Disclaimer. We'd like to know before the start of this interview that the opinions
about to be expressed by the guest of tonight's Getting Salty Experience Podcast are that
of the guest and do not directly or necessarily reflect the views of the host
of the Getting Salty Experience Podcast. You're listening to the Getting Salty Experience Podcast.
Hello, Hello, Sammy Peters Peter. I think Steve Steve Locket is
in the chat too. I saw before, so let me see. Let
me go back a little bit and see if I catch you, man,
then we get willing Oh yes, right here, hey all, oh he
has a beer, sir, just see even just the whole story. I
already apologize to your mother when Coop starts throwing the F bombs already, so
ut, I'll reserve the F bombs, missus Lockett. We'll throw the red
flag. I got the the instant replay flag. So if we needed to
replace something, yeah, that commercial, the instant replay. Should we get
the flag? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah, what you want?
Well, you know, may come in handy. Interesting week, man,
tough tough week, interesting week. The ship Christian into the Francis Key,
Scott Bridge there. That was insane, wasn't it. Yeah, I told
her, I have the here's a map because you guys want to see a
map where it was in the pre show, like the ship dwarfs the bridge.
That's how it's like. And Ray was saying, yeah, looks like
an erector set on there. It looks like a little It's just incredible that
they let that thing go through there without uh, well lost control. No,
no, I understand that, but I mean you got to realize that
that how many times have we had ships do something stupid from you know,
guys drinking or whatever. They shouldn't be able to just come in out of
there. And the look at that. They found the other guys the other
worker is right, two of them last I heard, they only found two.
Yeah, those guys were in the car where he was saying, yeah,
the good in the truck or something? Right, Oh, were they
in the truck? Holy crap, those guys. Those are the cars that
were only ones left on the bridge. If you saw it full, there
was a couple of things. And I guess said, well they let that.
They radioed ahead saying that they had no control of the ship and they
shut down the bridge. Can you imagine it was like doing rush out of
something. Holy shit. He was saying, seven. You know, he's
been going over that bridge for a lot of years. He was saying that
they get like a ridiculous amount of cause going at now the traffic that that's
like one of the main arteries there too, Like we go all the way
around now. I don't know. That's why I pull up the map to
show you help. But you're one hundred percent right. It's literally the work
for that, bro. Right, everything you have to take take a different
way to work. I got pains already, who medicine? Take it?
Take it easy over here, tough, you got a debilitated ticket it.
I don't want anything that happened. He's good, though, everything's rotal rooted,
bro, He's good. I come better than I was. There some
good news, right, guds. It's finally in the air. It's finally
on its way. Oh yeah, ready ready for it? Here we go,
there it is, It is finally on its way. He got up.
Good God help me. Yeah, looks we're gonna sell out no time.
Ruby's gonna say. You know what, I should have listened to that
a whole weeks ago, months ago, what would be great if you could
pull the rip cord for real. I didn't even think of that. Gone,
take it easy, and you know they could put like little sound effects
in there too, like when you're rolling it, how you pushing it and
you put take it. How funny is is Mikey Cologne with the with the
whole getting on the yeah mess over there problem when he's sleeping stories steps see
let him get this the empt run the bus for a while. Yeah,
there was we had. This was the job lou that we had and uh,
you know it was around on the Charlie side. I'm like, all
right, take it easy, take it east. What's not throwing out exposures
just yet? You're just talking about it toad shopped. Does he say anything
in the check because you know he's listening, just hello, he said,
little but it easy with the tones you're dropping and Charlie side and all this,
I said, imagine what he gets if he starts riding the bus is
an emt or did I tell where I was? When I tell him what
the lou? I didn't know. I didn't know what to do with you
gotta pay and everything was fine, pal Pa is cool. I'm riding the
backstep, and uh, we're going on a cardiac. You know, I'm
giving. I'm giving the compressions. I'm compressing, I'm compressing. And Ruff
he always says, bagging him. I'm bagging him. Ba boom boom boom
boom. Love always says love. What does Ruff? You always say?
Stay with him? The little body, little buddy. That's what he told
until you gotta remember, bro, that's it. He's a good tell.
He was like my son, young enough to be myself. I tell you
what he's talking. You could see how like exactly is like he's really very
focused, I guess would be the word. He's focused on what he wants
to say, and he'll wait. We'll we busted his balls and we'll wait
to be all serious, tie the whole thing. Yeah, well, listen
tomorrow we got a quick little video coming out. I'm stepping my toe into
the editing realm and I edited a little piece so tomorrow will be shown up.
It's only four minutes. Ship it's one that you can share, so
share it around, send it around, will you send it this way?
Yeah, we got to get the commercials because the only one to show this
week. So uh, let's get the commercials out of the way so we
can get my man mister here. No, you lock it up, No,
you lock it up, you you lock it up. Back there,
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Find us now at www Dot NJFE dot com. That's www Dot NJFE dot
com. Sweet, don't forget to tune in Monday me roof you big reveal
show. You got something big to announce on Monday. Thank you. Actually
it is big, big, big announcement. Tune in, Tell your friends,
tell your friends, tell your friends. Let's get him in if you
bring them in. All right, So we've had a couple of guys from
Baltimore City, some legends and those guys about this guy. Is that how
that worked? Oh? Yeah, yuh the goat Yeah to my goat work,
it didn't work. Oh I'm sorry. No, I'm loving that all
up for you. For God's sake, I got my ship. It's not
Thursday cleaning people. I tell us put my laptops down easy, take it
easy, All right? Coming to this page to Baltimore City, f D
Ray locking it up? Ray? Were you lock it up? We've got
to have a scary plot behind him. I'm already scared. I'm trying to
do it. Man. You know what, before we get up, we
forgot the pledge last time, so let's get in there. Let's not forget
it. We cannot be definitely the way things are going. Uh as well?
Yep, alright, here we go. I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America and to the Republic, for which it stands,
One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Shalom.
That's alone from Tom war Welcome to the show, mister Lockett. Thank
you good to be here, to be good. He looks good, that
guy. Huh twenty three years retired? Coops? How many years? Two?
Three? O? Man? I hope I make twenty three years retired?
Well, I got on, but not too far after we were born.
I don't want to give his age way, but I'm just I think
Lockett invented the pop and lock a dance break dancing thing back in today.
You know when the Coops started with that. He's like a rolling witholeum around
with him. I used to carry a car with a box. But yeah,
sorry squirrel, a moment, I already have this answer on my very
Look at this detail, I tell you one of the best timelines I got.
Let's let's dive into the early days of mister Lockett. Where'd you grow
up? Give us a little early history of the days when you were young?
We were you're into before you got into the fire service? And how
did you get into the fire service? Well, I grew up in Baltimore
City, lived there for forty seven years. I grew up in a blue
collar, poor neighborhood. Never had any intentions of going in the fire department.
I was in. Seemed to get in too much trouble and drinking too
much and fighting too much and just having having a good time. Never had
any intentions of going in the fire department. And my mother in law,
whose husband was killed in the line of duty. He was a Borderman City
firefighter. He got killed in nineteen sixty one when my wife to be was
thirteen years old. Oh wow. And I met him when she was fifteen,
and we never discussed her father and I went to the army for three
years, came home, started dating again, and got married to her.
And for four years I went going from job to job. I was a
brakeman on a railroad. I hung sheet rock. I was a security guard.
I was a truck driver. And I'm sure Moller was getting tired of
seeing her only daughter being married to a guy with no directions listening Ray Ray,
Ye, hell yeah. So after we'd been married four years, my
mother in law got me an application for the fire department. I looked at
my wife and I said, I think your mother's trying to get rid of
me or tell me something. But it was the best thing that ever happened
to me. I took the test. There's thousands of people took the test
down the Civic Center in Baltimore. And so this is nineteen What year did
you take the two at the test? I took the test, and I
did better than I thought I would. I came out fifty two, and
they took fifty three in the first class. Oh, in first class?
Good for Yeah, I was in the first class. I took the test
with my brother in law, who was a lot smarter than I was,
and but he came out number two. He never went in the fire apartment,
Is that right? He passed up. He went up working in the
government job down in d C. And uh, yeah, I got in
the fire department in nineteen seventy two. What was the payback then, raight
do you remember about Yeah? He eight or nine thousand a year. I
guess. Wow. You know it's funny Rays. We talk about it all
the time, like how your life changes by one simple act, right,
something that is so special to you. Right. All the guys that come
on the show, they say the same thing. Everybody has this one little
you know where the road goes like this, right, if you were going
down this path and then you know, somebody intervenes, whether it's a neighbor,
your you know, family or you know, in your case, your
mother in law, and it puts you on a path to the best you
know, the thing that ever happened to you. You know, one of
the best things that ever happened to you bespelled your family. Right. Oh
yeah, but I wouldn't have had the family if I hadn't had the fart
aboutm I mean, I always want a bad path, you know, and
i'nno it. And so you had no kids yet when you got on.
Oh yeah, I had I had one son. I had my older son.
Yeah, he was born in nineteen seventy and I got in fire school.
I think I was in fire school about a week. And I thought,
man, don't screw this up. You'd like this job. This is
a good, best job. And you had no idea about the fire fire
department at all. Yeah, I had really no idea. Yeah, crazy.
I was lucky to get in. I'll tell you the truth, because
I passed the test fine. Then they had to interview and I had a
police record for fighting and I had to have a separate interview and I had
I had fairly long hair. Then I got into the interview and the guy
says to me, it's the seventies. Come on, you got a record
here for fighting. I said yeah. He said, uh, you think
you're a badass. And I said no, no, no, no,
no no. He said yeah you do. You think you're a badass.
And I thought this guy's trying to piss me off. So we talked for
a couple of minutes and he says he looked at my hair and he says,
well, i'll tell you this. If you get in the fire department,
this has got to go. And he reached over and grabbed my hair,
pull my hair, and I was like and I calmed myself down and
I said, if I get in the fire department, I'll cut my hair.
He said, get out of my office. I thought, there's a
know a job shot there, and I went over and when I put my
hand on the door to leave, he said hey, and I turned around.
