M you're listening to the Getting Salty Experience podcast. You muted, your knucklehead.
I told you that before we started. Oh yeah, we are back,
and you know what when you said that, I was like, yeah,
no, yeah, I got Yeah. Gonzo's muted too. It's bad.
I feel like we got so much to talk about because we've been away
for over a week. Bro, good stuff, some good stuff. Yeah.
Week, Me and Roof and Cliffy on the road Bro doing it out
in Indie. I saw so many people. Why I welcome back to get
in? Told the Experienced podcast, it's the only one in the whole wide
world that brings the firehouse to get your table to you. We saw a
lot of impostas out there, Bro, roaming around all over the place.
You know, we bring the kitchen table, I've bring'ring. Well, here's
a kitchen table for you. Table? What what? What? Why hitch
your tables all over the place. There's only one that does, and it's
this one. And we're back. And my man Rookie, he's looking at
it. He's all ready to go tonight. Bro, you're excited, give
me a little give me h Yeah, we had Sammy Pete has come down
from Chicago and hang out with us in a booth lot. I saw that
a lot of fans came down. Bro Uh, some people that you don't
you know, you don't put the face to the name in the chat like
it was like a nak grim agreema. I'm like, wow, I fuck
umpty name on the show, and I'm gonna mess it up now too.
Good stuff. Coops are signing hats like nobody's business. You werena thought he
was like Kenrick Glenquist or something. Over there, yep the roof. You
don't like to sign him? The guy comes over the Roofie, hey,
roof, could you sign the hat? And uh yes, coops go,
I can definitely see this guy right here. I could see that it was
Saturday, a Friday. It was pure Pandemonian. It was so many people
in the booth who was crazy. That's good stuff. I mean a lot
of people. It is yep, oh Man. Also, tonight, which
Gonzo reminded me, is the twelve year anniversary of this What's and this I
need? Yeah, so twelve years ago. Not only that, we also
burnt down O'Neil's. Uh so, same night, same crazy night, so
rotten hell Osama bin Laden. I hope you're down there, you know with
you suppose it hat chasing fire, Yeah, chasing fire, yep. And
that's it. Bro. We got a heavy duty guy tonight. No,
the Detroit guy. Detroit guy. It got back on, got on in
fifty seven, Bro, nineteen fifty seven. And that's that's just what I'm
talking about. The kitchen table. These guys are gonna leave this stories on
this kitchen table here for the rest of time, for all the young guys
to come back and watch him. Over where else are you gonna get that's
gonna bring? Actually he did? Huh. I want to thank the I'm
gonna say hundreds and hundreds of people that came by the booth to ask Griffy
about the pizza cut it too. That was price priceless. The six people
who bought on the way. But we sold a lot of the underwear.
They go on sale right now, the fruit of the loom. Get out
there. We saw the lot sale. It's the Pollard case of emergency underwear
and repack hose when dry, please take them, get them. We have
a thousand still in quantities. I kept telling him, I'm not worried about
the pizza cut. I'm worried about the drawers. Man. We got to
get these drawers going, and we were on it. We put our best
salesman on a cliffy bear. He was on it. That's one more thing
we gotta thank They are the best every year. That's uh, Bobby and
Red. Red is in charge of the p D out there and Bobby's post
is right outside where all booth is, and they are awesome. We love
them to death. Pull up that picture. We took a picture. I
wanted to get a picture with Red too, but shes get dattled out of
it. There he is, there's Bobby that We were heading out of there
like our hair was on fire. If I see, I had a full
head of hair, but you wouldn't know it because they looted, burned,
burnt out of running out of it. I kept saying, kept slow down,
you're burning your hair off your head. Yeah. We couldn't get I
couldn't wait to get behind the wheel for the thirteen hour drive. It was
love off only thirteen It takes three hundred and sixty three days to forget about
that drive. So that you go, yeah, let's do that again.
Now, let's do it oh, Harrisburg. Now we're just watching on in
shows, bro Harrisburg. The fifty first Annual May nineteenth and twentieth. It's
a Friday and Saturday ten to five will be in booth four three six.
Until you got the picture of that? Yeah, I am coming boom hand
Caster to come and see it. Did you take its ten bucks or ten
bucks? How can you go round with ten bucks? Brob. You get
to see coops, to see so many things down there. The Amish they're
running around with their pages. I love it. We could probably get away
with offending the Amish because they probably don't listen to the podcast. They can't,
right, So yeah, you're right, those good pretzels and Amish people
done that. It's a good show. All right, let's do some commercials.
What we got guns? We have ours and I'm still thinking, I'm
assuming we're with armor tuff still Yeah, okay, Well let's do our mister
mcbob. First, here we go. If you're looking for a gift for
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we have partner saw cigar cutters and humid oors. Think we're done, Far
from it. We got toiletry gear bags, poosies, a full line of
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I think we're done, fall from it, well from it still at
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beautiful. We saw a big Vince down here. We're a chilling with Big
Vince A little bit, all right? What about the super chat? By
a second? A little like delay? All right, my friends, Sorry,
guys, you guys want to hit us up in a super chat,
you want to support us, that's where we're gonna do it, my friends,
and here we go. If you want to support the show, like
I said, if you've got a question you need to ask this fine young
gentleman tonight, please don't do so in a super chat. That's one way
that we can guarantee your question we'll get answered. Other than that, that's
what we have. Beautiful, all right. I want to bring this gentleman
in. You talk about guys with time on the job, bro, this
guy was on the job doing it, Steve, and he was doing it
way before I would say, almost everybody in the chat has been alive.
So bring him on in. Rough all right, coming to the stage,
eighty six year old Detroit f D firefighter Frank Decca. There he is,
mister Decca. How are you. You guys too looks for good more than
you, Koby. That's not that's not a big feet probab, I'm telling
you. But it does look good. Thanks for coming on the show,
mister Decca. Oh my pleasure, and I'm excited about it. My whole
family is too cool. I hope I don't embarrass anybody. I mean I
do that. I do that to myself every show, so it can't be
any worse. Somehow, someway he doesn't get work. Oh there's the call
me Grama, to call me Gema. He's in the all right rough before
we haild, the stories from mister Decca were back in the fifties. You
heard it right. I did say eighties. I did say, I did
say sixties. I said fifties. One of your stories. Let's get a
little patriotic. Okay, here we go. Oh say, can you see
by the daneslylight? What so bridly weee held at the twice lights? Lastlyming
wose broad stripes and bright stars through the proless fine or the rap partwee watched
were so gallans Lee streaming and the rocket Raglan, the bombs busting game,
froof through the night. That our flag warsy there? Oh say does that
star spangled banga or the Land of the Free and the Home of the breath.
Yes, she is my girl? Up jail, we not hut down
there too or over there? I want to sit down there over there we
met. You had a powerful voice. Beautiful did excellent? Gives me the
chills, Yeah, chills. All right, mister Decker, let's roll Let's
roll it back back. How many decades? Let's roll it back a lot
of decades, at least seven seven seven decade. Let's go back to a
young, brash, handsome Frank Decca and let us tell us where you're from,
where you were born, where you grew up, etc. Okay.
I was born in nineteen thirty six in Detroit, Michigan. My father was
forty four when I was born, so he was born in eighteen ninety three.
He was in World War One. In nineteen forty eight. They operated
on his back for they thought were tumors. They were malignant. He never
walked again. He was in a wheelchair from nineteen forty eight to nineteen sixty
five. They gave him six months to live three different times. My dad's
idea was, and I hope that someday somebody will say you're a lot like
your dad. Well, he said, which I was dealt a hand of
cards. If I don't like him, I can throw him in and get
out of the game. But I want to stay in the game, and
I'm going to play it the best I can. Awful, you never complained,
never gave up. Nope. When I was fourteen, I'd go to
his bedside. You'd say bend over, and I'd bend my head down and
he had put his hands around the back of my neck, and he'd say,
I prayed for a miracle last night. Let's see if I could walk.
Never happened, but he never gave up. Hope, he never gave
up, mister fantastics example, And I hope I can be that way with
my kids and my grandchildren. And he used to see, everybody's here for
a reason, and I guess I'm in a wheelchair for a reason, and
it's how I react to it. And that's what he did. Wow.
Wow, how about siblings, Frank, have any other siblings? My older
brother was drafted out of Northwestern High School when he was seventeen and a half.
He was in the ROTC and he was sent over and almost went to
Germany as in a B seventeen. He was in the ROTC and Germany capitulated
and they were going to send him over to Japan, and I figured out.
I was only ten years old at the time, but I know my
dad and mom were worried. But somebody came into his barracks and said,
anybody whose education was interrupted, I'm going to stand uniform. You can choose
the college that you want, we'll pay for it, but you got to
stand uniform for your last two years of your enlistment. So he went to
Holton Mining and Technology College and graduated from there and got a PhD. And
my brother, Dick, who was six years older than me, he became
a fireman in nineteen fifty two in Detroit. And I was working at the
Wayne County Road Commission and had a good job, and the fire department called
and I asked my dad, what do you think should I leave the Wayne
Country Road Commission. He says, if it's snows and range, you can't
work, go to the fire department. You got a steady job, like
your brother in a retirement. So I took his advice and I never regretted
it. It's the greatest job in the whole world. You meet the best
people in the world. They become family. As you'll see a picture there
of us fifty years. Yeah, Frank, that picture. Go back to
that ball. The ball, Frank, don't don't get that far ahead with
the ball. What's the story with this picture with your brother? Give you
a second. It's coming to you. Sorry, guys, it's I have
a little delay. Am I in here? It comes? Okay? That's
my brother Dick. He ran down in the seventh Battalion, and I always
gave him the business. They were very slow. He'd be lucky if he
got a run or two runs a day. And here I am in the
ninth battalion. We're going constantly. But then when he became sergeant, he
started getting squad two, squad four, Squad eight. He was all over
and he was a heck of a fireman, he really was, and I
think everybody loved him, wanted to run under him, and he did.
Forty years, right, you said forty years. He retired as senior chief
and he had a heart attack when he was on the job pulling people out
of a car. I think it was a squad two at the time,
and it was below zero and his men said, Decker, you look terrible.
What's going on? He said, I think I'm away home. I'm
going to stop in emergency room. And that's the way he took it,
and he had had a heart attack. They kept him off the job for
a year, and then he came back and started smoking again without masks.
Yeah, oh yeah, for a year. I'm okay. Now he retired
like a new penny. He retired at sixty when he had to. And
he lived for nine years after his retirement and died on the table with a
heart operation. So I missed him. I miss him to this day.
My kids miss him. He had he had stories and I'll tell you some
of his stories later on. But that's him in his chief scar. Look
at how dirty is he was inside? He was never outside. I always
liked those pictures with us where the guy's in action and he's not looking at
the camera. That's that's always the best picture. Yeah, yeah, And
the pictures I could not find a shot at him, but he's hanging out
of a second store porch as a chief and the snouts running down and I
think's hitting the first floor, and why are you in there? You got
a driver to tell you what's going on? No, no, he said,
I gotta be it in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I
can't take that out of you. Once you get that bull, that's it.
