent eight years in the Army before joining the fire service. Deb came straight out of school into the academy and has been on the same shift rotation for eleven years. They met on B-shift, discovered they were both spending their days off up ladders for family, and worked out that there was a business in it.
The first season was nine houses, all of them people from the station. The second was thirty-one, almost entirely because those nine told their neighbours. We have never bought a lead.
Shift work and a seasonal trade fit together almost too neatly. Four days on, four off, and a business that runs hardest in the eight weeks either side of Thanksgiving.
What we sell is not really lights. It is not spending a December Saturday on a ladder in the cold, and knowing that if a run goes dark on the twenty-second, someone answers the phone and turns up.