He said you're in. Wow. I changed my entire life that right
there. I wasn't like the whole thing was a test. What he pulled
you had you knocked him out, you would have been done. I went
in, Harvey liked you. Nineteen seventy two. How long was the academy
back then? It was eight weeks and five days a week. And on
saturdays we rude a company that they sent us to what either an engine or
a truck? How were you allowed to operate there? You just rode with
them? Oh? No, we went. We went right in the fires
with him. Really well, yeah, I think I was in fire school
two weeks and they sent me the four truck on the west side, which
was an extremely busy place, and kind of my hold aground, and they
told me they pointed to this guy he probably had twenty five years and looked
like they could holler the fire that would go out. He said you stick
with him if we did anything. And we got to fire down the high
rises with nasty, nastiest high rises, and we had fire smoke coming out
the fourth floor. I get off the truck and I'm trying to remember how
to put a mask when the mask were in big green boxes in a compartment
on the truck. I'm like, God, I remember how to put this
one. And that old firefighter John Frank and he said, we don't need
a mask. Come on, and we went inside and went up to the
fourth floor and he said grab my belt, and I grabbed the back of
my buck. We started down the hallway. It was just a narrow hallway,
apartments on both sides. Smoke's getting lower lower, he's bending down.
I'm not I got his bolt. I'm standing up. I'm dying. Sweat
snot running. I can't see that, can't breathe. He's bent down real
low. He's not out of any We get to the apartment that smooth was.
We go in. He took me right through one room, right to
the balcony outside balcony, shoved me out, said stay there, closed the
door, slowed me down when he got the fire out and came back and
got me. He said, I wasn't much of mattson box brings. It
wasn't bad. He said, come on, you can help us overhaul.
I was. We We're overhaul and throwing stuff out, and I'm thinking to
myself, Man, I wonder if other be able to do this job like
these guys do. I mean, they knew everything was like clockwork. They
were a busy company. It a knew what they were doing, and everything
went like clockwork. Everything they did, it was it was a learning experience
right there. And with just two to three weeks in the fire school.
You know, we have the guys riding on the rate back then, right
four four four on the engine four in the truck. We say all the
time rate on the show, like you don't know how far you can go
until somebody shows you where you can go, right right like that? Like
that, Like that's a perfect example of you're there a week and you know,
a couple of weeks and this guy's dragging you through. You know,
you're like, I can't even believe where the hell we're going, right,
you have no idea about the fire department. Next thing you know, you're
like ten rooms deep. You know, and uh, you know, you're
like, I can't even believe I'm here with no mask. Forget about that.
I mean, yeah, we didn't wear a mask back then if you
were on if you were on the engine company especially, Uh, you didn't
wear a mask if you were on the pipe and you were first, and
you were expected to get in there and do your job until the guy had
let off. Put a mask when it came in and relieved you. And
we heard that before too real full did guys say that the guy who let
off, they would take the mask and leave you after you knock most of
it down? Right? Yeah, you learn real quick, Lieutenant taught me
real quick. You opened up my who's on a half for half a fog?
And you get that little pocket of error right by the nozzle. You
put your chin down there, and you got more or less got something to
breathe, you know, enough to let you keep going. Right. It
was a much different, man. It was so different when I came in
and than when I left, no doubt. Right, how was the firehouse
culture back then? At the kitchen table? What was it like the same
as it was when I loved everybody everybody's balls? I mean it was always
fun. It was universally roof anywhere you go, different hits. The table
was these spots in every firehouse. Yep, that's the world problems, right,
Oh my god, yes, all the world. That's why this is
the only show that brings the kitchen table to you. Right. So we
so seventy two, eight weeks of fire school, you assigned to Engine twenty
five. Now there was slow house, there were middle of the road.
What were they? Extremely busy? Oh there you go, extremely busy.
Oh the why that woman was chasing around the house. Who is that young
guy looking good there? Right? Yeah, because we were taxis. We
wore khakis back then, which was real nice when you crawled in a burning
building. They were filthy dirty after one fire khakis. Yeah, it was
an extremely busy ass. I asked. When I was getting out of fire
school, I was playing fast pitched softball and the picture on our team was
high up in our local seven thirty four, our union, and I went
to him and I said, and I want to go somewhere busy. I
don't want to sit around. He said, I'll take care of it.
And I got to sign Engine twenty five on the west side of Baltimore,
a single house or they were single house built in the early nineteen hundreds.
Still had the spots where the troughs were for the horses to drink outte cobblestone
floor. I mean, it was, it was old, it was big.
It was you know, you had the hose tower. You had you
had to change the hose with saturdays. We had a second line engine in
the back. It was not two hundred feet deep. Had a big back
door where you could get the second line engine out the back door. We
ran out the front door. Is that fire house still standing today? It
is, but it was closed. The closed it it's nothing. It's just
sitting there now. I just closed years and years and years ago. So
you evidently you pot guys were riding the backstep, right, no doubt.
Oh yeah, yeah yeah. Now when I got to twenty five, they
had just got a new wagon and we rode inside. But whenever it broke,
when you got a second line, you rode the backstep, and if
you were detailed to a truck under you rode the side of the truck.
If it was that back of the day, riding the back step, like
like Louis and I were on after that that had to be amazing, right
right. In fact, the twenty five engine I took the place of a
guy who got thrown off and killed. Is this it? Yeah? That
looks like kid man. I mean it's where'd you get that picture? He's
quit that gun? So he is on his game lately, right, ruf
he is? I think to give him pretty cal that's hard to time.
When I googled Multimore City Fire Department engine twenty five, this is what came
up I found. I saw a couple of PEPs. Yeah, it's a
real you can tell it's a real deep Yeah, that which I'll pull it
back up. Yeah, that on top of the door that says that's when
the whostsales were maybe Mayfair Hostle and we were saying with this it was a
vacant fire house now whatever the hell it was. But I guess they're selling
something out of there. I was at the corner of the Collaring Gold.
Yeah, it was how much money were you doing back then? Ring?
How much? What running? How many runs you guys go on? You
know, probably over three thousand, which was busy back then. Now since
they closed, I think since since I was in they've closed twenty two companies
and the busy houses now where my my boat. Both boys were in.
They're doing over six thousand yeah, wow, six thousand runs a year at
the medicine five thousand six, you know to six down. It's after a
while. It's uh, what'd you say? Ninety was doing that rough?
They're doing over seven thousand runs. God, you had a medical units.
Medical units are doing between eight and ten the busy medic units, Oh my
god, eight ten. And now you know when I was in, we
worked four fourteen hour nights and four ten hour days. Now they work twenty
four hours. If you're doing six thousand runs, working twenty four hours,
My youngest son's had thirty two runs. I was gonna say, it's over
thirty runs. Yeah, thirty runs was not twenty four hours. The b
boop was going off. I was afraid to hit the ten eight button.
Yeah, I didn't want to go. I didn't want to go ten eight
because I knew there was a picked you up right Yeah, they picked you
right up. Man. And then my youngest son, he would be coming
home and call me up on his way home to talk to keep him awake.
He had like an eight or ten mile drive to get home from the
firehouse. Yeah, he would want to talk just to keep him awake driving
home. Yeah. How did you bring the boys like? Did they have
like upe you have Christmas parties in the firehouse? You have picnics? Did
the boys go with you to all those things in the firehouse? Not so
much. At the we didn't have any anything going on at the firehouse.
I would take them there and show them and to meet everybody. Would they
ride fire engine? There was no room for anything. Would they ride with
you ever? Bring them in the rite with you? Not? When they
were kids? No, No, we were. They fire your ass if
you did that. I mean they was. They were pretty strict. They
were pretty strict. Did they did? Did you did they? Did you
know right away that the boys were interested? Or did that come up?
They were? They weren't interested. They saw me come home busted up and
burned, and said, and you were going down. You might want to
be a doctor. Once they got into the real world and started working other
jobs. And I said, uh, I got your oldest son. He
was he was too much, way too much like me, way too much
like me. And I said, I gotta get him an application. And
I said, you go down and take the test. Him and his best
friend. They went down and took the test, and it was the same
way with him as it was with me. I think that that really put
him on he got in there. It was like, I don't want to
lose this job. Yeah. Put him on the path. Yeah. And
my youngest son was the same way. He was the same way he was.
He wasn't like me. He was more like my wife. He was
more laid back. He had a lot more sense than me and my oldest
son. And it took him a while. He went to college for a
year to play football and blew his knee out. He came home and worked
some different jobs and finally, so I want to try a fire depart And
he took the test. He did well, and he got in five years
after his brother did. Wow, awesome. Who who are some of the
bosses? Who are some of the guys there when you first got the twenty
five that stick out to you that really took you under that wing type of
thing. I had a guy, an lieutenant named Lieutenant Baber, and he
was a tough old bird. He came from another busy firehouse when he made
lieutenant, but he was only there about a year. When I while I
was there in the UH, he was burned out. He said, I
got to go somewhere slow and he transferred out. And the first acting man,
I don't know, you guys have a first acting somebody takes the lieutenant's
place a firefighter. When the lieutenant's off or if he goes sick during the
tour, you have acting lieutenant would be the senior guy. Yeah, this
was This was the senior guy in the house. If the lieutenant was one
vacation, he took the lieutenant's place. And it was a black guy named
Willie Gibson, and he was a great guy man. He taught me a
lot what to do, what not to do, and he was one of
the first, one of the first blacks to come into the fire departments a
matter of fact, and he would tell me what it was like when he
came in, what he had to go through with the separate beds and separate
eating utensils and separate sangu's all that stuff. Yeah, but he did it
wasn't he didn't tell it like he was bitter. It was just a matter
of fact. And we would stay up late at night talking about all different
subjects. And then we had another guy who was a gratchy guy. I
didn't like him, he didn't like me. Let that go. And there
was another guy earning, Bobby Simone, and he had two and a half
years in but all the twenty five engines, so we had a lot,
a lot of service. And he was another one that was helpful to me.
Yeah, when you're a bookie, you need the fire school. Don't
teach you nothing to compare to the Do you agree with that? I mean,
oh absolutely, on the job learning nothing like it, especially if you
get guys who never had a job before in their life. You know,
they cause, you know, staring at the dishwasher sometimes, like you don't
know how to turn on the dishwasher. Bro, you you can't have to
make coffee? Yeah that's right, you had to make coffee. Yeah,
we do that. It's funny you say that, come on, make coffee
for you guys that don't know how to make coffee. And I send him
the chief teaching that is that what you do? I passed that down to
me. I just like this. Yeah, I have good I have a
good team. Man. He's guys a sellid all right, So you're there
to how can we leave after two and a half years. I wasn't there
enough. They detailed you other companies all the time, and every time I
got DJIL, I rode to medic and I hated riding to medic and I
just wasn't there enough. And the captain of the thirteen engine, which was
about six or seven blocks south of twenty five he was, He asked me
if I wanted to come down there and just getting outen me, And I
thought yeah, because there was a double house. So if you got detailed,
just stayed now perfect you learn the truck work, right, I sort
of learned truck work. Yeah, if you don't ride it enough, you
know you're just doing what the guys are telling you to do. Well.