You can't stop doing that. Oh yeah, yeah. He was a
good man. What's what those helmets, they always had those helmets right.
Well, what happened is in nineteen sixty seven during the riots, John Ashby
got killed. He was up on an aerial and he would be in snipered
at and they moved the aerial around and he hit the high wires and he
was electrocuted. He lived for nine years or nine days after he hit those
wires. But John used to come to the squad from injured twenty one.
And when you're a squad man and you got somebody there that want to make
your head bigger where it hardly fits in the helmet. He was one of
those guys. He just admired squad guys and Decker. I want to be
like you when I can get on the squad and stuff. And then he
got killed. I think he had just got married. He was in his
early twenties. He got killed. And then Carl Smith got shot during the
riots right and threw his helmet, got killed. I went to high school
with him, and I don't think he was in my class. I think
he came to class after me, but he got killed. And I'll tell
you you get angry. I'm sure you guys were angry after nine to eleven
to see your men that you were worked with. You knew you loved to
get killed for something nonsensical. And now your guys know they were going in
to do something but ashby and get shot for nonsense. Yeah, and then
get pulled off. The switched the area around because of snipers. I'm sure
that chief regretted that order moved the area. But anyway, that's not here
and there there that we shouldn't be begrudging that. But these were guys that
were good fireman and something like a civil disturbance that happened there in Detroit that
was on the job. I think they got me on the squad as nineteen
sixty five. But in nineteen sixty three, I was running an engine forty
and Don Pemmitt got his back broken. He was in the squad and we
had the same kelly and lieutenant at Squad five. Von Macintosh used to say,
Decker, you got the same kelly as Pammitt. When you come in,
you put your was on the squad. So I'd come in and put
my clothes on the squad and eventually they gave me a red helmet and we
got a squad helmet. Yeah, we wore ten helmets until Ashby got killed
and that was it. After that, I got a New Yorker, uh,
fiberglass helmet. It was heavy, good grief, I can't believe how
heavy that helmet was. And I actually lost my helmet during the riots.
All street. I call the guys looking up from my helmet if you see
it, and one of the guys that, hey, we saw it the
other day. Decker, I said, well, why didn't you pick it
up? He said, some lady was doing a washing in it helmet.
So let's let's go back, let's talk it. So you thought, I
think Louis mentioned this and appreciate you. You didn't have an academy that you
went to before you got on the job. Well, what happened is the
city fought from the union wanted six to fifty six hours. They were working
sixty three. The city fought it, fought it up until July first,
but it was put on the ballot and the fire department won and we went
from sixty three to fifty six hours. So I get a thing in the
mail from the Detroit Fire Department report to training school July first, nineteen fifty
seven, which I did. I got there and I figured, okay,
I'm going to learn about ropes and hoses and all this stuff. And my
boots are sitting there with my helmet and he says, Decker, do you
know where liber Noison and where Chicago is? And yeah, of course,
he said, what you're going to Injine forty two? So I pick up
my gear by nine nine in the morning. I have an engine forty two,
and the Captain Stanley Dobies said, Decker, put your clothes on the
back, and I think was Gordy Smith was cooking. He says, he's
going so we're only riding with four. I said, oh, okay,
So I'm put my clothes on the back and the alert goes off or not
the alert the box comes in because we had box and ticker tape then,
so he said, forty two is going. So we pull out and he
says to me, he says, Decker grabbed the can. I'm standing on
the tailboard. What in the world is a can. I have no idea
what he's talking about. So they're holler and extinguish her. Kid extinguished.
So I picked that up. Don't know how to turn it on, but
it was the old one with soda and acid. You turn it upside down.
We get in there, it's a mattress fire. Now I'm running with
his can up two flights of stairs and the captain's in there. Fifty year
old Stanley dobs and he says, okay, kid, just don't put the
thing out. We got to just pose it down and we're going to stick
it out the window. I'm dying in there, he said, I'm fifty
years old. I can take it. You better be able to take it.
So okay, So we threw it out the window and everything. We
get back to quarters. It's not even lunchtime yet. The cook is there
now and he says, the box comes in. It's cunning Hen drug store.
Joy ran River. So I'm staying on the back and we get there
and there's smoke coming out of the back end, and he says, stretch.
What stretched calisthenics. I'm a little tightened the back stretch, He's holler,
Kid, grabbed that line, I did. I grabbed the wrong one.
I grabbed the second bundle, taking the belt off and everything, getting
ready to grab the nozzle, and he says, kid, I hope you
have something to drink today, because you're gonna have to pee on that fire.
The first line is going down the street boom boom, boom boom like
that senior man's chasing it. So finally they get it back, give me
the line, and I go in with Captain Dogs again and we knocked the
fire down. It wasn't that terrible, but that was my That's how I
got broke into the job. So if you grabbed the one, they had
two small jobs right off the bat from the top, right off the bed.
And I only ran on the truck ladder of twenty one for three months.
I think I tillered maybe two or three times. And this should be
a story. I want to tell you. There was a young guy I
thought he was I thought he was old, but he was in World War
Two. All the guys on the job when I came on. They had
been in World War Two and they were they were a different breedom in I'll
tell you after walking from Hanzio to Berlin, or you know, my lieutenant
A Entran thirty nine was in the submarines in North Atlantic for two years.
How do you you know? You can't comprehend that they went through hell?
They really did. But they were a good fireman, I'll tell you.
And they were old school, you don't need a mask. And but Danetti
was on ladder of twenty one. He was a tillerman. He'd been in
World War Two. Skinny, little guy, a little Italian guy, skinny
and he's a tillerman. And the going down this before I was on going
down, I forgot what street it was. They hit a bump, threw
him out of the tiller seat and his boots get hung up in the ladder.
He's hanging upside down and there's side swiping cars. He's off booty for
a year. I don't know side swiping CAUs he comes back on the job.
I'm on Squad five. Now we get a call over to old Ditsler
plant which made all the lacquer for General Holdings. We get a call over
there and it's now waste paper dump bailed waste paper. It's a two alarm
fire. Squad five gets there and I see ladder twenty one is pulled in.
Their aerials up and they got a hose tower going. He's on it.
I was pretty sure it was done. He's not buckled in. One
of the engines shut down. It lifted him up off that aerial ladder.
And the next thing, me and Pepper got a line we're going in and
I look and I said, estinetti, and that line can whip him down
and put him through the cab of the latter twenty one. And I think
he broke it just about every bond she was off. He was off the
year, and now I'm still in squad. He's back on duty. And
I think he was a boss at Injinn fifty seven or maybe Squad Squad seven.
They came to relieve us at a fire. And the next morning we're
pulling out his Hey, Don, I used to work with him washing windows.
I said, hey, how you doing, Don? Oh, I'm
good, I'm back on. Everything's cool. I'm walking out two and a
half separated. The butt end hit him in the back. And broke his
back. When he retired, I'll bet you it was a good half hour
medical report. Is he still around? Yeah, well I know he died.
Guy had to be in paint every time he woke up. For God's
sakes, most of the people I talked about are going to be going.
Yeah. Uh, I was the youngest, I thought, the youngest in
my class with Jimmy Siebert was I think three weeks younger than me. How
well, how old were you when I came on that picture? I just
turned twenty one, twenty one to get your badge, and I just let
me let me see the young uh mister Decca with the young missus Deca,
because obviously he is the vice president of the Married Up Club. Oh yes,
let me get there, let me get there. Here we go.
That's a great picture. Oh my goodness, gracious. We were nineteen and
seventeen. That was in nineteen fifty five, and uh, I was working
a Cadillac motor. I agree and hung around with her brother and she was
always in pigtails and a little girl and had never paying attention to her.
She was a pain in the neck, you know. And Uh, Frankie
and I would try and lose her whenever we would go out and do something.
It's been how many years you said, you can't lose sixty seven years
we've been married. I'll bless you guys. But I was working a Cadillac
motor on the assembly line on the afternoon shift, playing ball during the day
for Cadillac, and uh, my buddy George was home on leave and he
had my car and he brought Patty to pick me up one night and I
looked in the car and whoa who is that? You know? And he
says, you know, that's Patty Frish. Oh man, she's grown up,
you know. Seventeen My inviters to come to my baseball game the next
day, and she came and watched me play. And then I left my
mitt at her house, naturally, so I could go and pick a slick
move brows, that old school move right there? That what the is?
That what the week was for? Right here? Is that you want?
You want to talk about a slick move? I said to her one day,
This was in August third and nineteen fift five. What are you doing
for the next twenty five years? Nice? What do you mean? I
said, Let's get married? And I just thought it was for twenty five
years, so now it's sixty seven. I think she owes me something.
What do you mean you've been chasing around the house all these years? Again,
give her a break. She's tied. But we've had four children.
One of them is a firefighter in Charlotte, Josh, and I gotta tell
you. I gotta tell you the story about Josh. You're gonna love this.
I don't know if you guys have ever heard. There's Josh and it's
Captain Belchis. Little Barnie told me he was your favorite. I don't know.
That's what I told everybody. He was, you know. But we
were at the Midwest Firefighters Bowling Tournament and we'd never taken our wives our team,
and this year was in Waukeegan, Illinois, we decided to take our
wives. There was me holy Cross, the priest, Tom Holt, and
it doesn't matter anyway. Three of us had children within three or four days
of one another. Josh was one of them. He's now a fireman Holt.
Tom Holt had a boy. He's retired from the Detroit Fire Department.
So that fire department. There was something in the water in Mala Keegan.
The priests had a little girl. But I get a call. I'm at
thirty nine. I'm on the watch and Lieutenant Brugie let me pull my car
and what used to be an old chiefe quarters behind thirty nine. He's in
case your wife calls, have it in there and be warmed up and if
she calls and you gotta go. She called about midnight instead of water Broke
said okay, I said, you think, no hurry, just my water
broke no contraction yet, I said, okay. So we get my car
out of the garage and everything, and I'm running back. There's twenty five
miles from the firehouse. I lived in the last street in the city.
All of a sudden, I get I'm on Joy Road and I see these
red lights behind me, and I figured, man, if it's the cops,
they're gonna have to take all the way home. So I pulled up
my driveway and it was Squad seven. They pulled up behind me and Ted
Dregary gets out and he says, deck or you got a little boy.
What back then, you didn't know what sex your kid was. You know,
they didn't give you ultra right. So I go running in the house
and my older brothers there. He brought his daughter over to babysit while I
go to the hospital with my wife. Here sits Patty. She had the
baby at home by herself. The baby's in her lap, she's all dressed,
ready to go to the hospital. Me and my brother Dick cut the
cord and Antonetti, who was on Squad seven, he picked Josh up,
wrapped him up, put him in his coat, he says, kid.
