MOVING OUT and MOVING ON...

I worked in the same firehouse for 6 years.  My dad would come up from Florida 2 or 3 times a year and stay with my sister.  Since I had come with the house, he got to see both of us.  I think Mom would send him up to NY to get him out of her hair.  She worked all day and he was home alone all day.  My Dad would come to the firehouse when I was working day shift.  And when I worked a night shift he came and stayed untilabout 10 PM and then would go home.  The first day he came to the firehouse he asked if they played cards.  Of course they did.  My dad was a great pinochle player.  The officers and senior men always played.  They loved to have him come and play even though he beat them most of the time.  I think the fact that he brought beer with him also helped.  

I was on the job about a year and a half and there was a fellow I went to high school with who was a firefighter.  He was on about 3 years and worked on the other side of down (rough side).  He called me and asked if I was going to the firefighters convention at Grossingers in the Catskills.  I told him I was thinking about it.  He said the rate for the convention was 2 to a room - let’s share a room.  It was a long weekend convention so we decided to take the rest of the week off and head to the Jersey shore afterwards.  We had a blast.  On the way home I told him I was living with my sister and I wanted to find an apartment.  He said that he still lived at home with his parents and was looking for an apartment, too.  We found an apartment near my firehouse.  It was in an 8 story brick building – the owner owned 2 or 3 other buildings and thought it would be great to have firemen as tenants.  He had a 2 bedroom apt. on the 1^st floor – we took it.  

We didn’t have much furniture but Bob’s Mom gave us lots of stuff.  I think she was glad to get him out of her house and on his own.  We drew straws to see who got the BR without a window.  He drew the windowless room but, in the long run, it worked out great for him.  My BR window and the kitchen window faced south.  The south side of our building faced a large parking lot.  Half belonged to our building and half belonged to the 10 story apt. building next door.  Bob and I worked opposite shifts and we were home together about once a week.  There were 2 girls who lived in the next building on the 5^th or 6^th floor.  I think they looked out their window and when we came home, they would come over and ask if we wanted to come over for dinner, go out for a drink, or go to the movies.  In the winter, when we got home about 6:30 it was dark.  When we turned on the kitchen lights, they would show up at our window or call us on the phone.  In those days, we had to wear our fire uniforms back and forth to the firehouse.  I was telling Bob that in the mornings, I laid out my civilian clothes on my bed and when I got home I had to sneak into the apt without turning on the lights.  I put my uniform on the bed, put on my civilian clothes, and snuck out of the building.  He laughed and said he could turn on the light in his room because it didn’t have a window but he had to sneak out of the building too.  We went to the apt. owner and told him about the girls and that we needed another apt. He had one in a different building.  It was newer and bigger and more $ but we took it.   

 

Before we moved out, Bob started dating a girl who had a big Doberman.  We had parquet wood flooring down the hall to the bathroom.  I would come home and see water stains on the wood floor.  I would wax the floor and 2 days later the floor would be stained again (sounds like the odd couple).  I then found out this dog would come over, drink out of the toilet, and dribble down the hall.  Bob was babysitting this big dog.  

One Sunday afternoon, we decided to go to the movies.  Bob had just bought a brand new Ford Mustang – candy-apple red with white seats.  We took the dog with us (WHY???) – we left him in the car (another WHY???) and went to the movie.  When we came out, I walked up to the passenger side of the car and started laughing.  Bob looked in the car, but he didn’t laugh.  The dog had eaten all the leather and stuffing off the passenger seat.  I guess he was mad we didn't bring him any popcorn.  I had to sit on the wire springs for the ride home.  That was the last time I saw that dog or his mistress.  

When I was working at Western Electric, I went back to college at night.  I enrolled at Manhattan College School of Business.  The bosses at Western Electric said that if I got a C or better in any course in business admin that Manhattan College offered, they would pay the tuition and the cost of the books.  When I became a firefighter, I decided to continue my education.  Most firefighters had a second job (called a B job) that they did on their off time.  They jumped at the chance to work my night shifts and I would work their day shifts so they could work their B jobs and make more money.  I didn’t know if I was going to like being a firefighter.  After 3 years on the job, I decided that I loved it

and I would be a firefighter for the next 20 years.  So why was I spending all this time and money taking business administration?  Westchester Community College was starting a new curriculum in Fire Science.  I transferred to Westchester Community College.  The only courses they would transfer were electives so it took me another 2 years to graduate.  I was the only firefighter in my department to receive a degree in Fire Science.  There were only 9 of us in the first graduating class but the demand was increasing for this type of degree.  A few years later, they changed the degree to Public Safety so that Police, and  EMTs, as well as Firefighters, could qualify.  I had finally found my niche in life and my mother was so relieved! 