When I was a twenty five engine, tell this story. Uh, they
were rookie, don't know nothing. Go to a car accident up and drew
a big park, threw a hill park, cars upside down. People were
out there. They're screaming the guy lost his leg. Guy lost his leg.
So of course I'm the rookie. The captain the tennant says to me,
crawl in that car and get the leg. The car's on its roof,
I'm crawling on the inside of the roof and I see the I see
the leg, and I'm like, oh Jesus, And I get closer and
I reach out and I realize it's an artificial leg. It's not a real
leg. It's a prost theses. So I crawl out of the car and
I hold the leg up in the air. I said, I got it.
I got it. And the people were screaming. They're hiding their eyes
there, turning away. We get back to the firehouse. Man, we
were laughing for an hour over and the people were freaking out. Everybody thought
it was a real leg. It was a good time. It's a good
time in that house. I just wasn't there enough. So there's a story
that says, uh, your first fire night working at the end of twenty
five, you on the watch in four am. Oh yeah, the Uh
my lieutenant, we've been running all night my first night there. And my
lieutenant said, look, I'm not staying out. They put me on a
four to six watch. He said, I'm not staying up all night with
you. He said, see all these numbers on his desk. It was
like fifty fifty sixty numbers on the desk. He said, if they call
one of those numbers, you throw that gun. And he went to bed.
I'm sitting there, nerve on Christ. Now what that half hour later
they call box three seven three three month, Pennsylvania. I know it's here.
I know it's on his desk. This is a building fire box three
seventh three. I'm looking down nerves like I'm looking at mewhile I can hear
the guys. They hear it. They're getting up. They slide the pole.
The lieutenant slides the pole, looks at me. I said, I
can't find a number. Get on the wagon. We get, We go
a couple of blocks, like five six blocks. We got a body and
fender shop burned, locked up tight as a drum. Dad. Chief gets
there. Nobody can get in their truck. Companies working. They call a
second alarm. Finally they get the whole big rolling doors up about three feet
and my lieutenant says, come on, let's go. No mask. Crawl
underneath three quarter boots. I forget to pull them up. They're filling up
with water. Crawl all the way in. I can't breathe, I can't
see. Lieutenants. Got my head shoved down by the pipe, open it
up. We got cars burning, we got offices burning. I can hear
them working on the roof. I can hear other companies hitting up with water.
We finally darken it down. The tennis says file. The who's out
take a break? So I crawled out few on the hoose, I crawl
under the door. I throw up. I'll look up. There's a battalion
chief stick almost threw up. He said, all right, son, I
said, grace spitting up black flim for two days. Beautiful. So what
about the fire we knocked out the austiness? Oh, we had a fire
up. Were caught up the hill, the great, big three story,
big joints of all rowhouses. We pull up. We're first in. The
truck company gets there. We're taking our line off. The truck company throws
the twenty four foot ladder. The guy that set the fire runs over and
knocks the ladder down. While they're getting the thirty five off, they throw
the thirty five. They're going to put the twenty four. He throw.
He knocks the thirty five down. We're going inside, Me and my lieutenant.
We're going down the hallway. We find a guy laying in the hallway.
My lieutenant says, I'm gonna drag him out. You stay here,
I'll be right back. So he's dragging him out the hallway. Meanwhile,
Bobby Simon had let off. He comes in with a mask. When I
got it, I got it, So I follow him a lieutenant out and
by now he's outside. He's got the guy on his shoulder. He's walking
down the sidewalk. The guy that set the firewalks up. Boom, hits
the lieutenant in the chest, knocks him down. He drops the guy on
the ground. I grabbed a guy to hit him, beat his head into
the concrete, knock him out. Where the old days, a fighting came
in off a fight. The crowd is going now they want a piece of
me. The crowd's going nuts. And one guy was the instigator of the
crowd. There's a cop there, let's get ready. Sorry, he raised
He was like this. Sorry. He looks like Bama Smith from the Boma
Coach. Great big guy and he had this big longmu in a flashlight and
he poked it in this guy's chest that was starting out of trouble. So
I'm gonna tell you one time, shut up. And the guy kept yelling,
and he went back handed him in the mouth with this allo and a
flashlight. They got at the medics coming to medic comes to take him away.
To come and take away the guy I knocked out. They come and
take away the guy. All the tonant dragged out. We get the fire
out, We get back to twenty five engine. I want to talk about
it. They don't take anything off this ship. You get the day,
not a day Holy Christmas, not the day to the ghetto. Bro.
Yeah, let me see I missed these stories from there. Nope, nope,
yep, and I seventy four year transfer the thirteen most were never act
twenty five right down the street, six six seven blocks down the street.
Oh so that was a big house. You had an engine, thirteen,
truck four, ambulance AMBO four and the battalion for for you. Wow,
that was a big house, man. How many guys you cook it for?
There? We didn't do a lot of cooking, to be honest with
your God. Maybe once once a trick somebody would cook. We didn't do
a lot of cooking, not not like you see now. We didn't do
a lot in that house. But it was a tight house. In the
firehouse right, huh, that's because you weren't in the firehouse. You were,
we didn't have microwaves yet, right, I have a microwaves. You
know, I forgot about that roof. What was it like back then?
Because microwave only came out in the eighties, right, food got food,
got cold, cold, warming up, go out warming up every a while.
I think that that was one of the greatest inventions for the fire service
ever. In the fact, the first time I saw a microwave, I
was detailed to another firehouse I saw. I say, you got a microwave
on here? I said, how do I use this thing? I want
to cook a hot though? Yeah, you know I was an easy mark.
Say how long a cook a hot dog? He said, five minutes?
Come out bet that pig. It was about this pick. I'll shrivel
up. You got me on your But thirteen engine four truck was a really
good house, really tight house. We had a great captain. He was
real strict, but he was real fair. I mean, somebody didn't clean
the oven. He took the heating element out of it for a week,
couldn't use the other nice but eventually he was in on the card games.
And you know, we bowed. There was a Fire Department shift bowling league.
We all bowed in that. We played ball together. I played on
the Fire Department baseball team. I played different junior colleges and played the played
the Bald in the City Cops at Memorial Stadium before the Warrior game. That's
cool. That was neat. It was all. It was a tight shift,
it really was. It was a lot off duty. We were off
duty. We hung together all the time. Everything we did was together.
Uh So let's talk about some of the guys you got there. You got
the Doug Fall, Stan Williams, you had the nicknames for all of them.
Let's uh, let's talk about some of these guys. Well, I
told you Captain Geleski he was. He was the captain, and he was
the captain. I mean, you knew he was the captain. You knew
he was in charge. But uh, like I said, he was fair
with everybody. If you screwed up and he got you got in your ass,
you knew you deserved it. You knew you deserve it. Stan Williams
was a big guy, like six three sixty four. He had a scholarship
for UH as a tight end to Clemson and uh, it didn't work out.
He got homesick or something. He quit, came home and joined the
fire department. And he was. He was a lot of fun. He
was a boisterous kind of guy and dunk falls. I went through fire school
with. He wasn't there when I first transferred there, but he came in
not after a lot long afterwards, and he was hysterical. He was a
tunnel right in Vietnam man. He was. He never never shut up,
even when you played golf. He talked when you were hitting. He talked
when he was hitting. He never stopped. He was He could say stuff
to Captain Gileskie did nobody else could get away with. He called him by
his first name one time. We're playing cards. Come on, Ronnie,
come on right. Yeah, they were good guys. There were a lot
of a lot of really good guys. That's so funny. And the truck
was the same way. The truck was tight. Guys. You know,
we chuck cushto with big blond haired guy that he knew his work. You
could always depend on him. But he was he was an easy mark.
He was getting he was getting married, and we met his wife, his
wife to be his fiance, and we told him he couldn't get married,
and to his chief and to his wife, had an interview with the chief
of the fire department, and he's so he fell for it a special to
his wife to meet the chief of the fire And he wrote the special and
and uh, our battalion chief was in quarters, and we told him that
you got to hand deliver it to the battalion chief and he'll he'll sign it
and then he'll send it downtown. And of course we're all waiting, and
he goes in. We can hear he goes into the chiefs of the time
and the chief, he was a no nonsense kind of guy. Man Chuck
goes in there and says, here's my special. The chief said, what's
this for? You said, this request and permission from my wife to my
fiance to meet the chief of the fire of him and said we can get
married. And the chief said, what are you stupid? Don't you know
they're pulling your leg? Get out of hold laugh. Oh my god,
that's horrible. But he was a good guy. He was a really good
guy. A lot of a lot of good guys in that house. Man
say, what about huh, pooty Poody. Poody was a short little black
eye could out work anybody on a fire ground. And we played pitch every
night when we were night work at a card table. And uh, I
don't know if you ever played pitch, but if you bid four and make
it in our rules, you went all the money for that hand, and
uh, you had you had to say you were all in. But he
wouldn't say. He would stand up and act like you pull guns out and
he was an alma far the hell of a farm. That's great? Did
you guys, ray, You guys ran in with twenty five like clothes?
Was there? Like? Uh? Did you try and beat them in?
And stuff like that? The competition back then was more than it is now,
I believe anyway. And uh oh yeah, yes, everybody turned out
quick and even. And we had street boxes then and most of them were
false. It didn't make any difference. If there was a twenty five box
and they were supposed to be first in it, we got there first.
I didn't hear the end of it. Man didn't hear the end of eight
engine ten truck were our wound up. They were west of us. It
was the same way with them. The competition was fierce. It really was.
It was good nature, but it was fiercest. I love it.
That's good. Makes everybody better, right, coots, thanks, everybody better?
You're right? Makes the upstick game. You know. When we went
there, when we turned the engine into a squad, they all hated us.
They hated us because we would steal the boxes we made them. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, not gonna get out. We're gonna take your box.
That's right exactly there for the ticket. Yeah. We if we beat
him in, we'd ask them what happened? Your door's stuck down. You
couldn't get out? Why what happened? Uh? So July seventy five,
July seventeenth, at a dwelling five five thirty sixth Lauren Street. Yeah,
that was three blocks from thirteen Engine, middle of the night, at four
o'clock in the morning, I guess, And it was a worker and Stan
Williams had the pipe. I don't know where my officer, the captain,
wasn't working on it. I wound up behind stand after I got off,
and this place was rolling and they were screaming that people were trapped. There's
a three story dwelling row house and when Stands alarm went off for his bottle.
I took the pipe and I wound up trying to go up the steps,
and it was hottest fire had ever been in And I got to the
third floor and my bell went off, and I kept going out of stupidity.
