LET ME DRIVE - PLEASE!!!!

I was on the job about a week when the Captain called me up to the large map of the City streets.  The City was divided into square blocks: 1 East to 10 West and 1 North to 10 South.  Alarms were transmitted as a 4-digit code – the first 2 digits told in what section of the City the alarm came from, e.g. a 1,1 code meant North East section; a 10,10 was the South West section.  The next 2 digits told what cross section in the square block it came from.  The Captain drew red squares around each of our first due sections.  He told me to learn one section at a time including the names of the streets and what route to take to get to specific square block.  He gave me 4 days to learn each square then he would quiz me.  He didn’t realize that I had grown up in this neighborhood and, as a kid, I had been on almost every street.  I didn’t always know the names of the streets, but I knew how to get there and I would remember them by who had lived where.  So all I really had to do was learn the street names.  

On my first test, the Captain asked “How do you get to square one and what are the names of the streets.  I answered all of his questions.  I finally told him I had grown up inside these “squares.”  He asked me about square #2.  After about an hour, I had answered almost half of our first due districts correctly.  The Captain shook his head and told me to learn the rest of our district.  He tested me on my next night tour and I got an A. I don’t know if he was impressed or if I just drove him crazy, but in lots of the squares I even pointed out where the fire hydrants were located.  We were nosy kids and my friends and I spent our childhoods roaming every inch of these “squares.”  

On the next day shift, the Captain took me (the “proby”) and 2 other new firemen out for driving practice.  The fire engine had only one bench seat up front, behind the windshield.  A firefighter drove on the left and the Officer rode on the right and operated the siren and rang the large bell on the front right fender.  The rest of the crew stood up on a 2-foot wide rear bumper and held onto a chrome bar above the hose bed.  I remember responding to fires in the freezing cold and, when we hit a bump in the road, we’d all be thrown 2 feet up into the air.  By the time you got to the fire, you were already beaten up, just from the ride.  But, back to the driving. 

The first to drive was the senior Firefighter among us.  This, of course, meant I would be last.  The first Firefighter didn’t know how to drive a stick shift.  We bounced and rocked and stalled and he ground gears for blocks.  The Captain gave up on him and told #2 to come up and drive.  At least he knew how to shift, but he was scared to death of the length and width of the fire engine.  He came so close to hitting parked cars and moved over so far when he passed a car, the Captain was having apoplexy.  Next it was my turn. 

Now I really wanted to be a driver – for a lot of reasons.  I had always been interested in mechanical and engineering jobs. I often think that’s really what I was meant to do.  But this looked like my ideal job.  The driver of the engine was called the MPO – motor pump operator.  He pulled the rig up to the fire and began to organize the necessary flow of water.  He controlled the flow as well as the amount of pressure needed for that situation.  He also wasn’t running into the burning building trying to buck the vermin who were leaving.  If you were a ladder driver, you controlled the aerial ladder – from outside – another mechanical/engineering type of job.  You weren’t spending your entire career inside an inferno breathing toxic chemicals.  So, I began to make my pitch to the Captain. 

I looked at the shift handle (it was a 5-speed floor shift.) I said to the Captain, “I guess it’s easier on the clutch and the throw-out bearing if I double clutch between gears.” (I had learned a lot driving that dump truck in Connecticut.) He looked at me and said something about me knowing how to double clutch??? I said “Sure” and took off down the street.  I drove for about an hour, made lots of turns, stops, and up and down hills.  He liked that I knew how to down-shift going down hills and approaching stop signs or a traffic light.  He asked me why I did that.  I told him that, since we had 500 gallons of water in the tank at 8.5 lbs. per gallon it creates a lot of forward inertia to the fire engine.  And by down-shifting the transmission it helps the brakes to stop our forward motion.  (I had also paid attention in the Fire Academy classes.)  I also told him I could shift the transmission without using the clutch (another trick I learned driving the dump truck.)  He claimed it couldn’t be done.  I did it 3 or 4 times and then he said he wanted me to drive back to the firehouse after all alarms.  He also wanted me to have driving practice every day shift.  I then became a back-up driver for both the engine and the ladder company.  I was on my way! 

One night we received an alarm for a house fire.  We were told the house was fully involved and it belonged to a fire officer.  The house was set way back from the road up on a hill.  Another firefighter and I dragged a 2 ½  inch line up to the front door then attached a double Y shut-off and hooked up 2 lengths of 1 ½ ” hose.  I gave the driver the signal to start the water flowing.  We ran into the building and started to put out the fire.  We ran out of water less than a minute later.  We both ran outside for fear of being burned.  I went running down to the fire engine.  The driver was confused and couldn’t get any water into the pump.  He was priming the pump so much that the whole rig was rocking back and forth.  Water was coming out of the vent on the top of the tank.  I told Tom that the water he sent up to us was the 500 gallons in the tank.  Then he had opened the hydrant valve so the water went into the pump – but he never opened the valve to send it into the hoses.  The water went into the tank and had nowhere to go – so it started shooting out the vent.   He looked at me like I was crazy.  He said he was very nervous because it was a fire officer’s house.  I opened and closed the right valves and sent the right water up to the house.  3 other engine companies responded and we knocked the fire out.  When everything was out, we dragged the hose back to the engine and loaded it onto the hose bed.  This driver was the senior driver and he asked me to drive back to the firehouse.  Back at the fire station, he told the Captain that he didn’t want to drive any more.  He said he was getting too old and he was afraid he might injure other firefighters.  That’s when I became a full-time driver.  

I had a friend who was a ladder company driver.  He taught me how to operate the aerial ladder.  On the way back from fires, he would drive my engine and I would drive his ladder truck.  I asked the Captain who rode on the ladder truck to teach me how to operate the ladder.  I became a permanent driver for both rigs.  We worked a 3-day shift – Day 1, I drove the engine; Day 2, the ladder, Day 3 was a tossup depending which officer was working.  I loved being a driver and I drove both rigs for 6 years – until I got promoted.