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. 

SHOPPING...FIREFIGHTER STYLE!

One night we had a big fire in a huge winery.  They made fruit wines.  After the fire was knocked down, we were up on the roof standing next to a large hole we had opened.  We could look down into the warehouse.  Firefighter boots have loops on each boot so you can pull them on easier.  We tied a rope between the loops and lowered the boots down to the warehouse floor.  Another firefighter filled the boots with bottles of wine.  We did this over and over.  It got to the point where we would yell down to the fireman “no more blueberry – more strawberry.”  You have to remember that the bottles had been declared contaminated by the health department and couldn’t be sold.  They were scheduled to be destroyed.  That night, all of us went home with lots of wine.  It still tasted pretty good, even if most of the label was burned off.  

Another cold, snowy night a delivery truck skidded into a bridge abutment and flipped over.  The doors split open and hundreds of boxes of Saucy Susan Shrimp Cocktail were scattered all over the road.  Once the container boxes had been split open, the contents (packed in glass jars) was no longer saleable – so we all had shrimp cocktail for weeks and weeks.

In the firehouse where I worked, there was a large Italian neighborhood in our first-due district.  One Sunday afternoon, a fire alarm came in from a 2 family house in that neighborhood.  In those days, most Italian families cooked a large pot of sauce from early morning until their big Sunday dinner later in the day.  After we put out the fire, some of the firefighters crawled through the attic looking for any fire extension.  One of the firefighters slipped off the ceiling rafter and his leg went through the sheetrock.  We didn’t know that Grandma had snuck back into the kitchen to stir her sauce.  The pieces of sheetrock went into her sauce pot.  Grandma got very upset and started beating the firefighters boot leg with a big wooden spoon and yelling, in broken English, that the firefighters were “making too much dirt.”  

One night I was called into work because there was a major snow storm predicted to hit NY.  About 3 AM, we got a call via the Police Department that there was an accident on the NY State Thruway.  An 18-wheeler hit a bridge abutment and turned over.  The police were taking the drive to the hospital.  There were so many accidents on the Thruway that night that all the nearby fire crews were out on other calls.  We were about a mile away.  They told us to close 2 lanes of the thruway, leaving one open, and wait for a commercial truck-towing vehicle to arrive.  They would try to right the tractor trailer, but, if not, a crane vehicle would be called in.  In either case, with the weather conditions as they were, it would have been hours before anyone showed up. 

As we began to secure the accident scene, we noticed that the trailer had been split open and there were frozen turkeys all over the snowy road.  Once again, food products in that situation were considered contaminated and would be destroyed.  Since they would be a major hazard to traffic once the lanes were opened, we had to remove the turkeys.  We couldn’t fit 33 turkeys safely in the fire engine (32 firefighters and one for dinner tomorrow).  One of the firefighters told me he lived nearby and had a 4-man toboggan.  I sent him home to get it and, when he returned, we loaded up the toboggan with turkeys and he and another firefighter pulled it to the firehouse.  They unloaded it and returned to fill it up again.  By then, the tow vehicle arrived, righted the truck, and that section of the Thruway was cleared.  Everyone in our firehouse had a frozen turkey in their freezer for the holidays.  

Eating or drinking something that was in a fire is really not a good idea – especially if it was open or exposed to smoke.  We had a fire in a bakery and, after the fire was out, firefighters started eating pastry that was still in the oven.  They all got food poisoning and were sick for days.  Another fire was in a butcher shop.  A firefighter took a roast beef that had been in the open case back to the firehouse and cooked it for lunch.  No one could eat it – the taste of acrid smoke made them all sick.  

After a fire is knocked down, firefighters are looking for something to drink to hydrate themselves.  Water is the best thing, but hydrant water is unsafe to drink.  The pipelines have been super-charged and the water is black and full of rust.  Opening a refrigerator that was in a smoky room and drinking milk or orange juice from an open container is also a NO-NO.  

Firefighters are a tough breed and they learn quickly!  A cold, unopened bottle of beer is usually safe to drink.  It may not taste as good as a fresh one – but it’s safe!   