And then when of course, in your air runs out and the mask
goes that camp. He took the mask off, went to go down the
steps, fell down of steps and fell about ten feet and I didn't know
if they told me later. I crawled right over a two year old baby
on a slavery way and we lost six people dead, eight injured. And
the guy that set the fire, a girl owed him twenty dollars, I'll
burn you out, and he fire bombed the place twenty bucks. Twenty bucks.
Yeah, that's crazy. Had some high rise fires and the Murphy Homes.
Of those like the Murphy Homes, it was four buildings fourteen stories high,
like a fourteenth story ur. I mean it was. It was terrible.
That's a good one. I like that one story. I've been in
a couple of others. It was terrible. Yeah, you had a guy.
He wasn't in our wasn't in our house. It was in another house.
Well, we go down there and they would throw stuff out of the
high rise, out of some stuff. We went down and uh, he
got this guy got hit. We had the cops with us and this fireman
and name Ernie Florentine. The old tary guy had twenty some years and he
got hit with a bottle and a helmet that burke cut his face. Cops
are staring. He grabs the cop. He's trying to get the gun out
of the cops because we grabbed. He's rustling around with the cop. Finally
we pulled him away and later I said, Ernie, what are you gonna
do if you got that gun out? He said, I was just gonna
start basting away a good thing crazy so he can shot in front of us
while we were down there. I mean it was It was a bad,
a bad, bad place, man. Wow. He blew him up.
A couple of years before I got out of the fire department. They blew
them all up, the low rises in there. What was that neighborhood life
back then? Was it like the South Bronx? Would you say like it
was it? It was never in the South Bronx, But I can I
can tell you from what I've read it probably was like the South Pars.
I mean it was. It was a bad it got worse. It got
worse. When the crack epidemic came, they got it worse. Willie Gibson,
the old guy for twenty five Engines, told me that at one time
Pennsylvania Avenue was the main third fair through Westimo at the time. And he
said there were night clubs in there. All the top black acts, the
where the singers, the top singers, the top proops. They all went
to Pennsylvania Avenue. It was really big. And when that when everything got
bad and everything got vacant, and the rats took over and the crack heads
took over. Man, I'm telling you, I've never said I hadn't been.
Never in my life. I've been to West Baltimore before I got assigned
to twenty five Engine or fourth drawn. I was amazed. A lot of
vacants, a lot of vacant stare right, oh yeah then and probably less
then. When I got the fire department, it was nine seventy thousand people
in Baltimore. Now there was five hundred and fifty thousand. Wow, everybody
moved out that could move out. I felt sorry. For the people that
couldn't move. They were stuck. They they couldn't come out at night.
When I was an eight entril tumble, they couldn't come out at night around
there. I remember, I think I told Cobo this. I remember.
I think it was ninety three, ninety four. Uh. We went to
the fire Expo down there at Baltimore, right in the Harbor, and a
friend of mine, he had like the scanner and everything. He I had
just got on the job, but he was like a big buff buss And
I remember driving around like in some of the blocks just outside of the Harbor.
I don't know what part of Baltimore it was, but you could have
told me I was in Lebanon, Like yeah, it was absolutely yeah.
I mean it was burned out. It was. I mean it was just
people just sitting in the streets like walking around. It looked like I bombed
out, you know what. I what I would think Lebanon or one of
those places what you said, eleven On, because I was compared to the
Bay Route. Yeah, same thing, same type of thing. I would
tell people if they went to your harbor, I said, don't wander away.
Yes, there you go. We used to weft more than five or
six blocks. No, it's I couldn't even believe I was looking. I
was just talking. I don't know how I was talking to. It amazed
me when I first got on the job. In the project areas, like
three o'clock in the morning, you get a run maybe kids playing like hopscotch
and people out talking, and I'm like, it's three o'clock in the morning.
Yeah, the next ten, eleven, twelve, one o'clock, it's
like a coach. Nobody's sleep, nobody's awe. I used to going to
sleep the world. Yeah, I used to. I used to drive a
little truck part time, and if I hadn't deliver in the ghetto, I
made my deliveries. It's between six and seven in the morning because all the
crackheads were asleep. Yeah, six and seven in the morning. If you
got there at eleven o'clock, they were getting up. They were looking for
who they were going to rob. Yeah, they rob you right. Yeah.
I did the same thing. I had to trump a canna wrap.
In nineteen seventy six, you get a new captain named Charlie Immel. Oh.
Yeah, Captain Goloski made chief. He left Charlie Emo was on four
truck and he wanted to do engine work and he came over with us.
That was a blessing man. This guy was fun. He was a lot
of fun. He was. It was a good captain and one hell of
a firefighter. He uh one year with us. I don't know if it
was seventy six. It might have been seventy six or seventy seven. He
was firefighter the year for Balma City. He had three rescues. The last
one we were with him, he crawled up the steps and uh, tipped
the crib over. He couldn't stand up. It was too hot. You
didn't have a mask. When he tipped the crib over and a baby rolled
out. Wow. He picked the baby up and crawled back down and just
as he got the steps to the entire hallway in the in the room flashed
over and uh, that was his third rescue of that year. Wow,
he got Firefighter of the year. He used to turn he used to turn
take the corder on when he turned out because he wanted to hear him.
He wanted to practice if he was first in to say, working fire.
He's walking around the firehouse working fire. One day one day, I'm driving
box and uh, we don't see anything. And he's getting ready to call
on a false alarm. And I look over and a half a block over
on McCalla Street, flames are going out the third floor of his row house.
I said, Christ, look over there. He picks up the microphone.
He says, we got one. I said, been practicing for two
months here, what's going on? I don't know. I think you'll fold
them the questioning Henry. Yeah, he was a good guy. He was
a good guy. I liked working with him. That's funny. Uh,
what about Uh? And I'm up to seventy seven. A lot of these
guys still haven't been born yet. Dwelly fire at seventeen hundred Madison Avenue.
Oh yeah, gloves. I was with mal then and we had we had
been We had a multiple alarm earlier that day, about five six alarms in
the lumber yard and it was it was cold and raining, and I'll come
back and I'm on watch from I think I had four to six or two
to four. I forget which, but uh, I look out the window
and across the street block away when the Loon Avenue flames splow out of the
third floor. I turned everybody out. We we go over there to ask
for the box and uh. We get to the top of the steps and
I go to get my gloves. I left them back in the quarters of
dry already, and I'm we're first. Then I'm laying at the top of
the steps and I looked at him, who was snuggling up behind me.
I said, gryst, I forgot my gloves. He said, I got
a pair. I said good, and he pulled them out and he said,
but you're the only pair I got, and he put them on.
I like this guy. I'm putting the pipe on my arm and putting my
hands like that, crawling down the hall. Yeah, and we found a
guy in there. I should even told us. We found a guy in
there dead. And when the smoke cleared, it was blood all over the
bathroom. The guy was laying in the bathroom. We said, man,
we better leave him there and call the cops. And there were two cops.
One of my I grew up with, hung in my hung in our
firehouse. And you know their their sense of humor was just as bad as
ours. And this guy had been cut his throat, shot him and set
him on fire. And I wanted to make sure he was dead. The
cops said, there's the worst case of suicide I've ever seen. So say
that ain't cut himself shaven. Yeah, it was a shop reason. Uh
So nineteen seventies, Doug get burned. Who's Doug gets burned? Falls the
talker, the guy who won't shut up the talking gets burned. Yeah,
we getta We gonna that shut him up when he got burned and he was
still talking. Oh I got burned, but he was still talking the whole
time. We were in there, frawing on behind him. We crawled down
the hallway and just as we started into the room, it's burned, big
big room burning somebody, some idiot stuck a hose in the in the window
and blew it right on back on us, and Dougie threw him. We
wound up out in the hallway again. So I said, come on,
we'll get it. We'll get it this time. We'll go back in.
And he's like, I got it, I got it. I got He's
talking and talking. We started in. Part of the ceiling comes down.
We got three quarter boots on and he's he's crawling and it goes right the
embers got right down his boot and there burns lad. He's like a right
and he's taking the hoose and he's trying to shoot it down his boot and
every time he takes it off the fire the fire gets worse. So we
back back out again. So I said, I'll take the plate about I
stuck the hose in his boot again. I said, I got it,
I'll take it. So I go in and I work it. We get
I get the fire out, and my bell's going off. So I go
over the window and I take my helmet off, and I take my mask
off, and I lean out the window to get some air. Just as
twenty truck four throwing the twenty four foot ladder into the window. They can't
see me because of the smooth hit me right between the eyes for a couple
of seconds, only a couple of seconds. Take me outside. Don't like
this, not the funk out. I'm going to Wow, he says,
are you sure see my leg? That's a great story with that was great
man, He was great. Oh my god. Cool. Can you imagine
you finally catch your break? You stick your head out the window and get
a blow and hit you like I had hurt like a bitch through the ply
without the window, and it came down like a piece of paper and hit
the captain right in the head. Oh man, So we got a fire
on Freemont Avenue too, Yeah, seventy eight. Yeah. Like I said,
the competition was fierce to beat beat the companies in also eight engine get
to this fire dwelling, fire sucker floor. We get there at the same
time. Into the quarter line inch the three quarter line. We're going inside.
I'm the pipe man, eight inch pipe man. We get there,
We're gonna mask off. The mask is tagging again. Gotta take your gloves
off, take your helmet off, put the mask on. Pot distrats,
put the helmet on. All I'm out of the corner of mine. I
can see him. He's keep it. We're both doing the same thing.
He stops to put his gloves on. I said, I ain't put my
clothes. I go up the steps. No clothes I get. I get
up to the top, landing the fires over to my left, and as
I sco to turn, somebody hollered, look out, look out, it's
over your head. And I turn and look and it blows out and a
ceiling over my head and I just curled up into a ball and put the
pipe straight up over my head and open it and everything all the fire is
falling and I can feel it landing on my hand and nothing I could do
about it. So I hear guys, I'm like you, are you all
right? And I said I'm okay. So I get the fire out and
I asked Chuck cushto from the truck. I said, shine your hand on
my leg. I think I burned my hand and he's I mean you're light
on my hand. He shines his leg and all the skin like this said
cheese. I go outside. I'm in the medicare and this is this is
fire department. This is just like fireman. I'm into medicure that it's getting
ready to bend my head up, get ready to pull away on the back
door to medic chief Chuck pushed there. The guy that was in there that
shined his light was the door. He says, you all right? I
said, yeah, I burn my hands. So I got to go down
to the hospital. He said, you're not coming back to work today,
are you? I said hell no? He said, can I have your
lunch? I was off. I was off part of while I was first
and some second degree, and I was off for over a month. I
guess, holy thought, I thought you were going to say, he was
going to say, here's your gloves. I doubt even more. Uh,
I was lucky I didn't get in trouble for that. That's when I went
to ten truck, ten truck, not eight. I started. You mentioned
eight as well, so I thought you might have had some correspondence with these
guys for eight engine. Now you know what happened When I was at twenty
five and thirteen. Nobody was taking pictures. There were no phone cameras.