He said, I got ten kids, and none of them have been able
to ride in the fire truck at your age. So here's Josh brand new,
conceived at the Midwest Fire Department bowling tournament, and now he's riding on
a rig. Grand new baby. So the m on this rig. I
didn't get charms on the squad rig. It the squadrig okay ride on Squad
seven. And my sister in law, who my brother, came over with
her daughter. The baby said. My sister in law called the fire department.
So Squad seven got there just behind me, and they knew, they
knew a little boy was born, so he already knew he was going to
be a fireman the first day. He was right away. That's that kid's
going to be a fire. He's got to be right and a good looking
one. To look at him. I mean, he's you know, he
looks like his mother. That's all I gotta say. Right, he's well
respected. He goes back and trains now on. In fact, tomorrow he
called me this morning and he said, Dad, guess what he was.
He sounded like a little kid. We're teaching pomp piers tomorrow. Oh way,
really, I think they're the only department in the country teaches pompier letters.
Yeah, I know, I know. The FDNY stopped doing that a
couple of years back. Were you on it? Were you on a pop?
I did? Yeah? I actually did that in my form, my
proby class back lean back, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it
was it hooked. Yeah. When we did the display for the families,
I actually went from the first floor to the sixth floor, you know,
like hop scotch and upload. Isn't it a great way to get up there?
Well, I'll tell you right now, it's a great way to shed
any fear you have of heights. You know. I mean, if you're
practicing trying your underwear from white to brown one of the other brown, he
says, you're looking at those kids out the window when they let go and
you see that their eyes light up. You're right, it held. But
yeah, right now I think the grum let's get a little bit a little
bit bigger at that point in time, and you feel a little better about
that job. Yeah, there was no doubt about that. He's teaching.
He's teaching it tomorrow. So that's my son jobs. That was his christening
on the job. And uh, he's an old school fireman, and uh,
from everything I ever heard, he's a heck of a good was a
good captain. They were sorry to let him go, but he goes back
and teaches. Now they pay him extra. And he said, I get
to see the guys and get to he teaches its good and he teaches that
class that you guys started where you had five firemen had to go out the
fifth floor and got killed. Hut, and now they got out. I
don't understand that. But it's a heck of a lot better than getting your
self toasted, isn't it? Yeah? Ye, Now why don't he go
to where was he He was in the Carolina's right, Yeah, he's in
Charlotte, Carolina. What made it go that way? Why do you go
why do you go from Why do you not try to get on? Yeah?
Why do you go to show? Jordan's dad? But he lived in
Charlotte, and Jordan was born in I think Charleston, South Carolina. Then
they moved there in the medical profession, so they were in in Charlotte.
We had I haven't got to that yet, but I broke the rules on
the fire department, I confess now. I moved out. I moved off
the chest. I moved out of the city in nineteen seventy and I lived
seventy miles out of the city. We had a farm, so my kids
were brought up on a farm. Josh was ten months old. He was
born in nineteen seventy. He was ten months old when we moved to the
farm. I got hurt from seventy well, I got retired from seventy three.
So he grew up on my lap on the tractor. I had a
John Dare forty twenty, and I learned to be a farmer. And I
gotta hire a Frank to come on down to Oiowa. Maybe he can show
me a little couple of parents, you know about the tractor. Yeah,
and and him and I. Yeah, he is he's my favorite son.
No, I don't love him more than the others. But he became a
fireman, and him and I, him and I bonded. O. Yeah,
my two older boys. I was working three jobs. That's another story,
you know. Oh, let's get back, let's get back to back
to the timeline. Yeaho's over there himself. But I want to make sure
where you stay on the timeline. All right, So engine forty two,
and then you went to engine twenty one in lott of twenty eight in September
of fifty eight. Why what made you want to go over there? I
didn't, to be honest with you, Captain Radar, who I thought was
a little bit of a Anyway, he's gone. I don't hope he doesn't
have relatives listening. But he wanted to separate me and Herbie hand. Herbie
had been on the job quite a while, and he was a duck carver
decoy carver, and liked his beer. And me and Herb became tight,
and he said, yep, he was let me just pull out out of
the bus somewhere. I don't know. Nobody's got those hanging around except me.
I'm sorry, Frank ahead I carve decoys is that right? Anyway,
me and Herbie would take telephone poles down the basement of forty twos and the
credits and would drop him off. And he had carved decoys out of those
telephone poles. And I sit down there in the basement. I don't want
to get into what politics, you know, But anyway, Captain Radar said,
I got to separate you two. I don't know if you're bad for
herb or herbs bad for you. So there was somebody going to twenty ones.
That was me. When I got to twenty ones, it was great.
Busy house loved it. They get a call over there from Engine forty
that they had a Captain Webber. Also had a Roger Webber who was a
decide and the guys would walk around and say, Wheb, you're an a
hole. And Captain Webber finally got sick and tired of that, and he
called the chief and he said, you got to get rid of Roger Webber
because it's driving me nuts. They're using him to get to me. So
you have somebody over at twenty ones that you can send to forties. Well
that was me. I got sent to forties and I ran at forties and
in nineteen they got me down for the squad at sixty five. I actually
I actually started running the squad at sixty three. Don Pemmitt, who had
broken his back had a fire, had the same kelly as me. And
Lieutenant Vaughan macintoss used to say, Decker, you got the same kelly as
Pemmitt. Put your clothes on the rig when you come in. And they
actually painted my helmet red after a while. Until sixty five, I was
officially in the squad. And I think, like everybody, nobody likes squad
men, right, No, they're a pain in the neck. Cancel the
squad, you know, And so you don't want to be on there.
But once you get on the squad, it's a different ballgame, isn't it.
You know? And I'll say this. While I was on the squad,
we had a big district. Squad five had a real big district.
And there was mansions. Gordy Gordy h Berry. Gordy had the Kresgy mansion
that was on Chicago Boulevard. We had things like that. We had mansions
up in Palmer Woods seven miles and eight and off of Woodward, and then
we had sungs. We had ghetto and we were busy, real busy squad.
But we had a big district. And I told I've always told guys
I never would take the line if the guy didn't want to give it up.
That's the true through We knew houses when we ran in the squad.
We knew we we get in the district. We knew we didn't get off
the rig with a tool. We got off the rig and no, we're
going to get the line. The guys were there ready to give it up.
And other times, if you went with twenty one or some of the
ones down in the ninth Battalion, you knew you're going to grab your hallet
and bar or your acts and you were going to go to work pike pole
and U. But some houses you took the line. And that's what I
loved about the squad, as you could get the line and go in and
fight the fire. I was never on a truck except for three months.
I was always on an engine. To me, that was fighting fires.
I always thought truck men were just crazy painters, you know, Frank,
You know what me and coops. Coops say all the time about the squad.
How many guys can you fit in the fire building coops at least five
more at least five more. So how do they squads? That does the
TROIT have right? They had? They had seven seven squads? Okay,
So and what was the staffing? Like, how many guys wrote on the
squad? You always rode five on the squad? There was sixty engines.
I would say. The trucks were in the thirties numbers in there. And
so you can figure only seven squads. You had a big district. Yeah,
and you know you could catch a lot of good fires. And so
for that reason, I did love the squad, I really did. I
didn't like the medical be very honest with you. We didn't have that much.
We were not emt you know, we got called. We got called
down downtown one time the Red Cross. We're going to have a training schedule
for squad companies. So we go down there and I'm sitting there and I'm
listening to this guy talking about how to do this and how to do that,
and how to rescue people in all this. And I was sitting there
and a Libby looked at me. Red Libby was my one of my favorite
guys. Libby looked at me, said don't decker And I said, you
know, he said, anybody ever save a drowning person? I put my
hand up and he says, what did you do? And I said,
well, it was here in the Detroit River and I said we pulled him
halfway out and I put a pump on him, and I said, we
started pumping. I said, good grief, we were pumping sardines out of
him. I said, we were pumping beer cans out of him. I
said, if we hadn't pulled his fanny out of the water, I don't
know what we would have pumped out of him. And he guy said,
that's it. The class is all done. We had a rig did you
have back that fright? What was a squadring? Like? It was a
Chevy with a Gorten slagger body that they redid it, but the brakes were
terrible on him. They were brakes just like you'd have on a panel truck.
And I don't know how many times we'd have four or five runs in
a row and you get to the fire and you'd go right past that you
draw out the anchor. Yeah, so you would go to every fire in
your district. The squad sua yes, if there was a hospital. If
there was multi story buildings like orphanage or something, there'd be two squads excusually
Squad five, Squad four, maybe Squad five, squad seven. And we
were busy, you know, twenty sum runs a day, mostly fires,
and I love that. You know, the only thing is after the riots,
they became ambulances. And to me that was me and Libby said let's
get out of here. And me had read one to thirty nines and thirty
nines had orders to run with five. Because the apartment house single engine,
somebody would ask me, well, what was the tools you carried? I
don't know if you guys must be familiar, because the apartment said, did
you guys have hose roll in row? That was the young man. He
carried the hose roll in row a lot of our apartments back then. It's
hard to believe, but we carried. I would say, it's probably almost
a foot long piece of railroad track on a sixty foot logging chain. We
carry that in a paper bag, and that was for incinerators. Cinerators would
back up, you would drop it up, you would drop it down and
try to break up the incenter. To do that with bricks and stuff too.
Right, they don't do that anymore. That's nobody would understand that.
What we got there, we got. I tried to pull up an old
rig while you guys were talking to much sure if it's the right one from
this to your department. So I was trying to see if that rings a
bell? What year was your rig? I could try to do some research
if you wanted to pull it up. Oh to be Actually, when I
looked up in nineteen sixty five rig is what I looked up to see if
we had in Detroit with Sea Graves. I think there was one map and
one four wheel drive Seagraves had with the department, that purchasing department. They
had a thing where that's all you could buy with Sea Graves. So after
the riots, people started looking at that and they said these are way too
expensive and everything. Why don't we buy something else? Well, after the
riots, say, thirty nine's got a Ford with a gmcdesel in it.
Fantastic rig really great rigg had a hose roller automatic, and that was nice.
You got five hundred gallons of water. You can knock down a little
tar fire or a mattress and stuff. So we didn't have to stretch all
the time. But the rigs were all sea grays and trucks and everything.
And then they stopped that when we moved down to here to the Carolinas in
nineteen ninety four. There's a little town out of here, Double Island.
And one of the guys that I worked with at Habitat said he was worked
volunteer fireing at Double Island. Why don't you come up and see what we
got. They had the old rig that I ran out in night. That
right, that's crazy. All the odds of that man at forty two is
an old sea graves still in beautiful shape, still in beautiful shape. When
you when you were working like in the first companies and in the squad we've
had a few guys from Detroit, were you like having bare bones equipment like
you guys? Were you know, as far as obviously your your turnout,
Gere, you said you only had a rubber coat and a helmet and boots.