EARLY LESSONS LEARNED

There were a lot of hoops you had to jump through to get onto the Fire Department in the ‘60s.   The city wanted the cream of the crop for their department. The ACLU hadn’t gotten involved in civil service jobs as yet so the city still had very strict hiring code.  You had to be over 5’10” tall; your height and weight had to be in proportion; your vision had to be 20-20 or better; hearing perfect; a mouth full of your own teeth; and then you had to pass a battery of mental evaluations, a strenuous agility test, and a full medical exam.   

  

If you met all these requirements, you were put on a list and they would call you when they had an opening -- all for $112 a week.  My friends and some family members thought I was crazy to quit an office job paying $120 a week to go on the Fire Department.  I told them that working in an office I had to buy white shirts, ties, shoes, socks, and get a haircut every 2 weeks.  I had to work 2 years to get 1 week vacation, 5 years to get 2 weeks’ vacation, 20 years to get 3 weeks’ vacation, and work until I was 65 to get a pension. 

In the Fire Department, I would get 6 weeks’ vacation every year, 4 personal days, 10 sick days – paid in cash if not used – a dental plan, vision plan, medical plan, Fire Department doctor on call 24 hours a day at no charge, a legal assistance plan, and a 20 year ½ pay retirement plan.  Plus, the city supplied winter uniforms, summer uniforms, work clothes, as well as all protective clothing and equipment.  The only thing I had to pay for was shoes and a haircut every 6 weeks. 

After 8 weeks of firefighter training, I was sent to firehouse #11.  All new recruits were on probation for 1 year.  The city could fire you for any reason during that time period.  Once your probation was up, it was almost impossible to lose your job. 

Another “proby” and I showed up early for our first night shift at station #11.  Just as we were coming into the firehouse, the alarm went off.  Two 14” bells rang – one on the apparatus floor and one in the dormitory.  The lights came on and a ticker tape started running across the watchman’s desk.  The tape punched out a 4 digit code so the driver would know what sector of the city the alarm was coming from.  The voice of a dispatcher gave the exact location of the emergency through a large overhead speaker.   Engine 11 and Truck 3 responded.  They told us to wait for the night crew to show up. 

At about 8PM, the day crew returned and they were all happy.  Seems they had performed CPR on a young girl and saved her life.  Thirty minutes later, the Fire Chief called and told us the girl had a contagious disease and the firemen who performed CPR were ordered to the hospital for a few days to be checked out.  The other “proby” and I looked at each other wondering what we had gotten ourselves into.  

We went out on several calls that night but nothing special or exciting.  Everything calmed down around midnight and, after watching the Johnny Carson show, everyone went to bed.  The Captain told us to get some rest because at any minute we could be called out for an all-nighter.  The two of us sat watching TV until 3AM.  We had to creep into the dormitory and feel around for our beds.  We were so nervous we both laid on the bed with all our clothes on.  I leaned over and said, “I can’t believe the city is paying us to sleep.”  We both got the giggles and it took over an hour to fall asleep.  

It wasn’t all fun and games – obviously.  Most people run OUT of a burning building, not INTO it.  Even the rats and roaches are leaving – now there’s a sight you really don’t want to see! 

The other “proby” didn’t like this firehouse.  He asked for a transfer to a busier house in a rough neighborhood.  He wanted more action.  He was transferred and was promoted to Lieutenant about 8 years later.  One night, he responded to a fire in an old wooden tenement building.  Some women were outside crying that there were children trapped on the third floor.  He ran in without putting on his air tank.  He never made it out.  He left behind a wife and 2 kids.  There were no trapped children on the third floor, or anywhere else in that building.  Unfortunately, there are so many stupid, irresponsible people who are more interested in stealing TVs, stereos, boom boxes, etc. from their neighbor’s apartment than saving their own kids.  After they had stolen whatever they wanted, then they screamed for the firefighters to save their kids.  This happened time and time again. 

I once saved 3 year old twin boys who had been left in their cribs with wet and dirty diapers while the building went up in flames.  I got them out of the tenement and told the Assistant Chief what had happened.  He was a smart old guy.  He asked a group of women standing nearby who the boys belonged to.  No one said anything, so the chief just put the boys down and they ran right to their mother.  She picked them up and ran away.  That was a lesson I never forgot.