You know. When I got to eight and ten, we had a guy
that room with named Jim Keith. Great guy. He was a pharmaceutical salesman
for Lily and he was also a professional photographer. He did weddings and he
was a firebuff and he had permission to ride with thirteen truck Rick Lego his
company, and he rode with ten truck where I was, where I had
gone, and that's where all these pictures are from. Let me see that
picture again, guns, who is who are some of those guys in there?
Uh? The guy on the far left, that's Rodney Carter. Hell
of a farmer and the guy in the middle he was a lieutenant. I
mean the guy next to Rodney that was We called him Duke. He got
all busted up on a fire and when a collapse broke, broke eight ribs.
The guy bending down went through fire school with my son Ray. It's
Moose Moose. He was a moose. He was a big, powerful boy.
And the guy standing up with the mustache next to him was the pump
operator Alex, and then Bob McMillan next to him, the tall boy.
We rode to work together for years and years. Carpoo went into ten truck
and then Charlie next to him. He was with us for a little while.
He came over his first actor man, and then me and then Mike
Proser. He was the other ev D with me. He recalled him the
energizer bunny. You couldn't wear him out. I mean he would work I
think until he until he dropped dead, and they were all. I was
so lucky in all the years that I was in that I've worked with so
many really good, good fireing man. I felt like I was extremely lucky
to have that happen. It's like Disney World ra Yeah, and here they
were. They were a bunch of good guys. I don't keep in touch
with many of him anymore. Rodney died of cancer, Duke died, Moose
just retired. I talked to Alex, I talked to Bobby, and Mike
moved to West Virginia when he retired. Mike Prosier, he moved to West
Virginia when he go far away from West Baltimore as he could get. Yeah.
Hell yeah. All the rigs in Baltimore still white. Uh uh yeah
now they're yeah, I think except we had the Gray Ghost was there?
It is. That's the one I drove until the Great Ghost. That's the
Great Ghost. It was supposed to be painted, and they never did it.
They left the primer for years. Nothing no, nothing, nothing generic
fight. That's no frills right there. I gotta tell Potter, Potter Wills,
that was a that truck. When you would it rode like the wind,
I mean it would five speed and it could really roll. And the
neighbors they knew it as the Great Ghost. Cops knew it as the Gray
Ghost. I freaking love it. Man. That's a great pick. Look
at that thing. Huh that's over the roof of ten truck, and that
photographer friend of mine, Jim Keith, he took that. You see all
three storage dwellings clock a block after block. Not a car on the road.
I'm sorry, does a pickup truck on the other way before you a
to ten? You were at fifteen right? Yeah? Before Well, I
got promoted to ev D and I went to twenty five truck. It was
the second slowest truck company in Balmer City and I almost went out of my
mind there. It was just way, way, way too slow for me.
I was called a floating EVD. If they needed anywhere in that battalion,
if they needed somebody driver, tiller, but all three trucks were slow
in that battalion. I didn't like it. And then Captain Gileskie called me
up, so I hear you're not too happy yet. He was the chief
and a busy battalion. I said, no, I'm not and he said,
edulate the flat with me. I said, I'd appreciate it. I
think I floated for less than a year. And then when he called me
up two weeks later, I was in his battalion and I wound up at
fifteen truck, which was in the east side in the ghetto, single house,
real busy and a bunch of good guys, guys that knew what they
were doing. Had a big, big barrel Chester lieutenant that I watched him
pick a civilian up that staggered into the firehouse screaming at us. He picked
him up by the seat of his passing his collar, threw him out of
the firehouse body. I was like, we need that was there. I
was there for a couple of years. I had some good fires there.
Where is that picture Gouds with the three guys walking away? Where was that?
Oh? That was that's Bob McMillan and me and and Mike Brazier on
the right. That was it? That was it. That's all old ten
truck. That's the gray goose. That's the back of the gray goose.
That's a great picture. Man. Yeah, I like that. Jim Keith
took that one too. We had maybe it was a second alarm on Pennsylvania
Avenue. We were walking back to the truck in the rain. Oh,
there's the little t tent under there, yeah, truck ten. Yeah,
Yeah, that's the sport Tilla cabs I've seen after a while until the cab
broke and instead of fixing it, they just put it off. So you're
driving like Kramer sat like at fifteen Truck. When I went to fifteen Truck,
their first line truck was was uh, just a windshield in a seer
room, no cab. And I used to tell there were younger, younger
guys there. I used to tell them, said, man, make you
put your seatbelt on. I said, if you hit a curb, you'll
go flying out of there. And there was a guy there named Tony Rose,
good guy man, nice guy, young guy. He was still didn't
put a seatbelt on, got hit my car at Fayette and Patterson Park and
somehow by the time they got it stopped, he was up inside the wheel
well of the tiller and his leg was almost cut off. And we were
I was at a union meeting and uh they announced it. Fifteen truck just
racked up in its bed. Sounds bad. The rescue is going. So
we left him and rode up there. Time we got there, they had
to take the timber wheel off to get him out. Oh my god,
he was screaming for him to kill him. He was in so much pain.
And they saved his leg, but he was never able to come back
to work. Oh my, he would have had a seatbelt on. Nothing
would happen. I've had a few guys in the wheel well that they don't
usually do well in there. No will wind up at the wheel well.
It's not a good place. No no. And I was there for a
couple of years. Ten were talking about right, I was fifteen, oh
fifteen, But then you go to ten. You get any good fire stories
from ten? Oh? Yeah, ten ten. I spent seventeen years at
ten. One or two coobs one or two, three or four. Yeah.
I worked with Lieutenant Don't who was probably eight eight. I'd saone who
left with the white hair. I love it. Uh hard as nails,
this guy man five eight five eight. If I'm stretching it, then Coop
stretches it all the time. And if you did something and another officer hollered
at you, man, he would come over and get in that officer's face
and scream out him. If he needs to be hollered at, I'll holler
at him. Hell. Yeah. He was in the old school. No
mask or very You saw him with a mask, he was like, hey,
look look he's got a mask on. Yeah, very very solid.
He used to be five ten, right, But you know when you get
the gray hair, you start shrinking, you know, shrinking, that's shrinking.
We we're down the high ride. We're down to Murphy Holmes. And
like I said, Murphy homes were filthy, filthy, filthy. And we
get a fire on the eighth floor. And the elevators were always out of
service. They were broken. And so me and and uh Rick through Theberg
and Martin office. We put masks. Thanks one got the mask kind of
down. We got to run to the eighth floor. Well Doult she was
a lot older than us, but with no man as going and it was
great shape. He takes off. He pieces up there. We get up
there, he said. He's kneeling down. He says, Christ of smoke's
down here. And the door is closed to the hallway at each end,
so we may ask up. He opens the door. We go in.
We're calling I go. We dropped this door open. I go all the
way down, drop the other door open, try and get some ventilation.
I'm coming back. I'm I'm duck walking coming back. There's Lieutenant Dots.
His mouth is on the floor and his fallway and his lips dragging on the
floor. I said, is it fluid taste? Lieutenant? You knocked it.
He was a good guy man, he was. He was a hard
guy and uh Rick Sludeberg worked there. He drove and I tiller and uh
and he could drive to he could make that thing fly and it was and
he was a really really good fuck That's what I said. I had so
much luck working with these guys that were such good firefighters. Yeah, have
to worry about your back. These guys at your back at all. I'm
sure they said the same about you, right, Huh, I'm sure they
said the same thing about you. Oh yeah, I would hope they did.
Yeah. Uh So November twenty eighty five, Lieutenant Nelson Taylor, Yeah,
he wasn't on our shift. We came in on day work and his
shift was still standing. They were standing a stairing at the door and I
walked in. It's going on and somebody said, Lieutenant Taylor got killed in
the dwelling last night. Turns out that they had had a fire in a
basement and he was one eight engine. Lieutenant Taylor was and the pipe man
they stopped to mask up and gloves and he got done before the pipe man.
He said, I'll take the pipe, and he went in and he
got to the basement steps and he started down and it blew back, and
he threw himself backwards, and there was a refrigerator behind him, and he
bounced off of it and rolled down the steps, and the captain of the
truck tended to Captain Shugate. He tried to get him, and he wound
up getting it, almost almost died himself. The tenant, Taylor died down
there in the basement and they left. It pissed me off. They left
the whole shift one due to the rest of the night running if they got
another fire. Oh my god, really you do that? Oh man,
Oh, who the fuck made that cold? I guess the chief. I
don't know, chief of fire department. I guess. Yeah, that was
cold. That was cold. That pissed everybody off. Taylor I didn't know
that well. He was one of the other shifts. He worked from the
East Side for most of his career. But everybody that talked about him had
nothing but good things to say. In twenty six years, it says,
huh, yeah, a shame, shame. What about the high rise firing
the homes? And that was one of my dults we're crawling on the floor.
Okay, falling on the floor. Look back on that one. Mm
hmmm. And I had a fire on Laurence Street and got Laurence Street was
a business street. And we pull up and there's a girl. The smoke
coming out the second floor too story joint and uh, I said, teenage
girl sitting on the steps and me and Donald Horton got off. So there's
nobody in there? Is that? She said, Oh yeah, my mother
and father upstairs in the Oh my god. We rush upstairs. They were
in the back bedroom and it was the middle room burner. We crawled past
the middle room and we forced the door open, hit about halfway and we
find the guy and we dragged him out to the steps and we go back
in and we're pushing on the door, pushing the door, and we finally
get in and we find a woman. She the reason we couldn't get the
door, but she was behind it and we drag her out. And the
whole time I'm thinking, I know, move is coming with this pipe so
we don't get trapped in here. And that's what I said, you could
depend on these guys. Man, And the eight engine came up and we
crawled by and they were coming into hitting the fire. We crawled the steps,
dragged the people outside, and they both made a full recovery. And
there's a picture, one of the pictures in there, me and Donald Horton
sitting on the running board of the truck after we pulled those people out.
That's it right there. And the guy Jim Keifer took that picture. He
said it's one of his favorite pictures. And what was telling when that picture
that we didn't know until later. You can see I'm relaxed, I'm okay.