But as far as equipment, how is your equipment? At that time,
our equipment was good. We had fifteen hundred firemen. Everything was good.
Then The city was what the fifth largest city in the United States,
So we were mayor. Marianni did not like the fire department. We were
tied to the police department. When the police department got a raise, we
got a raise. Maryannie didn't like that. Pavanall came along and he was
he beat up Mary Anne. He said he'd give us a raise and and
he would take care of the fireman. So Kavanaugh was there during the riots.
But up until then we had good equipment, not the best I've seen.
During the riots, Lansing came, Canada came over. They had better
equipment that we did. When I would go on the Midwest firefighter bowling tournaments,
there were squads that had defibrillators. I had a resuscitator. That's what
I would carry in. Sometimes all that does is to make a person's chest
go up and down and they think he's alive. You know, he wasn't
alive, but yeah, and we would take him out of there on a
stretcher and everybody's saying, oh boy, the fireman saved him. We didn't
save him, you know. But let's talk about the riots a little bit,
Frank, Uh, what years that they stawed over there? And where
you were in July of nineteen sixty seven, I was on Kelly. I
was out cutting the grass. My neighbor had a what do you call it
where you pick up radio callsner scanner, and he was walking over to the
house and I was cutting the grass as Patty was coming out the front door
holler and ed Smith's on the phone from Squad five. So I take the
phone call and Smithy says, Decker, something's going on down in twelfth in
Claremont and all the stores are closing everything. Come on in. Fill up
the station wagon with ginger ale and cigarettes and whatever else you can think of.
So I did. I filled it up with ginger ale and smokes doing
tobacco, and I pulled in allegedly orders and they said, we're evacuating the
quarters. We're going to go over to forty twos. That's where I started
on with Chicago Liverwise. I knew Fred Steiner there, so I drove the
station wagon over there. Steiner was there, and I give Fred my keys.
I said, Fred is of ginger ale and cigarettes and whatever. You
got the keys. You just distribute the stuff the way you want, and
I know you're going to be good with it. And you got the keys,
and so me and Pepper were on the squad and they gave us a
lieutenant. We just came to the squad and he was an ex chief driver
and all he wanted was medical calls. So Bob and I ran on the
squad with him. And the first fire we had we were at it looked
like it they might have sold furniture there and things, and it's going and
we're in there with the line, Pepper and I and we're knocking the fire
down, and all of a sudden, I see this guy come in and
he's trying to pick up you know, big TVs were back there in the
sixties, tubes, you know, he's trying to pick this TV up and
him and his buddy and they finally get it out and they laid it down,
and he came back and they got another one, and we're fighting the
fire, and you know, everybody the police just left them alone. They
were they were looting and doing whatever they wanted. So they get these two
TVs and they're thinking, how are we going to get them home? So
they grabbed a bed on casters threw them on the mattress and down they go,
Oh my god, twelve Street with the TVs. Like now you know
now, okay, I think this. I told my daughter, I said,
the riots for only five days, honey, I said, I was
on there for sixteen seventeen years fighting fires, but the riots for five days,
five days straight. Me and Pepper never if we didn't ride the squad,
we would jump on latter seventeen and ride with them, and we just
wanted to fight fires. It's you know, it's like being at a Polish
wedding. You're just so happy. You're hoping it doesn't end. It isn't
terrible that you would think that your city's burned down, but you're enjoying fighting.
That's what you do for that's what you love to do. I wasn't
happy when they jumped over the alley and the side streets Philadelphia, all the
sewered, all these houses, two flats start burning and now all we got
sometimes is we just got hydrant pressure. We hooked up to a hydrant and
we're fighting fires there. But Twelfth Street was it was there. You go,
you know, that's sad. That's when you look at it, it's
terrible. I can't say one thing that I hope people will look at and
say, this is this is uplifting in nineteen sixty seven, Detroit and Boston
were fighting for the pennant, and before the Riots, we'd be driving down
the street and we could holler at the neighbors, what's the score, and
they had holler out what the Tigers were doing. And then the Riots came.
And I used to shop on the boulevard at an AMP store, and
I can remember going in there and all all you were as far as uniform
as you got your sand fries on it, but you got a fire hat
on. And I go in and I'd bring my groceries up to the checkout
and they wouldn't check me out, and I call the manager, and the
manager come over and finally he'd check me out. So there was this animosity
there. There was this hatred for no reason, I didn't think. And
then sixty eight comes along and the Tigers win the pennant and win the World
Series. Black and White were the happiest people in the world. They were
dancing in the streets in downtown Detroit. The politicians didn't bring them together.
Detroit Tigers did. Wow. You know, the politicians aren't going to solve
any of these problems, but sports teams will. Maybe a good movie will
something will change it. But I got a good story about the riots.
I'm angry. We got two dead firemen, saw a lot of people shot
and killed. It was you're man, you're tired, you're dirty. You've
been fighting fires for three days in a row. We're coming down Alfie Evans's
Lieutenant Constantine Andrews is driving Bob pepper Mere in the back end. This car
keeps coming up real close to the back of the rig. I'm getting angry
with it. It's a big Buick and I'm looking at the guy driving,
and I'm not happy with that. I told the driver. I told Gus
stop at the next light. He stopped. I opened the door, climb
out, take my axe, throw it down on the guy's hood. Not
a nice thing, right. The guy's eyes are so big, he says,
My wife's having a baby. I didn't have. I didn't have a
shovel. Dug into that pavement and crawled under. We get her out of
the car and put her on the rig. Me and Bob and the husband
parked his car and got on. He never said anything to me. He
was never mad. He thanked us. She had twins. Oh way on
the rink. Look at the hospital one on the rig a little way delivered
him and she looked at me and she's, what's your name? As my
name's Frank. That didn't sound good her, I guess, and Bob Pepper
Bob didn't sound good. She says, who's up front there? And I
so that's Constantine Edwards. We call him Gus. I like that Gus.
I don't know if she was gonna name that little boy Gus or not.
We got him, we got him with you know, we had we didn't
have good clean stuff on the rig, you know, but we got him
covered up on her chest. We didn't cut the cord and we got her
on his chest. And I see she started the crown. She's starting to
have another baby. And I said, close your legs, and I hollered
at gusts. Go to what Chicago General right down the street. We got
her in there and they delivered the second twin. And that's cool. So,
you know, good things do come about a bad situation. But I
felt like that big I'll tell you he had every reason to punch me,
he had every reason to sue me, and all he did was thank me
for stopping and helping his wife out. So That was one of my riot
stories that have something have some good ending to him. But there was a
lot of bad stuff went on. We got called down one night every Brother
warehouse and I was riding latter seventeen with John Hedgecock, Lieutenant and Pepper and
we get down there and there's nothing, but there's people up in the apartment
houses and they got flash and everything, and you're you're a little scared.
You know, there's been enough sniping going on. We got off the rig
and we're looking around. There's nothing going on. There's no fire at the
divery Brother warehouse. So we get back on. We're going back and Lieutenant
says they're calling us back again. We went back and then we saw this
kid laying on the street. He had been shot. He was dead,
didn't have a T shirt on, he had a pair of blue jeans and
his sneakers and he was laying there dead And those people are looking out the
window. Had they had guns, they probably would have shot us. You
know, there was anger there with the fire department too. Huh, not
too surely. Even the FBI talked to us after the riots, took us
aside, wanted no different things that we'd seen and the first night of the
first night at forty twos, we were getting a lot of sniper fire and
you can see it hitting the pavements. We'd dive under the rig and we
didn't do whatever. And there was automatical weapons, I mean, there was
automatics going on. So National Guard came down from Upper Peninsula, Upper Yopers,
they call him. Those guys should know how to shoot and everything else.
Right, that's all that's our country right up there. Yeah, open
the upper that's all. He got a jar up or something. Right.
This one guy comes up and he says, what's going on? And lieutenant
said, they keep shooting at us. He said, well that you got
that street light. Let's put the street light out and they can't see you.
So good, good idea. Why didn't we think of that? But
we don't have any guns. Oh he licked the s thumb, looked up
at the light and shoots. It doesn't go out. Shot again, as
still didn't caught. Some mean he said, what's what rigger are you on?
You know, we to punch you on our rig. A few days
later they took all their bullets away. One guy was thirty thirty fives was
doing a parade thing showing them how to operate a rifle and hit the payment
went up to the cabinets. Another guy was sitting on a rig, went
over railroad track, his rifle went off. The National guardsman increased the fireman's
helmet and went out through the top of his helmet, pull the bullets out.
Now these poor guys are sitting on the squattering in front of the Tillerman,
sitting there like little buddhas with a gun with no rifles in them,
I mean, no no bullets, yea. And they're saying, don't go
down that street, please, don't that street. But hey, you gotta
go to the alarm, you know. And there was a lot of sniper
fire going on. And then the third day Johnson, President Johnson called in
the army. So these guys in the guard, Yeah, no more National
Guard. There was a regular army. They had bayonets on their on their
cut. They had jeeps. I didn't know that. Yeah, they had
jeeps with fifty caliber machine guns on the back. And we were getting sniped
at every night at forty twos. And somebody said they thought there was somebody.
Every once in a while it would see something on this roof of a
house that you can see from forty two quarters. Sure enough they had cut
through and they had raised the shingles up and shoot from there down on where
we were. That fifty caliber machine gun took that rofe off. I've never
been in the service, and I've never they're They're awesome. They really are,
virtually in everything we got. And then uh Lynnwood, they had there
was a statue of Jesus on Saint Saint Saint Precious Blood. I think it
was a seminary. They had painted him his face black, his hands black,
and they had pulled cars across Lynnwood. So we'd get a call down
there to a store or a house and we couldn't get through the cars were
there. Paint came down the street that car, it hit the hell out
of there and washed it no way. And these kids were having the greatest
time. They wanted to pull another out there and see it gets squashed.
But I'll tell you right now, we could probably use a little bit of
that in some of the places. What's going on. I see the Army
changed a whole lot, they really did. Uh Me and Pepper had some
guys bothering us. We had the line and they were bothering us. And
this guy walked up with his bandet and he kept saying back up, and
he wasn't moving quick enough. He hit him in the nose with that bandett
and that was it. They left us alone right out. Baby they were
or an auto baby. I'm trying to think what group they were, but
they had just come back from something sixty seven probably no, I'm right,
yeah, And they weren't fooling around. There was no fooling around at all.
I don't know if that's why there was forty three people killed. I
don't know, but it was forty three people killed, and not say right
now everything you said. When when I see some of these videos going on
and what's happening like with all police, the term no falling around kind of
really comes to my mind, like we shouldn't be falling around anymore with this,
with this stuff that we're doing, where we're allowing to go on because
of the rights or whatever these people think or this country thinks is going on.