Donald's leaning on his knees, leaning on the truck like he's having trouble
breathing. I was saying, that's a tripod position there. Yeah, damn
it, that ems coming out and you listen, we've been talking about it
all night. That's all I got in my head is d fibbs and uhs.
A couple of years after that picture was taken, he was home and
had a massive heart attack and died. A yeah, he was in his
I think he was like forty some years old, like middle forties. Look
at you there is that okay, looks like a movie star. Rough for
crying out loud. Look I like looking at it because I'm thinner there eighty
five there, now I'm two twenty. Did you get a metal or citation
for that and anything for that? Yeah, we we probably would have.
Well, we didn't push it, and we had a We had a really
tough battalion chief. He was hard to please. To please, you say,
two people who lived, I mean, come on, I mean that
was the way it was. It's just the way it was back then.
That's crazy, right, just doing the job, right, bro. Yeah,
yeah, John Johnson said Charles Bronson. He does look a little bit
like Charles Bronson. Yeah, all my life, my life, Yeah,
John Johnson's right, which was piggy on the same one we just had.
Yeah, yeah, I would rather look like Brad Pitt. I didn't work
down. And then in eighty six I burned one whole side in my face
a gas meter in a basement fire. We had it knocked. It was
just smoldering in places, and we didn't know that the gas meter was leaking,
and all of a sudden I had a helmet on with the shield down,
no mask, and all of a sudden it lit off and the gas
was inside my mask and it burned the whole right side of my face.
Ouch. I drove out the basement window. It was about twenty degrees outside,
and I'm laying there thinking, man, I hope I didn't burn my
eye or what I hope it didn't lose my eye. And the paramatics came
running over and poured cold water on it. Took my breath away, and
then they thought I was having a heart attack. Took me to the hospital
and they kept putting cold compresses on it and wound up smearing silver dean all
over. It was all blistered up, and so I was in there a
couple of hours. They released me. I go back to ten truck,
take my gear back and get get I'm gonna get my car and go home.
I walked in and the guys were like, god damn. Donald's looked
at me and said, you were now Robert Redford to begin with, that
was no. I was off duty for quite a while with that one.
I was that was pretty painful. I was gonna pull that up for you,
kid. Somebody they're asking about the towel out with no boom that was
running coals. They want you to talk a little bit about what the towel
out of that had no boom. I'm assuming the tower was no boom running
coals. That's that's not mine. Well all right, well there you go,
Toman. What are you doing? Because I had Tom was hitting it
up too. You'll get that twenty bucks back Tomomy. Sorry, yeah,
different guy. It was maybe laut of forty nine. Maybe I don't know.
Maybe all right. So I met Joaquin Phoenix. Oh digit he was
riding ten truck. I was, I just retired, just retired, and
they had him riding ten truck to learn how to act like a fireman and
somebody else for Baltimore, saying that they were really cool, both of those
guys. To Volta, Oh yeah, my son, John Travolta wrote five
truck with my son. I got a picture of my son and him standing
next to each other. But the guys that take you said, uh,
Joaquin Phoenix, we're going down to the bar down in Canton. He's buying.
We want you to come down and meet him. And I went down
there. He was a little guy, man like five't seven or something.
Oh whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Hey, you're not standing
up. I can't telling you I am standing a rank five seven might be
a stretch too. I was just remember I tell you about when you get
the gray, hey, you start shrinking. Here what I wanted to tell
you. When I was at fifteen truck, we got a little garage vacant
full of garbage. We go inside and no mass four of us and the
engines there and we're pulling, pulling things apart and everything, and so whatever
was burning effected this bed and we all were having shortness of breath and throwing
up. So they called him, and we know we're gonna be all right,
but they called him. Medic units. So they take me. They're
taking me to Johns Hopkins Hospital, and the guy driving a medic was a
good friend of mine. We played softball in the fire department softball team together
and everything. Name is Jerry Morgan. So we get to the hospital and
I'm on a stretcher and they take me out and they're wheeling me in the
hospital and just being a smart ass, I grabbed Jerry by the arm.
I said, Jerry, I said, if I don't make it, promise
me you'll have sex with my wife twice a week. He looked me right
aye, and he said, I'm not cutting back for newbody. That's it
right there, Mike dropping. Wow, that's awesome. And we were talking
about fifteen truck. I forgot put that other question up. Somebody there was,
Mike Ray. I'm sorry, Mike murrit murrits I did. He was
a captain of ten truck. Not on my shift. He wasn't on my
shift. But yeah, microphone Mike, that's what we called him. Good,
good, God good. His father I worked with. His father's father
was a captain of fourteen engine. Oh no, well, I got detailed
down there. He was really a strict captain. Mike wasn't as strict as
his fathers, but he was. They called him microphone micas he would call
in the size up and it would go on and on. You know,
the windows are day on his flowers and the windows yellow curtains. He was
a real good guy. I think he wound up going up to New York
when he retired, I believe, and I'm not sure, not in the
fire department, stup there for relatives or something. I'm not sure. I
never laughed about that guy. Oh that's freaking funny man. All right.
So December eighty seven, paramedic Pam, Yeah, she was we called her
aunt be off of Andy Griffith's show. She was a chunky, chunky girl,
come from that's her. We came from up the up far out in
the county, somewhere paramedic signed our house and we thought, we thought she'll
never last. There's too much blood, too much core, too much everything
for a look a little country girl like her, And and we bugged her
and she she fit in. She gave it back and she was. Everybody
wound up really looking after her and really liking her. And she was work.
They worked all fourteen hour nights and she was exhausted when she got done.
And I was sitting at the because she was leaving, and I said,
Pam, you take it easy going home. You had a rough night.
She had about a twenty five thirty mile drive. Oh, I will.
And she left and I went back in the kitchen and Captain Fugate came
back about fifteen minutes later and he said, everybody, listen up, said
I hate to tell you this. He said, Pam's dead. She got
the Lafayette Druid Hill and blew through the light without thinking about it, and
I hit by a bus, killed her instantly ejected her right through the passion
to window killed her. Wow, that was tough man. I come home
and told my wife, Man, I had tears of my eyes. That
was that was That was tough man. Her father was Captain Nabaul Mac County
Fire Department. To this day he swears it's because they worked the paramedics after
death. Yeah maybe she just lost, just lost. Yeah yeah, cruising
through the lights with the lights and sider. Yeah you know what that's true
man either Yeah. I said the dog story and thenngined thirty six telling the
story. Yeah, now you have to six engine was a forty six engine
was a single company that we ran with. They were a mile away from
us or so single house. Good guys and uh fire prevention week. They
would bring in school classes, show them the fire engine. So they bring
in a kindergarten class or first grade whatever it was. They bring them into
thirty six engines. Well, they fed a ghetto dog there all the time.
So the kids are is that the fire dog? Is that the fire
dog? They were like, yeah, that's the fire dog. Make them
happy. So they told the teachers, they said, look at the gongas
off. We gotta get out of here. You got to get the kids
off the side. Make sure you know everybody's away before we pull out.
They did a run, the gongers off, the kids are all on the
side. They get up in the truck, pull out, ran right over
the dog killed it. Jesus. Within twenty minutes, everybody in the fire
department that was working knew what happened. Oh my god, that's so funny.
No, it is. It is to us. My wife said,
you shouldn't tell that story. What is that? That's their thirty six engine
where it was thirty six? All right, that's a good looking job.
Yeah. I just wanted to ship. It was something I had. Oh
that's good. Then in eighty nine I had a fire. We had a
fire at four in the morning on Presbury Street and I was leaving for can
Couon on vacation the next day, and so a little silent prayer to the
fire gods, maybe leave us alone the rest of the night, and we
went out, I don't know, three or four o'clock in the morning.
I was I was was that driving, Yeah, I was tillering. The
rick was frying, and we pull up two story joint and there was this
big woman in the window on the second floor and she's got two kids,
one on each side of her, once passed out across the window sill.
The other one's just staring and she's screaming a stare. She's a big woman,
man, she's screaming hysterically. So there's a guy on step ladder,
civilian on a step ladder trying to get to her. So we pulled the
twenty four off. We kicked the step ladder out of the way, and
I'm going up the ladder. I'm thinking, I got to get this kid
who's unconscious before he falls back in. And the smoke is just roaring out
of this place. And I get about halfway up the ladder and she dives
out the window, comes straight down my ladder, and I grabbed the rails
and turned my head and she crashed into me, and I'm like, God's
still here. I thought for sure she'd take me with her, and I
took her down one rung at a time, and I got her on the
ground and I got her over and I said, no, is there anybody
else in there? She said, there's five more people in there. And
Rick and Donald had thrown another ladder next to the twenty four and they got
the boy out. There was in shock, staring, and then Rick went
up did a great job. The window came down on the kid, and
Rick went up and pushed the window up and strouded the windowsill, got the
kid out, pulled his leg out, climbed down the ladder, brought him
out. I went inside, Me and Donald went inside. And it is
roaring rooms and I can't get to the back. The back's not the front's
not burning. But if I move, there's nobody with a line yet it's
going to get us. And here comes somebody with a line eight engine with
a lineup the steps and they're hitting it. And another thirteen or somebody else
came up and they're hitting it. And I said, don't let that get
down this hallway. And me and Donald crawled down the hallway, and we
found a teenage boy in a side room and dragged him out, and we
crawled back down. We found a woman in the front room, dragged him
out her out, and somebody found a grandmother in a chair but not too
far from the window, and somebody else got somebody else had It was five
of them all together, and uh, but none of that. We lost
all five of them. The only ones who lived with the three that we
got out the window. So she jumped out the window and left the two
kids there. She come down head first, left her kids in there,
left their kids in there. Yeah, that blew my mind when I was
thinking about it afterwards. Yeah, I mean I've seen that a few times
too. With that, people like really panic and they they just forget what
their responsibility is. I guess I don't know, Yeah what what? Yeah,
I couldn't believe. I was still not louder when she hit me,
because she put it. She was probably two hundred and fifty pail bumbles,
bounce, rookie, he's on it. It's a new roofie. Man getting
up to the head of something. I don't know what it is. What's
good, let's better now, blood flow's getting up to his head. Now,
that's sit so Bright Street. That's nineteen ninety. You don't know what
it was, nineteen ninety, nineteen ninety. Yeah, somewhere in there.