I'm not really sure, but that term no falling around, I think
we could use a little bit of that right now. Yeah. Now,
I don't know if you know Tiger baseball. But Willie Horton back then,
what was a graduate of Northwestern High School, built like a tank, heck
of a hitter, had an iron money that you wouldn't quit. He played
right or left field for the Tigers. They called him down to the riots.
They threw brick setting. Really John Conyers, he was a black congressman.
They've called him down. They threw brick setting. They took thirty nine
crew, all white, and put an all black crew in there. They
threw bricks at him. It didn't matter. It wasn't a yeah, it
wasn't black and white. It was just anger. It was anger at at
the physical system and the fire. They didn't like us all of a sudden.
Before that we were heroes. I was sitting on the back of the
rig. If you ever see the guy during the guys during the riots,
you might wonder the city. The Detroit Fire Department had one hundredth anniversary coming
up, so we were allowed to grow handlebar mustaches. And they were wearing
the red shirts and button angle right. And I was sitting on the back
of a rig out in the middle of the twelfth Street. I was whipped
tired one of the store owners and he had a big sign on his window
brow but he would bring out beer whatever. And it's July. It's hot,
ginger l Yeah, ginger Le. And we're sitting there and this little
lady came down the street and it's smoky. She's walking down through the smoke,
and she's got a picture and ice water and cups, and she came
up to me and she says, mister fireman. She poured me a glass
of water. And there was a guy that looked like he was on an
African safari with cameras all over him. And he made it, he posed
it. He had her do it again and took a picture. Here I
am with this handlebar, mustache, had dirty and everything sitting there, and
she poured me a glass of water and he said, kid, it's gonna
be on National Time magazine. I never saw it. I don't know.
Maybe they didn't like the pose or whatever, but it never got anywhere.
But I thought that they were nice people. They were. There was their
houses that were burning down. That's craziness. It was their businesses. Now,
okay, we're through the riot, I hope, Because how did they
how did they end that? Like? How did they ask? How was
it five days and then that was it. How did that come about with
the army? I really don't. I think the army was the big thing.
The fifty color machine gun on the back of the gail. I'll do
it. I don't do it. Current in tanks and h One night,
me and Pepper we didn't have a rigger ride on, so we jumped on
an army troop carrier and rode down a Grand River in Trumbull and there was
a furniture store burning, and the deputy came down with the driver, Deputy
chief of the department, and he said, uh, what rigor you guys
on, we don't have a rig We're just going to other work on that
fire. Well, you're going to go downtown. We looked downtown. There
there's no red downtown. It's just the sky isn't glowing red. And that's
a that's where we were. It was all red, it was all burning.
So he's I said, we're not going to go down there. And
he said to me, he said where do you run at? And I
took my flashlight and I pointed it up to Squad five and he said,
you can't even read that. And I said, that's because it's been in
a few fires. I can read yours really good. I was not disciplined
and kind of left. It really had and we heard we didn't even know
if we're going to get paid. We just thought we were going to get
paid for the days we were supposed to work. I worked five days straight
and during the second day of the riot, I didn't hear it from fire
them, and I heard it from people that were rioting. We're going to
go out to EJ. Corvette's, which was out in Most Chicago and Telegraph,
which was five blocks from my house. I called my wife and I
said, Patty, get the kids and go to your mom and Dad's out
in Utica and get out of there because I don't know if we're going to
be safe. It was that bad. I mean there was I guess we
can talk about it. I guess it had something to do with Detroit.
When I went to thirty nine from Squad five that was one block from where
the riots started. Thirty nine they were the first engine at the riots.
We get over their me and Libby and holy Cross, the Priest's Fantastic crew.
Rugie was the lieutenant, and we go down the street and we could
bottle thrown at us, especially me being blonde. And there were guys standing
on the corner. I don't know if you remember. Black panthers. Okay,
they'd be standing on the corner, especially down on Twelfth Street and Claremont,
down in those places where there was a light with pamphlets how to make
Molotov cocktails, throw them into fire trucks, how to cut stairs through I's
sabotaged the buildings. Yeah, we put up with that after the riots.
And they would get a five story apartment, all freshly plastered, new plumbing,
everything done, and they would go in there and start putting five gallon
gasoline cans on every landing with wicks on them. We go in there with
a line and all of a sudden, or are we going to be able
to make it up there before something blows? You know? And that's what
we put up with after the riots. And they were marching with rifles on
their shoulders, the Black Panthers. They had streets that we had to get
police escorts to go down, and they had sandbags on the porches with little
swits. Oh shit, Oh yeah, it was bad down there, and
they let it. They let it go, I know, you can carry
a rifle. Good grief. You see pickup trucks with the rifles on them.
But you know, so that's not against the law. But when you
start marching with them and telling you how to make Molotov cocktail, something's got
to stop. They can't allow that to keep going. But that's the way
it was down that was. That was different times too, because then that
was the time when there was a lot of revolt, I guess against the
war too, right, So there was a lot of that going on too.
So the sixties, yeah, turnative thinking, right, everybody wasn't thinking
the same way. It was kind of split down the middle somewhat. Do
you remember Huey Newton that ring a bell, I know the name. I
heard the name. Okay, he was out in California thinking he was somewhere
anyway. A policeman was shot and killed, so they threw him in jail.
There was a big poster down off of the expressway, down by the
firehouse. He said, free Huey. After the riots, So guy with
a sense of humor took a spray can and Dewey and Louis Huey, Dewey
and Louie, can we shoot him at how so was that the beginning of
the effort Detroit fight? Was that when it stought, I guess turned for
the worst. Yeah. Yeah. There was a sign on Woodward and eight
mile that's the city limit. The last one out of the city turned the
lights off, and it just it was an exodus. I should have been
thinking, thirty nine isn't going to be busy. Everything's burned down and they're
moving They're moving out, And that was the whole premise of it, is
we're gonna take over the city. And that's what happened. They moved out
into the other areas and Twelfth Street became Rosa Park Boulevard, and it's most
of the stuff has gone. There's hardly enough buildings on it anymore. And
what year did you move the family? You did that early nineteen seventy.
Yeah, so right around that time, you're like, this is it.
You know it's going bad here. Well, I don't want to get too
political, but they the PTA had a meeting and I went to our school
I had My oldest boy was ten and my other boy was eight, and
they said we're going to bust people in from the inner city. Hey,
I worked with them every day. Fine, that's good. My kids got
to get used to it. Bring them in. I have no problem with
that. It's a lot of people in the pta looked at me and what
do you saying. I said, Hey, that's no problem, as long
as they don't change the curriculum. Oh no, mister Decker, he's going
to have the same book. Everything's gonna be fine. He's going to go
up or not to say, he's gonna go his next grade. They came
home with the same book they'd had the year before. They set him back
the year. I went over to school and I was talking and this young
teacher came up and she said, I know your boy Mark and Steve.
They're blonde hair and blue eyed. They're never going to have problems in this
world. It says, ma'am. I'm blonde hair and blue eyed, and
I've had problems all my life. Everybody does. It's how you do it
and how you accept it. Yeah. So I told Patty, we're moving
and we took a terrible discount on our house was the last street in the
city, but we moved out seventy miles. Wow. I did the same
thing. They had a farm. Yep, God's pull up the picture of
the fifty eighth. This is good todd to pull up that fifty year of
pot picture. Okay, it's coming. I was gonna get I want to
go to the old what you call it photos, to the old firehouse ones.
Okay. These are guys that I ran within the ninth Battalion, and
the last three to my looking at it, to my right, the last
two Frank, Tata, and Bill the priest and myself had a business together.
Holy Cross not so much, but we ran with Holy Cross at thirty
nine. One of the funniest, had more fun with Jim. He was
a fantastic guy to have him around the firehouse. Those three, those four
guys were always together at parties that our families. We all grew up kind
of the kids together. Then we get a call from Bill Frank and he
said, Tata's down in Florida and he's got cancer and he doesn't have long
to live. So that's the top picture. He's second in from the right,
correct, with glasses on, yeah, right, right right, it's
Frank Tata. Heck of a he's the second one in the right in the
box. His boy said, you know, you guys, I got a
picture you guys after the riots. He said, let's set it up the
same way. So that's a great idea. That's what he did. Holy
Cross was he lives in Michigan and Florida. He's still kicking. Uh L
Priest lives in Arizona. Tate has gone and of course myself, I'm here
in the Carolinas. But uh there's something about Fire Department. You guys know
it. You love the guys you work with. The ones you don't love
pretty soon they're a lot of times they don't even sit around the table with
you. They're out, you know, they're on the phone and they're doing
something else. It's not family. But the guys that you love become family.
And did you love them more than your family? I don't want to
make my wife mad, but yeah, there is a certain thing there.
I would give my I give my life for my family, no doubt.
But I would go in the fire. Libby saw me at my retirement party.
He told the guys he got to Mike and he said, if I
was ever in a fire and I couldn't get out, Decker come and get
me. And he says, Moller would figure out a way to get me.
But Decker wouldn't even figure out a way he'd come and get me.
And that made me feel so good that we loved each other that much,
and we did and me and read. When he had cancer, he told
me I'd never have chemo. I went to see him in the hospital and
he said, the worst thing I did is I quit smoking. He says,
I'd only got days to make it as I'll keep doing what I'm doing,
right. He said they could have given me as much chemo. I'd
take it every day if it gave me another day. And then I held
him and hugged him and we cried together, and he was my buddy and
I hate to see him go, but that's life. And he handled it
good. He handled it good. And you know what, that's funny you
say that, Frank, because we got a lot of guys from nine to
eleven obviously getting you know, it's it was an everyday thing where Kevin and
I see somebody who's dying to cancer, right. You know, some guys
you know, younger than us, some guys older than us. But it's
kind of almost a fall and gone conclusion that, you know, And I
always kind of feel it's funny that you say that, because I always feel
like, if it does happen, how, how what is my reaction going
to be? Am I going to be angry? You know you're talking about
your dad. You know he get dealt a hand and uh, you know
any any you know lived through it and he took it the best he could
take it, right. And I always think to myself, I try to
think if that, if that was the case. You know, I made
it through nine to eleven. I've I've had a lot of you know,
quote unquote, I've had gravy, you know, all these years now,
you know what I mean, I've been around, I've had to to to
retire, I've got to share a lot of stuff with a lot of my
friends, and so I kind of hope that I will have that if that
time. I mean, God a bid but doesn't come, but if it
did, that I would have that type of dignity and dignity and grace to
say, you know what I did good. I'm going to go out like
that. Like because the way you describe these guys, you have even more
respect for them for how they did that right. I mean, you know
you talk about your dad like that, you talk about your friend like that,
you could just tell that it's it's important to do that as well to
I don't know, maybe I'm just gapping. No, we're here for a
reason. I really believe that we're put here on this God's green earth for
a reason, and that's to affect someone else. And hopefully when I if
I had something like that life changing or a cancer, that the way I
handled it would affect my children. Somebody that's nearer to me and knows me,
they're it's going to affect somebody. My wife had staged four cancer,
and we talked before she went to the hospital to see it doctor. And
your mind goes there, right, it could be cancered, and you cry.