Yeah, we are thirteen truck was one that fire with us rick Legger's old
company, and we had to report of kids inside. And we get in
there and we're searching, searching, and we don't find anybody. And I
went to the window. I hollered at the chief. I said, we
can't there's nobody in here. He said, the people swear to God,
there's four kids in there. So we back inside, was searching, searching,
and one guy saw Paul Evard from thirteen truck. Yeah, I got
him. They were in the bathroom, behind the toilet. They were small,
and they crawled under the sink and behind the toilet, and we lost
three. One lived, we got but Paul. He had come in the
back window and in that and searched that. Biff never thought to look behind
it. They couldn't say the smoke, but you never thought to look behind
the bit of the toilet. And he was beside himself. He took that
one hard. He took that real hard. The guys from his company here,
you could see they were. They surrounded him, just talking to him,
telling him, man, nobody would have found these kids. You know,
you can't think you look everywhere, you don't look behind the Yeah,
you don't look behind the toilet. And then to have four of them there
is yeah, the same. It's all small too, little young kids.
Oh. So April eighteenth, nineteen ninety, Donnie Horton dies. Yeah,
that was my buddy at ten truck. He said, when I said that
a massive heart attack at home. Oh okay, lieutenant, don't call me
up. I was home. He said, you better sit down for this
one. Why. What's the matter? He said, Donald died today and
I could have not been with me and Donald work. We were, you
know, the whole shift was tight, and losing him was so unexpected.
So he was the practical joker on the shift. You know, you might
get a water balloon in your face coming out of quarters, and that was
That was a blow to all of us. It was really upsetting, really
upsetting. And then nineteen ninety my son got my son Ray got the fire
department. Oh nineteen ninety huh yeah, you're oldest son, right, yeah,
getting ready to retire. That's them right there. That was the unusual
experience because he was detailed the ten truck and I was crazy. He was
still and we had we had a little ten cent fire and Jim Keiths took
that picture after the fire. That's awesome. That's a good picture. Good
picture. That's a great story too. How old is he that looks?
How old is he there? And he's obviously he wasn't thirty yet, right,
he's fifty three now. He was probably his late late twenties. Yeah,
probably late twenty Yeah. I think he was twenty when he got in
and he made EVD three years later, so he was probably twenty six,
twenty seven, twenty eight somewhere. Now. Does it work? I mean
it kind of. I don't know. You know, we still have hooks
here and stuff like that. Were you were you able to put them where
you wanted to put him or he just was his When he got out of
fire school, I had had I had had some difficulties with the chief of
the fire department, some arguments, and I asked the cradle busy house,
and they didn't do it. He sent him to a good house, a
reasonably busy house, but a good house, a lot of really good,
good guys. He still keeps in touch with. Yeah. Is he still
on the job. Was he retired too? Is Ray retired your son?
No, he's going to retire probably a couple three four months. I think
he's got thirty thirty three. You have thirty four years and when he retires
sounds good to me? Rough right, help, that's my youngest son that
was after a fire. You had in West Ballton. He was. I
got him a thirteen engine when he got out of fire school. I got
him a thirteen engine that called downtown, and the guy pulled some strings for
me, and he went to my old company a thirteen engine. He stayed
there twenty six years. Really yeah. He comp me in Baltimore most of
the time. He's he's out now. No, he's not out. He
transferred out of after twenty six years. He got beat up really bad.
He he had had a broken collar bone and a broken kneecap, a broken
ankle. I was a dog headge over there. I know. He got
beat up bad. And he had a chance to go from six thousand runs
to three thousand runs and another engine company. Oh yeah, he called me
up. Of course I was retired. He called me up. He said,
I got a chance to go to twenty one engine. What do you
think I should do? I said, man, you're fifty years old,
you're all busted up, not going to get any easier. I think you
ought to take it. Yeah, And then he called his his brother.
My oldest son spent twenty some years at the busiest truck company, Truck five
on the East Side, and he got He eventually transferred to a slowhouse after
twenty eight years. I think he called his brother up and said, what
do you think I ought to do? Man? I love thirteen engine,
but I got a chance to go to twenty one. Couple of runs in
there. Ray said, don't be an idiot, don't take it. Help
on it. That was a couple of years ago. So they have do
they have sons that are maybe looking to get out of My youngest son.
Steve has an eighteen year old son. But he's not going to the fire
department. He's he's a genius and I mean I don't use that word lately.
I got you. He's been accepted at twelve different colleges. Wow,
it looks like he's going to go to Firman down in South Carolina for a
computer science computer science and computer what is it? Cybersecurity? Who is that
your producer in the back? Yeah, boss, listen, we know about
these technically challenged guys. Believe me, if you called me up and and
I wasn't married to her, this wouldn't be going. There's no way I
can do this. How long are you guys married? Now? June will
be fifty six years woo if Lewis beautiful never had a fight that he won
nineteen ninety five. This is the biggest fall you ever went to. Yeah,
that's that far behind me. I don't know if you could see it.
Oh that's the one that was scaring me before. Yeah, it was.
It was vacant. The one burned was vacant. We get a little
closer and there you go. It spread. It spread to this one and
this one was occupied, and it burned out to the ground. It burned
to the ground. That burned another five story building next to it to the
ground. We couldn't put it out. I think Warwick Avenue stopped it.
It couldn't jump Warwick Avenue. And I mean we built. We were there
all night long, and we came we went home, and came back night
work, and went back again, bail and ordering. There was eleven alarms.
The heavy, heavy timber, all that stuff, heavy timber. The
inside, yeah, the inside. Yeah, but they were old, old
buildings. The original fire building, the one that's burning that you can see,
that was set by all vagrants trying to keep it. They've gone for
those big streets. Yeah, they knew how to do it back in the
eighteen hundred and we're gonna put a big street there, a big street here.
Yeah, yeah, it's this fivey fires with my sons. Is that
the story? When Ray was Ray was the e V D. And at
one time he was an eighteen truck, which was not far from ten truck.
And I had a fire with him. And I'm on the third floor
and I'm crawling down the hallway, got a mais going and there's it's a
long hallway and there's rooms on both sides. So I'm crawling down the hallway
and I see a light at the other end of the hallway on a floor.
I know it's got to be another fireman, So I hollered down.
I said, I'll get my right, I'll get the rooms on my right.
You get the rooms when you're right, So we cover them all.
I hear okay, and there's a pause. Not heard, Dad, Oh,
I said, yeah, right, that's me. Oh man, you
med up getting hurt on that fire tours Red Tator Cup went off to me
for a long time, but it was neat to be crawling down towards and
hell, it doesn't get better than that, man kill me. That is
that you? Dad? My youngest son I saw a lot of him because
he was a thirteen engine and I was a ten truck, and they were
or not that far apart. We weren't different shifts, but if one of
us was on overtime or got caught extra at or whatever, we would see
each other. But the first time I saw him, I'm up on a
roof. It's a multiple alarm not too far from his firehouse. I'm up
on a roof cut a hole in the roof, and I'm working my ass
off because the roof got ninety years of tor it's a tarrow on it,
and I glance at my area ladder and I can see it moving. I
know somebody's coming up, and I go back to working and I hear,
hey, old man, you need some help. And I looked over and
it's my youngest son. Said we have to work with balth of them at
a job, and then, oh, blessed man great. Four hours later,
had had a dwelling fire and I'm at the top of the steps and
he comes up the steps with a line and flops down right next to me,
and he got water and I crawled in behind him. He's hitting the
fire. I'm in behind him and I'm searching it all. This is like
movie stuff. I don't think we've we've never had a guy on the show
that says they asked like that, not that, man, not like that.
And then at that same night, four in the morning, get a
fire right around the corner from ten truck on Kerry Street goes to a second
alarm. I believe, I'm not positive, but it was a It was
a really really good working fire. And when it was over, I'm up
front. There was my son again, and I looked at him. I
said, you know, those first two fires, that was pretty cool.
That was pretty unique. I said, but this ship's getting old now,
man. But I was really proud to say that both my boys were really
really good fire. And you got to see him doing it. You were
doing it with them. In fact, I had I had an older veteran
like me at the time say to me one day, talking about Ray.
He said, let me tell you something, my fire ever get trapped somewhere,
that's who I want coming to get me. I thought, Man,
that's high phrase right there. Man, Hell yeah, what else is that
beside your reputation? Right? Really? Yeah, it was good fire,
Steven, he was doing it. You gotta play that one. Oh he's
up to do it? Do I have that one? Do I have it?
I don't know if I was up there doing all right. So listen,
this is like the pinnacle right here. So you finally get the what
is it, Rescuer of the Year? You got well, because I didn't.
The companies and were on the fire but it was right around the corner
from ten truck and Mike Proser was tiller, and and I was driving,
and Mike was that's the guy they called them energizer, Bunny good good fireman
man. Well, we pull up a large three story roke home row home,
and there's a little girl sitting the windowsill, getting ready to jump.
And I stopped the truck and I get up on the turntable and I'm watching
as they grabbed the thirty five. They throw the thirty five and it comes
up short, and Mike goes up the thirty five and he can't reach her.
And he gets up higher and higher until he's up on the next to
the last rung with his chest pushed up against the building and his arms were
up like this. And he told me later, he said to her,
hand, I know you're scared. But you gotta let go. She was
maybe three feet above him, and she let go, and when he caught
her, he went back and I turned my head because I thought they were
coming down, and he threw his chest into the wall and stayed like that
until he could get a hold of her and start down the ladder. Wow.
I through the aira ladder. I was supposed to ventilate the roof,
but they were screaming. There were more kids inside, and I knew the
thirty five we wasn't gonna dohim any good. So I threw the air out
to the third floor and I went up. I didn't have a mask on,
and I went up and I'm crawling around and I didn't find anybody right
away, and Mike Brosier came up the air the ladder with a mask on,
and we're crawling around the room and I heard him holler I got one,
and he said, go to the window. You don't have a mask,
I'll hand him to you. And I was hung up. My mask
straps were hung up on something. I said, take them, take them
out, take them out. I can't get through the window. And he
got over to the window and I finally got unhooked, and we got out
the window and we got the got the baby down, and two others got
the two guys, my Lieutenant Jones from ten Truck and Scott Mike Fields.
They went inside. They got two out and somebody in the back and somebody
out and I forget how many we rescued. Six I think brought them all
out and they all survived. Got them all out and they all lived.
Paramedics did a great job on them and the companies they were when the fire
were nominated for Fire Rescue of the Year for Baltimore City and we won that
and we were all honored at Tawson University Black Tied Dinner, Governor, the
mayor, everybody was there. It was, uh, it was our fifteen
minutes of fame. It was pretty cool. It was nice to be recognized.
Nice. Yeah, man, now he got two hours of fame on
here, right, So you are a kid about this guy. I'll take
the dinner. I think I'll pick let us see black Tie Fair dinner,
three idiots, black black tire fan. Yeah, it was. It was
quite quite a career. It was. I really enjoyed it. I really
enjoyed it. That's pretty Uh, listening to that that grab that that that
guy made on the ladder. Oh, I'm telling you that's legit. Man.