It doesn't hit you until they tell you you got cancer. Yeah right,
no doubt. And then the oncologist tells me stage four, we're gonna
keep her. We're gonna give her nineteen radiation treatments and nine chemo treatments.
And I'm sitting there, Am I going to lose my wife? You know
all these years? How are you going to handle it? Well? She
said, you know, I turned it over to the Good Lord, and
it's taken all that burden off of me. It's on him now. And
her and I sat there and there was a calmness about it. We felt
that if this is it, you know, And my son was here and
the family was here. Everybody congregates, right when somebody's sick, and you
got a doomsday report right for everybody. Yeah, and everybody's sitting here.
All my kids, my grandkids are crying. And here's my wife sitting there.
She's bald, her hair is gone. And my son, Josh said.
She said to Josh, she said, Josh, you know I'm not
gonna make it when I go. I want you to have dad sell the
house. And he says, Mom, where's he going to bring his girlfriend?
All of a sudden, it broke the level. It broke everybody up.
And Patty even laughed, and she said, yeah, why am I
so down? Why am I sad like this? And not the right of
it? Right? Yeah? Yeah, and good stuff. That's why he's
your favorite? Yeah, yeah, he is. He's a special young man.
And I hope I know there's fireman that have gotten him to be best
man at their wedding and flown him over to wherever they're having the ceremony.
Had nowadays and they love him because when he was a captain, he quoked,
he scrubbed floors. What the hell you know, Roofie. Yeah,
he just said, Hey, I'm here all day long. We're gonna keep
this place clean. We're gonna do this, We're gonna have fun, and
we're gonna we're gonna enjoy our Can you imagine they almost had? They were
shooting for five thousand calls a year. He says, Dad, I sometimes
don't have enough time, even with a computer to get all my paperwork down
him, the runs in the book, all that stuff, right, Yeah.
Yeah, And he said it's so much medical. Ods, we got
narc am I doing anybody a favor by putting a narc can in their nose.
No, he says, sure, they come back, but we get
the same person the two days. Yeah. And he said, I'm getting
so jaded. I'm getting so disgusted with people, and I'm thinking to myself,
do I want to continue here? He retired. He was fifty.
He had twenty seven years on and he retired. And I know they hated
to see him go, But he says, Dad, I'm getting work.
I'm not happy when I come home. Once you get angry from that and
it, like you said, if you do the job long enough. That's
why I kind of when I see people on the news or whatever, you
know, they say, well, how could this guy do that? And
I tell people, I tell my family. You know, over time,
you do five thousand runs a year and you see crap and you see you
know, people who don't give effort. Right. I used to say all
the time, there was so much effort from Firement for people with no effort.
Sometimes, right, it just felt like we were doing this, like
you just said, we were doing the same thing over and over again.
It was like bizarro world. Every day was the same thing. And you
do get to the point where, you know, Kevin and I talked to
a lot of guys like yourself. You know when it's time, right,
twenty seven years, I did twenty seven years, Kevin did twenty years.
You know, you know when it's when it's time to go, because it's
not the same thing anymore, you know. I mean that's why a young
man's job you need fresh you know, fresh eyes, and you know your
eyes have seen too much probably you know, Yeah, have you ever seen
the Seed DVD? Burn? I have not a guy, you know,
keep talking about that. We got to get a copy of that b Yeah,
you got to see it. There's an engineer on there. I think
his name's Parnell and he said, my eyes have seen things in my head.
Yeah, I can't forget. Yeah, and there is there, there's
stuff that you see in you. You say, why why is this going
on? Why? Why can a ball team bring a city back together?
And then the politicians just split it up again? Why My kids are gonna
say, Dad, you didn't tell the Okay, hit him waited, That's
what I was hoping to get one that you haven't told them yet. Okay.
It was at Engine forty in Squad five. That's a triple house.
Fifteen guys. You got to come up with all manner of stuff, right,
more fun. And we had a guy that used to come down the
street down Twelfth Street, eight or nine in the morning, eight or nine
at night. He was drunk. His name was Jackson, and he'd be
staggering and singing and hollering, and for some reason, I have no idea
why, he hated Queen Elizabeth. So we'd see him coming down the street
and we'd go out and we'd start singing, God Save the queen, you
start there and hollering and just coming on glued. And we had a captain
of the squad, Leonard Smith, an old Southern boy, and he would
say, donla Jackson in the firehouse. Well, one day he came in
and the firehouse and Van Sickle, the cook, said, did Jackson wanted
to use the bathroom? Want to use the toilet downstairs? Well he did
and it was rank. I mean you can smell it all over the cors
of the doors open. Ban Suco went in the kitchen, he got ginger
snaps, wet him down, threw them all over the glazed brick walls,
all over the floor. It looked like Jackson and had an explosion in there.
The brothers the action is swearing out in the out on the platform.
Captain Glennard Smith comes, get that man out of this firehouse. And then
all of a sudden he could smell it. He come running down the stairs.
Who let that man in here? And Van says, cap look at
the bathroom. Glenn Smith looked at the bathroom. Band goes in there.
He takes his finger and he wipes across the that's not real, Glen,
don't do that, Van, don't look that's his lunch. Oh my god,
that's awesome. That was Bill Murray with it the bob. Yeah,
yeah, that's something only a firehouse these things can happen. I agree,
I agree. I talked about my brother. I love him, I miss
him. He was running a single truck ladder twenty two. They had a
driver. His name was Sidlowski. Sid should never have been on the job
because he stuttered so bad. But he could get on the department phone and
not stutter, so yeah it was but he could. He could talk to
you know, but certain things. He stud a real man. So my
brother and him and the boss and whoever else, they get a run down
on the expressway. A box truck is on fire. They get on there
with a being gun with the truck and they knocked the fire down. So
my brother goes up to get the information from the driver to see who you
know the yarns and everything. So he goes up and he said, can
I find out the name of the you know company you work for and different
things? Your name and stuff, and you guys said minding the name,
And my brothers just a minute runs back to the truck and he said,
Sid, would you go take that report. He said, I got something
to do. The lieutenant wants me to do something. Stid goes up and
he says, when the name and my brother, when they double up their
fist, I ran back out there. What would make you think of something
like that? He said, it was there, you gotta take it.
Was there, bro, And they loved the ball up. You gotta swing
right, I mean, you gotta do it. You and I love that.
We haven't heard that from anybody. It was there, bro, you
gotta take it right now. Did you guys ever have a mole on your
job? A mole? I had a Maurice Moe used to call him MO.
No. No. This was a guy he lived down the Bell right
by the Service Street, and he came running to the engine forty that his
house was on fire, and forties and squad and the truck are going out
to fourteenth in Oakland where there's a fire. So they don't stop. They
tell him we can't stop. We got a box to go too. He
got four kids that die in this fire. This is just a story.
There is no mo, there's no house fire, nothing. But you get
a recruit that comes in sitting around and you start talking about more right,
and you start, you get the police in out and the police come by
and they say, hey, did you guys hear that Mo escape from from
the prison. No, we haven't heard that. Yeah, Mos gone.
He's out and he's still looking for you guys. He still wants wants to
kill you guys. Well, Jim Rushton was a tiler, ran a ladder
seventeen. Little guy. I'd have to tell you about him. A fantastic
pink pom player. But he pulls his dark silk stocking down over his face,
mashes your nose and makes you look all you know, stocking cap on
peacoat dragging an axe. Mo kills, Mo kills. He'd come in the
firehouse when the trial man would be out by himself. Mo. That's cruel
buff. So that was bad enough with a trial man, But then we
had a milk driver. Do you remember when milk trucks would come up with
milk and neck And I wasn't around for that, but I do I know
about the milk come up to the firehouse twin Pines milk truck and he'd come
in and he'd bring us half and half and stuff like that, give us
a break, and he was kind of a cockey guy. And he came
in one day and we're talking about Mo. And first thing he says,
as well, if he ever did that to me, I'd knock him on
his fanny. He wouldn't get away with that for me. Well, Rushford
heard that. Down comes to stocking cat watch everything. He goes out and
gets in the back of the truck, battle on the bottles. That milk
driver sitting there with his ice pick and he's stabbing it into his ice that
he's gotten his leather pouch. He's stabbing. He's get out of my truck.
Get out of my truck. And I said, well, just go
out there and push him out. That guy wouldn't leave the kitchen for he
hollered it, and Mo would just keep rattling the bottles, rattling the bottles.
So Mo was great. He had dragged that axe and he looked he
looked terrible. He looked like he'd been through a fire. And all you'd
ever had a limp ye limp. Now, now, Rushford, do you
remember President Nixon? Sure? Sure, okay, you remember the Chinese ping
pong diplomacy? Uh No, No, he sent ping pong players from the
States over to play against Chinese pink pong players. Rushford was one of them.
Jimmy right from you. I would go down the basement at forties.
He'd say, Decker, come on down, and he said, I hear
you're getting a little better, So I go downstairs. He'd have his coat,
boots, helmet, mask and play him with a hot rah priyan pan
not a regular paddle, No, no, no, I ash chair or
something. What'd you pick up trash with sweeping into like a little uh,
like a little shovel. Yeah, I get two points on him. Maybe
from China he came back and got one of those sponge pads. Oh man,
you couldn't get a point on him. He was just he was fantastic.
Did he went in China? Did he went over there at China?
Yeah? Yeah, I don't know that the diplomacy work we're having dropped kick
their rest then they aren't too happiest gump. But he was that he was
that good of a ping pong player. And he ran there at forties and
he was he was fantastic. But you get on and play him with a
sponge paddle and forget it, forget it, And he would have we get
a phone call or central dispatch and call us. Uh is Rushford on?
Yeah, he's on. Well, somebody called. They want to come down
and play ping pong with him. The guy would come in with his little
paddle in a little bag, special bag and everything come in and he would
leave all sweaty and downtrodden us as Oh yeah, Rushford to take him apart.
Do we have pictures? Do we get to the penny ones yet?
There's a couple of I have the penny ones when you when you're ready for
them. Yeah, let's bring those up, okay, because I have a
question pinning My grandson Andrew in uh, Arkansas and he went to engineer's school.