That was that was a ballsy thing. If anybody's ever been on a
ladder, you know, they know that's scary shit. I'm up two stories
cleaning my gut is out. I'm like, what the fuck I'm saying.
If you're standing on the last rung, you ain't. You ain't at the
window. That ain't. No Joe, you talking about clean arms. Go
back cleaning your gut a out. After I'd been retired for ten years,
i was sixty four years old, and every year I'd been up on my
roof walking along the edge with a leaf blower, blowing the gut leaves out
of the gutters. I'm sixty four years old. I got up there and
I went, whoa, I could fall off here. I gotta keep waking
up here. Then we moved to a condo. Yeah, hell yeah.
Now they mowed my launch collect my pen for a while. Lois is gonna
kill me, that's right. Then I retired. I retired in twenty year
one. Oh wait, we missed one story. The Lucky Lockets. Oh
yeah, we were lucky. The whole family was lucky. They had a
really bad fire on the east side and a guy from thirteen engines. The
floors collapsed, they were thrown into the basement burned. A guy with thirteen
engines got burned, but my youngest son was off. Guy from five truck
got trapped, My oldest son was off, and ten truck Mike Prosier was
the first one down in the basement to try and drag him out. And
all three of us were off duty at that time. Because that could have
been that could have been real bad, could have been real bad for us,
but it wasn't. And they always call my oldest son Lucky Lockett.
I mean, I mean, no matter what happens then and he comes out
on a good side. Put that. You got that picture of me and
my boys when we retired. Yes, I was waiting to bring up that's
it. Yeah, I was last night last night in the fire department and
they got permission to come over and ride with me. I had to fire
my next to last night. I wanted to fire my last night, so
bad guy. I should have paid somebody who abbed that one. But you
got the Pike Act, that's you know. Yeah, we could have hide
Mike cologne to go out and do something. Set a couple of fives out
there something I don't know, you know him, he's itching? What he's
itching? What's the tones to drop? We had a bunch of runs where
we didn't have any fars. You got to work with him anyway though,
both of them, which is unheard. I don't think we've ever had anybody
on the show that actually got to work, go to work, work with
like like legit work rights job or something. But to have you know,
you've crawled down the hall and then the other guy coming the other way is
your kid? Hilarious. I gotta say you were right. This guy is
the guy. This guy got. That's what they said. Cobo, all
right, stand by we got because we're behind, we got to play commercials.
Let's play the h what do we do? Let's do and then you
get your old school tip when he does his thing right? Yes, yes,
yes, that's come get your autograph copy of They Saved New York at
this year's FDIC twenty twenty four at the Getting Salty Booth. It's the nation's
premiere fire conference and photographer Glenn Osden will be there and he'll autograph your book
at the aforementioned Getting Salty Booth during exhibit hours on both Thursday and Friday,
April eighteenth and nineteenth, respectively. Each book will come with a limited edition
sixteen by twenty color poster that is suitable for framing and This limited edition Qualfee
table book features the compelling stories of a ninety FD and Y firefighters and is
almost three hundred pages packed with action photos from the nineteen seventies all the way
up to today's FD and Y fire operations. Read the personal stories of the
men and women who fought the warriors, fires, the World Trade Center and
Black Sunday tragedies, and almost every major incident in the last fifty years of
the FD and Y. Come see us at the Getting Salty booth in the
hallway outside the main exhibit area Thursday and Friday of FDIC Week, April eighteenth
and nineteenth, twenty twenty four. And if you get there early enough,
Louise and I will not be bagged up. We will not be in the
cups. Yet. Get there early and we won't be in the cups.
I don't know about that, but yeah, I don't know about that.
That's a trink of thumb. But all right, you know what time it
is, though? What time? What time is it? What time is
it? The old old school day day? All right, right, take
it away, kid. If I was going to talk to the rookies nowadays,
I would tell them that there's a time for play, there's a time
for laughing, but there's a time for work. And don't get the too
confused, because work is serious. You can lose your life. Somebody else
from some way, you can lose their life. You've got to listen to
the old guys. What you learned a fire school is nothing compared to what
the old guys in your companies can tell you what to do, when to
do it, or when not to do it. It's fun, it's a
lot of laughs. The kitchen's always fun. But when that gong goes off,
it'll take it serious because it's no joke. You can get hurt or
killed very easily out there. Excellent, excellent, great career brother, great
stories. Man. I love guys. I can tell stories. And he
lived it. He was doing it, Stephen. Can I tell you something
about my youngest son real quick after he had been in less than a year,
maybe a year The Discovery Channel made a documentary called Streets of Fire and
it was shown in Europe and then it was shown in the United States and
they featured thirteen engine and they featured his shift and they featured him a lot
because he was a rookie. He come in in ninety five. This was
either ninety five or ninety six, and it's still on YouTube. You bring
up you see it on YouTube. I'm going to watch it and you'll see
him. He's the youngest. He looks like he's twelve. What's it called
Street to Fire Fire? Oh, we got to talk about the book quick
too. Yep, yeah, the book. Yeah, the book book FRC.
Yeah. When I had been retired, let's see twenty fifteen, four
or five years, I decided to write. I wasn't writing a book.
I wanted to write the memoirs for my grandkids to read when they got older.
And my mother had kept scrap books. She kept four scrap books of
all newspaper articles and fires that I was on, and then she passed.
I was still in the fire department, and I kept the fifth scrap book
from my up until I retired. And when I decided to write my memoirs,
I just opened that first scrap book and there was a little article in
there about my first fire. Wow, And you know you always remember your
first fire, and it brings back a lot of memories. I don't even
know how to turn on a computer. My wife's a secretary. She turns
on the computers, brings up word. So I just sit there, hunt
and pe yes, it just like that. And I did that for about
a year off and one's high. I get in a roll hours. Then
I wouldn't do anything for days, and I get on a roll again,
and I'd do it. And when I got it, when I got it
all done, and she printed it all out and I gave it to her.
I said, what do you think she's looking through it? She said,
you know what you got here? I said what she said, you
got a two hundred and sixty page paragraph. He said, I'll take care
of that way. Oh what a good way. Won in the book it
was memoirs. And then my son Ray took it to work, and a
guy at his firehouse said, tell your son to put it on a disc,
or your father to put it on a disc. I got a friend
of mine who's an independent publisher. I wanted to look at it. So
I told my wife, put this on a disc and he took it to
this guy and he sent it to his partner that was a woman in Denver,
Colorado, and they emailed me and said, we want to make it
a book. I was like, are you kidding me? There? You
go into there it is and I was throwing on here, they're all in
there, and I couldn't believe it. I told him, I said,
look, I can't put thousands of dollars up to get this thing started.
They said, no, we only we only published first time authors, and
you don't have to put any money up front, and uh, we'll edit
it and you can give us the pictures you want in it, and uh
that's what they did. And I couldn't when when we got the book at
home they wanted to but first they edited. They wanted to change everything that
I said the way because I said, I just wrote it the way I
talked, right, and I said. They kept sending. I'd send him
two chapters. They edited, scratched the scratch that I'd say as I had
finals say, I'd say no, no, no, no, send it
back. Finally said, well, I want you to change anything I said,
because if I let you read it, change it the way it reads,
people that know me are going to read this and say he didn't write
it like that. Yeah, right, right right. So I left it
the way it was. Ninety percent of it was the way it was good.
You get that, my god, I'll understand that. And they said
how much you want to sell for? I said ten bucks? They said
ten dollars. I said, right, you can sell us for twenty dollars
a copy. I said, I'm selling a fireman. I don't have any
money. And then she and I sold three thousand copies. Wow. And
I took a thousand dollars and donated it to the Window's Norphan's fun for my
union. And I had a couple of grand left over I put down towards
a new car. And my publisher went out of business. I couldn't get
any more books, and now the only way you can get it now is
on kindle on Amazon. I don't have any more books. So I just
out there. Hear this, and you want to get that book going again?
Yeah, reach out to ride Lockett. Yeah, I mean I had
to figure out how to get it back. My wife was pretty good at
it. We couldn't get it the way it was originally to cover, the
same cover and everything. But I'm fine with it. I didn't write it
as a book, and I didn't sell it to retire to book over Ton,
you know I was. I was happy with it. Boca Vista.
Yeah, so good for you. Right, you did a great job man.
You did a great job with your sons, did a great job on
with your career. But staying married for fifty six years, God bless you
and and everything you did. Just keep now, you just got to keep.
But you know, don't be fluffing the ball up now, you know,
no, don't be fluffing. He plays golf a lot, now,
Cooby could be fluffing the battle, fluffing it up. Now he's a big
confer. Now, huh, I got a frustra golf. Lock me up
and throw it straight, man, hit him straight. Let's play the old
school health and safety tip guns real quick. Yes. The First Responder Center
for Excellence is a not for profit organization dedicated to protecting their lives and livelihoods
of first responders. Their education and research initiatives aim to bring greater awareness and
understanding the challenges to the health, safety and well being of firefighters, EMS
personnel and other first responders too. They are an affiliate of the National Fallen
Firefighter Foundations, and Tonight's old school health and safety tip is regularly watched.
The inside liner of the helmet. Maintaining the clean hamlet removes harmful contaminants to
minimize your risk of skin cancer and pre cancerous cells on your four or five
head whatever you have. I don't know. That's it. That's all I
got. We'll be remiss if we did not talk about the New York City
Police officer that was murdered in the line of duty. Conso pull out all
please yep of officer Jonathan E. Diller on a traffic stop though left man
unbelievable dirt big who had twenty one counts prize before that. So I heard
that the barstool guys raised they did yees seven hundred and fifty thousand, and
then they matched it, so they got one point five million for the family.
And then I also heard that the the steven Silla the tunnel to tower
is steven Silla Foundation, Uh paid off the mortgage. Yeah, So so
again that doesn't doesn't bring the guy back, but maybe just makes it a
little bit easier. I guess, I don't know. Let's stay up prayers.
We're gonna bring the five bells line of due to death. Rest in
peace, brother, Rest in peace brother, and got in prayers for his
family and and his coworkers. Got a baby boy, one year old.
It's terrible, all right, So right, thank you so much to stay
around so we could talk to you on the after show. Don't forget Big
show Monday night, Big reveal, Big. It's big rough. I don't
even gonna be huge. It's gonna be huge. It's gonna be huge,
just a huge bitch yep. That's it. So until Monday, ladies and
gentlemen, pull up your boots because it looks like work. Oh no,
let's see it, the big one, right, alright, saddle up,
sounds like work, all right, good night, every one,