Uh. I never wanted to be an engineer. I want never wanted
to drive. But he said, Dad, that's Grandpa, that's the only
way I can get a promotion right now. I don't want to take the
captain's test yet. So he said it's more money, and he said if
for second engine in sometimes the captain, let me take go in and take
the line if I want. So. He loves being an engineer. He's
a good old school fireman. He loves to cook, and the guys all
like he might have been down there and met his his crew and they like
him. And there he is. He's a big boy, you can see
that. Yeah, he's a little beefy. Yeah. And he's got a
little girl. I don't know if her picture will be in here or not.
And he used to be on the that's his brand new baby. This
one, that's the good. Look at that kid. Yeah, this one's
uh uh, she's probably ten or twelve now. When she was two or
three, he would throw her up in the air and somebody saw him doing
it. He used to be a catcher in gymnastics. Uh huh yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah. Somebody took movies him doing it on the beach
one time and it went viral and she became the little flyer and he went
to Good Morning America and another show on TV, and uh, he would
throw her up. You can't believe how high she would go, really catch
her and like this, and she'd lock her legs and lift the one leg
straight up and she's she's ahead of her gymnastic team. Now she's just a
tiny little thing. But his wife was a gymnast and now you can see
him. He was he was the bottom man. He was so why didn't
he go over to Arkansas? Then? What brought him to Arkansas? That's
where my son was, My oldest son was an Arkansas. Yeah, he's
been there for forty some years. But he wasn't a fireman, right,
No, he wasn't a fireman. You know. He's a commercial artist and
uh, I don't know. He does uh logos for a lot of fire
departments, and so he's a fantastic does fantastic logos. He's a he's a
commercial artist does Uh? I got it already? Cool about take care Charlotte.
And I think I think Jordan's logo is from my son Mark. But
uh, let's see. Uh now what does Jordan's work. Jordan works in
Charlotte right there? Jordan with my son Steve? Which what was this one?
Who's your favorite? My favorite is my son? That's who? Which
son is that? That's my that's my youngest He's the one that was conceived
at the Bollington And uh, Jordan was the one who sent me the email.
He was what he was the captain, My son was a captain just
retired to him. Okay, yep, there's the one that was bopping around
in the back of the pre show. Right, that's not his son,
that's his grandson. Oh, my grandson. A M. I'm confused.
He lives. He also has a granddaughter who uh, yes, Jordan's sister.
Jordan's sister. Have you got a picture her? Guns on? I
might have, m I might have acquired a picture of this, Coops,
I don't know about this. When we think about this for a second,
I think I name is Decker. Isn't she a beautiful Is this the one
that we're talking about? Yes, that is the one. That's your grand
She's as nice as she is beautiful. You ain't kidding. I mean,
I'm sure she sped to a tennis star and hey, Roddick and she called
Andy before the swimsuit issue came out, and she says, do you mind
if I She says they're gonna put it up on a five story building in
New York And he says, you go for it? You know? Yeah?
Wow, she's whose wife? Is this now your son's wife? That?
Yeah, my son, that's my granddaughter. That's Jordan's sister. You
got, coops? All he has no idea and the words of led right
now, well disheveled six years old, she's he's just rapid fire at him.
You got to slow down. She's my second oldest son's daughter, your
second oldest son's daughter, and he's the oddest. No, No, that's
my oldest son who's out first. All you can because Frank kick your ass
if you talk about his granddaughter. And I'm not I'm just trying to get
a who's It's very confusing. There's a lot of five and his oddest is
couple models as Holy crap, my old good oaks. They got two good
oaks. What do you expect? Yeah, my oldest son was born in
sixty Steve Brooklyn's dad was born in sixty two, right, Amy, My
daughter was born in sixty eight. Josh was born in seventy. Wow,
and I got this photo too for you. That's Josh, me and my
wife. So he could go, who's okay, Kristen, Josh's beautiful wife
and his two twin daughters. Okay, beautiful. So you can try to
put two or two together, coops, I try to get I'm trying.
And they're graduates of UNC now and uh wow, fantastic young girls, Frankie
dog good. Really, I've been blessed. I've been blessed with beautiful children
and not just looks. I mean you ful in the heart, beautiful people
that you'd like to have for a neighbor. Andy Roddick Is he's a funny
man. He's intense, but he's a funny, funny man and a lot
of fun to be around. He's a fantastic ping pong player. He's a
fantastic tennis player and retired at twenty nine. And he's a good businessman.
And he takes care of my granddaughter and their two children. And I couldn't
be blessed with anymore, with any of my children, grandchildren, great grandchildren.
But I think my wife said one time, how do you feel about
your firehouse crew? And I said, there's a love there that's different than
my love for my family. But it's deep. It is a deep love
that you just can't explain. I would tell him it's the military, right.
If you go into battle with people and you trust and and you can
know your hands in their life, they put you know advice. You know
if you go to h you know we've said this on the show a lot.
When you when you go to UH to UH a reunion, right,
you could walk in there you might not have seen those guys for twenty years,
and it's as if no time has gone by, right, you don't,
you don't miss a beat, you're telling stories, you're laughing. There
are very few uh, jobs or relationships that you have, you know,
even like high school or college maybe college but or military, but there's very
few that you could just slip right in, you know, and uh,
you know after so much time goes by because people change, right, But
for Fireman, I think it's it's it's easy peasy when it comes to that,
you know. Yeah, And the ones that aren't going to fit in,
they don't fit in. They don't want to. And I'm not saying
anything bad about them, they're just not cutting that mold. And sometimes I
wonder. I used to see a few of them kicking the line, wondering
why in the world did I take this job, or putting dirt on their
faces so they looked tell them, you know, and you got them.
But there's a reason you got him, I guess, And that's I don't
know why to what it is there is. There's a spot for him.
You can't dislike them. They're they're part of the crew. I can remember
we had a fellow that got transferred into forties and he came up to me.
I was cooking, and he said, I'm allergic to pork. So
after he said that, some of the guys heard him, and one of
the guys came over and said, have pork shops or put pork and get
make soup out of pork back. Let's see him swell up. You know
it's the other white meat it is. Yeah, that's what they did with
salvo. Remember when Bobby Salas was a to shrimp and he couldn't he couldn't
peel it or anything, so he would and I said, let's put let's
throw up some shrimp on the phone and call the fire house and tell us
to him and see if he would blow up if he was in the room
the shrip. He didn't even have to go near it. He was.
But you can have fun with that cancer. Yes, it's there, it's
there there. Yeah, I'm putting that on a shirt. Oh many.
And I well, we used to have. His name was Vic Thomas.
He was too short to get on the job. He was a catcher for
a minor league baseball team, and somebody downtown at that time. This would
be back in the thirties, maybe the twenties. Light him got him on
the job and he was there through the warriors. And when I came on
the job, he was a captain, a ladder seventeen. He would sit
on the seat of the truck with his legs crossed like he was a catcher.
That's he was, that little. I was cooking, and I think
I think I made cherry pies. I don't think I bought him. I
think I made cherry pies. And he came into kitchen and he cut off
his piece like everybody, and he took me through in the trash and I
said, captain, are you allergic to cherry pies? Or somebody says no,
But I pay the same as everybody else. And I says, you
got a point. You got a point there. You can do with it
what you want. And that's what he did. He threw in the trash,
all right. But when Vick, Vick would go down for extensions,
and they used to give extensions, especially if the guy knew the mirror or
something, and he would he would go down and the guys would tell him
VIC put some shoe polish or getting gray. He'd put a black shoot on
and his hair to make him look like he wasn't so old, and he'd
go down for an extension. We had a lieutenant that used to go to
a funeral parlor and embalmed for him when he was on duty. They called
him up that maybe they didn't have an embalmer, and they called Loui and
he could do the involving and he'd come back with false teeth for by him.
On. Vic would try those false teeth on the wonder. Oh,
my dad's nasty. But Vic Thomas, he was a funny little guy.
But he was put on the job just because he knew somebody. And uh,
but he was the captain there at Latter seventeen for a while. They
finally let him go. H I'm trying to think of some of them.
Oh. We we used to have guys that used to come into firehouse.
We called him Firebuffs. Do you guys get out? Yeah? Never heard
of him. Yeah. And this guy was named Ruben and uh he sold
favorite grant of Enjoy Road and he would wear glasses and sometimes it would just
be the glass part he had put up to his eye. He'd come in
and he was Jewish and the story was as he was college, went to
college, was getting a degree, and something snapped in him and he became
almost autistic. But he sold papers and he would come in with those newspapers
under his arm, and he would call Willoughby, who was one of my
favorite fireman. He'd called Willoughby willow Tree, and he would call me Pecker
instead of Decker. And he had this strange voice. And we had a
Jewish chief, Joe Addler. He became chief department, but he was Jewish,
and Willoughby would say, you little jew, that too rude and Ruby
go outside and he'd say he had hollower up to the chief Chief Addler.
Willoughby said I was a jew and he says, you're one too. Get
Willoughby out of the firehouse. Ohoh yeah. Willoughby was a driver. The
chief would he put up with Wooby. But anyway, one day somebody hollered
out at Rube. Quit making noise out to Rube. We're trying to sleep.
Did you guys sleep from one to four? Could you okay? But
you could take a nap during the day. You know what they say,
A well rested five always said safety NOPs. We used to call the safety
naps. Okay, yeah, Detroy, we worked at twenty four hour shift,
but but you could take a nap from one to four. So everybody
go upstairs up in the dormitory, show out in case we're up all night.
Well, Rube was making noise and somebody hollered out the upstairs window.
Rube shut up. I think it was Stepki downstairs, said Rube, tell
him to go to hell. You're a taxpayer. He hollered back up,
go to hell, something about a taxpayer. There was one what was the
uh there was a question, yea question, Yeah, before we go to
the old school tip. That's a question. Well we got the old tips
come out, yea, yeah, yeah, we got a couple. Second
we have a question from the chat for you. I'm just gonna pull it
up on the screen here and there it is. Well, the biggest fire,
the biggest fire was probably the riots Good Grief. Not only twelve Street
was burning, but after they torched the and we got where we couldn't put
them all out, it jumped the alley and all these houses were burning down
these streets. We get two three, four to jumped from house to house.
There houses in Detroit were Good Grief you could jump for roof to roof.
I was on a roof one day and we got burned through. We
couldn't get back to the ladder. I jumped to the house next door and
I told the lieutenant, I said, you're gonna have to explain why they
got a hole in their roof because I hit it with a pen in my
axe. But we couldn't get off the roof. There was no way to
get off, and they couldn't get ladders up in between the houses. So
we just jumped to the house next door and come down that way. But
that was that would be the biggest fire was the five days of the riots.
I think. Other than that, we had a We had a grocery
store. Do you guys know what a chemos mask is? No? Okay,
you know we didn't have scots. We had smoke mask canisters. Okay.
And we get a grocery house. There's grocery store fire and we pull
up the squad. Me and Libby went around back with lines. They said
the basement. We went around back with lines. They said, you can't
get down there with your msa smoke mask. They put a chemox on us.
I never had a chemoks on before. It's like a big him,
almost like a scuba diving thing. It's rubber and it's got a canister in
it, and once you puncture this, the moisture makes the oxygen. It's
good for about an hour. You got a vent where you can push it
and let the arrow because it'll blow you up. It'll blow your face piece
up. And they tie a rope on your back and down in the basement.
Me and Red went that was kind of scary. I've never been scared
in the fire, but when they put the rope on my back and tie
me, that kind of makes you wonder how we're going to come out of
here. They're going to have to pull us out. But me and Red
went down there. Smith and Ed Smith and Hall Schultz. They came in
through the front of the store, and fire being in the basement burnt up
through the floor and burnt their line. They're stuck with no water. They
can't get out because the fires up through the floor. Now they head to
the back and the guys heard him beaten on the back where the meat cutter
was. They heard him beaten on that door. By the time they got
the door open and got him, they had what themselves. They were out
and they had MSA's on. You fall down with those and you're down,
you're not getting any air. We thought we'd lost them, and me and
Red are down there in the base and we heard about it, and I
think that's a fire that comes back to my mind. That could grief Smith
and Shoultzer. They may not make it, you know, And they made
it. They got you know, they got help the squad ring and got
him some oxygen. But I didn't like the fact that I had to head
a rope tied on me. But I would have gone anywhere with Red.
And we were we were down there. We put a lot of fire out
down that basement. We had a fire downtown in time. It was a
third or fourth and we pulled up and I'm in the squad got the red
helmet on and I used to chew it fires, chew red Man. Yeah,
but red Man and I had a big plug. And you didn't wear
a mask in an extra alarm. They're all been alighted, right, you
know. It's just a big store. And we went in, me and
Red and there was a young black. Yeah that's a little more modern than
ours. We just had one hose down to the chema the charcoal mask.
So I'm going in and I don't have a mask, and I'm going into
this place and it's smoky, but it's yeah, you know. We go
in and we're being read or working. I come out and there's a young
kid that kids sitting on the corner on the curb, and he says,
how do you take that smoke in there? Man? I says it.
You know, it's been elated. It's not bad. What do you got
in your mouth? I said, chew tobacco. You want something? I
gave it to a red man. Back in we go. I come back
a little while later. He's sitting on the curb, his head between his
knees. Yeah, I forgot to tell him to spit swinging at this.
He struck him out from then on. From then on, if I would
ever see him in a fire, he'd tell his buddies, Decker is the
man? Is the man? Yeah, my god, I think it's that
time now, brother, Oh, I have it already for words and wisdom
from mister Decker. We got to do it. YEA, already to go,
mister T'm ready you already here we go. It's time the old school
spit hip all over the day, day day, day day. All right,
Francis, you're up. I think my main thing I would tell a
young fireman, especially now with all the equipment you've got in the mask and
everything else, when you go into a fire, you get off the rig,
you take a tool. If you got the line, you got the
line, don't give it up. Don't ever give that line up unless there's
one of your crew. Don't ever give it up to anybody else that comes
up their squad, no matter, I don't care who it is. You
don't give the lineup. The other thing is if you got an axe and
you're chapping a hole in the roof and your arms are tired and your back
is done, and somebody comes up and says, give me the axe,
don't do it. You go back and finish cutting, do everything you can.
Don't give it up, because as soon as you do, the chief's
gonna come up, or somebody's gonna look at you, and that kid's got
your tool, and you're doing nothing like pull the same way you're pulling the
ceiling, and you figured, man, I can't pull another ceiling down.
I'm done. Don't give it up and then if you're on the line,
which I always wanted to be. I never wanted to be in the truck.
I wanted to be on the line, don't ever give that line up.
But if it's an apartment or it's a house, and it's in a
room and you're down in a hallway and it's getting hot, it's going to
get hotter and hotter if you don't get to that room. Once you get
to that room and you get a window open and you fall, it's going
to cool off. But if you stand there in that hallway and you figure
I can't go any further, all you're gonna do is your ears are going
to start to melt, your neck's gonna get burnt, and that's going to
be it. You don't ever back up. Just keep going in and make
the corner. I used to tell if I had a trial man that worked
there at thirty nine with me, I'd say, make the corner, get
around that corner and put the fire out. Don't stand out in the hallway
and hope it's going to get cooler. It ain't going to get cooler.
That would be my tip of the day. And the other thing would be
every firehouse if you're cleaning the house that day, do your best to help
everybody out. I don't care if you're senior man, I don't care if
you're a boss. Everybody's got to live there and clean that place up and
live in a clean house. You do your part. If you're cooking,
do the dishes with the guys. If you're playing cards for dishes, play
cards for dishes. But don't just figure that you're above anybody else. And
bosses. I never held up food to wait for the boss to get in
line. They may be they're in charge, but they don't work any harder
than me, and they're fireman, and they eat just like everybody else.
I call chaw. It's whoever's there. We don't wait for anybody. And
that would be my tip. And hopefully live with it. One day you'll
be a boss. De Troy had a seniority system. I was never a
boss. I didn't like being in charge. But I think if I was
in charge, I think I would have been a good boss. I really
do. I think the guys would have gone with me. I think I
would have gone with anybody that had the line. I would have gone in.
That's the way you're supposed to be. You're a fireman. That's what
it's all about, putting that fire out. So I love being on here.
Thank you for listening to my stories. I hope that I didn't bore
you at all. Take the corner, cool corner, corner, Frank says,
true, you guys know, isn't it true? No, you gotta
if you're not hitting the seat of the fire, you just just you gotta
make the corner to get to the of the season. It makes sense.
Those were old school that I was old. Tip of the day, never
give up your tool is obviously. Uh, you have to have some pride
in that. Like he said, you gotta finish it. If you got
to take a breathe, to take a breathe, but you gotta finish you
at your work. Like he said, they want your back for more stories,
Frank, So we're gonna have to get your look. I know there's
a lot of them that I didn't bring out, but some of them I
wonder if if if they would want to hear them. There, you're gonna
get your back. We'll get your back. We'll get your back off for
a plot too, guys, fire stories. I'll tell you what I respect
you guys from New York more than I could I could ever tell you you
guys to me or hear rows. I was telling my son today, I
said, they lost three hundred and forty three? Was it? Yep?
In one day? He says, Dad, that would have been a shift,
would have been B shift, would have been C shift. How do
you how do you go back to work? How do you? I don't
know how you guys did it. I don't know how you do it.
Same how you did it the time and what you what you guys that you
had left, you know that's how it was. Ye. Hey, Frank,
I got a question for you, Yes, sir, did you ever
give up the cam when they first gave it to you? So it's a
quick story, Frank. When my first, one of my first jobs won
a very senior lieutenant uh uh worked in Bushwick during the seventies, really you
know, fire fire officer, and you know, he was testing me out
and he said, we get up to the to the floor there was a
second or third floor whatever it was, and the fire was out into the
hall and he says to me, give me a can, reaching out with
your hook and uh and closed the door while we wait for the line right
because the fire was out the door into the hallway. So I give him
the can and I reached down and I closed the door, and as soon
as I closed the door, I hear the can dingling down, the ding
ding dinging. He turns to me and says, don't have don't have an
f and give up your tool. Have a kid, you glad to go?
Run down, get the tool, get my can, come back.
And then to your exact words, never, I never gave up my tool
ever again, not one time. I got him back for you, Roofie.
I read over his garbage cans. Can I give you a life saving,
life saving story? Absolutely? Okay. We went into an apartment I
think it was a second alarm, me and Ted Pataki, I was on
the squad, and we go into this room. It is full of smoke
and we're down. We got MSA on again and we got just you know,
the charcoal canisters. We're crawling through this room looking for somebody, and
all of a sudden, I hear this voice. I'm over here, you
dumb sob. It's a woman's voice, and you can tell she's been drinking.
But we find her. She's on the house. He's in a nightgown.
So I said, lady, we gotta get out of here. She
swore me again, told me to leave her alone. So I grab her
under the arms. Pataki's got her feet. We're heading out. Well,
we're down low right. We get to the door. We get her out
of the apartment and we get out in the hall and they got a big
grand stairway and it's a marble stairway with carpeting on. It used to be
an old, nice hotel. I couldn't keep holding her. I let go
of her shoulders. Her head hit every step. Oh god, I hollowed
a Pataki. Let's squat or get her leave me here. It sound like
cant going down the hallway. That used to happen quite a bit. Unfortunately,
she's that quite a bit. I'm thinking she's gonna say, who was
it that tried to kill me? Kind a big lump on my head?
Yeah, let my life saving coming on, But start thinking of some stories
for the next next show. We'll have you back on. I'd love to
be on with you guys. Really, we'll set something up with your grandson
Roof. You have any shout outs, but the Rangers losing to nothing.
That's my only shout out. I don't think I have an unfortunate a very
sad shout out. Captain Jimmy Graham, who's usually in here, you know,
his nephew's little baby Cooper had that very rare form of I think it
was brain cancer and got all this and it was a miracle. It was
working out. Well, they just got news that the cancer is back and
it's it's bad. So he's asking if the leatherhead nation because he believes,
and I believe in prayers, if we could say a prayer for a little
Cooper and his mom and dad, Mike and Rachel Graham. So let's let's
say some prayers for Cooper please tonight and keep them in your thoughts. And
that's all I got. Rough we have on Thursday night. Thursday Night,
we have Jafe Jonas doing the Worsters, and then we're gonna book mister Decca
for a pot too. All right, cons take us out, buddy,
what do you got? All right, We're gonna do our out. Children,
ladies and gentlemen standby. Well. Thank you, first and foremost for
tuning in to another episode of The Getting Salty Experience. Think we're out a
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contest that we may or may not be holding allegedly. Thanks once again for
tuning in to the Getting Salty experience. Great job, mcbob, who will
be making his return quite soon, possibly, I mean John too, will
hit it up. All right, mister Decker. Thoroughly enjoyed you coming on.
I really I look forward to having your back again. Thank you for
sharing that time with us. Could we just take a minute. Yeah,
you wanted to pray for a young Cooper? Yeah, sure, I want
to close her eyes and having his father. We come before you with a
young boy that's it's got a terrible diagnosis and we asked for a miracle to
be for his family. For him, your will will be done, but
we asked for a miracle. We pray for young Cooper and we just pray
that you will act in his behalf and that you would bring comfort to that
family. We thank you in Lord's name and Christ for his sake. Amen.
Amen, Amen, Amen, thank you, Frank, thank you so
much. I appreciate that. That's nice. Thank you all right, RUF,
that's it. I'll see you guys on Thursday. Johns, mister Decker,
thank you so much. Once again. We'll see you in the backstage
until Thursday, guys, stay low and go. I think I enjoyed it
more than you guys. I really did. I don't know about that.
I enjoyed listening to you guys. We'll see it, the big one,
everybody, al right, guy st Stef