Speaker 1: Disclaimer.
Speaker 2: We'd like to know before the start of this interview
Speaker 2: that the opinions about to be expressed by the guest
Speaker 2: of tonight's Getting Salty Experience Podcast are that of the
Speaker 2: guest and do not directly or necessarily reflect the views
Speaker 2: of the host of the Getting Salty Experience Podcast.
Speaker 3: You're listening to the Getting Salty Experience Podcast.
Speaker 4: Hello, Hello, roofy man. Where did you go? You went
Speaker 4: to Mexico.
Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, Jesus, let me a complex
Speaker 2: shaved the beer too?
Speaker 4: You end up?
Speaker 5: Bro?
Speaker 4: You look great.
Speaker 6: Where's the deer? What'd you catch? Where is it?
Speaker 4: Well, we might have a picture of that somewhere. Let
Speaker 4: me see shit eating grin on his face?
Speaker 7: Yeah, let me see this.
Speaker 6: This is not you.
Speaker 4: Look at that live. I think his eyes were open,
Speaker 4: an't they?
Speaker 7: It's looking at like money.
Speaker 4: Wow, guy smiled so much from killing him.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Wait, we go back to that. Look at it.
Speaker 6: Do you guys notice this? The guys in the chat
Speaker 6: make sure we comments this guy.
Speaker 4: Smiling smiling with a dead dea nice anyway. Welcome back
Speaker 4: to again sold the Sperienced podcast. It's the only one
Speaker 4: that brings the firehouse, kitchen table and hot charges from
Speaker 4: way back, like Bronx ghetto firefighter is to you when
Speaker 4: the Bronx was burning, Bro, he got him tonight, John
Speaker 4: Row coming in ship hot, Bro, he was dead. I
Speaker 4: like it, raw, Oh baby, I like it raw. He
Speaker 4: thought he saw them more fire in a year than
Speaker 4: most guys will see in their Korea runs.
Speaker 7: Right, look at you pulling?
Speaker 4: I really am Yeah, Mike, how are you so? I
Speaker 4: hear you're Are we allowed to say it? You're getting
Speaker 4: fitted for your bunker gear and whatnot.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's out there next month.
Speaker 4: It's gonna be a firefighter. We me and Louis, we
Speaker 4: rescued him. We took him. We yanked him right from
Speaker 4: the the doldrums of being a cock bro right right
Speaker 4: that gunson.
Speaker 5: Yeah, san Diego.
Speaker 4: I took him into my arms like this, and I
Speaker 4: coddled him and I said, this is the way, son,
Speaker 4: hold on to my coat, follow me, this is where
Speaker 4: we're going, and look at him out. He's gonna be
Speaker 4: a real, honest to goodness firefighter.
Speaker 7: We can we can bring back an oldie with him
Speaker 7: like this.
Speaker 4: God yeah, I mean, can you imagine the pussies that's
Speaker 4: going to be falling into his arms broken the fires like,
Speaker 4: oh god, I don't know. I guess the.
Speaker 7: Skip from Murph Pussy Pussy Pussy.
Speaker 4: It's gonna be getting so much poon time you won't
Speaker 4: know what to do with himself. Right now, we allowed
Speaker 4: to say point time you can poo. Yes, we gotta
Speaker 4: get John and he he's got a ton of great
Speaker 4: stories from the key head Tel Yep.
Speaker 7: We're gonna do uh Marshall Fisher want to bring him in.
Speaker 4: Do two commercials. Probably had to do two commercials first, right, well,
Speaker 4: a hot job yet exactly.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you said it, all right, let's do uh, let's
Speaker 6: do the new guys, we'll do them light off the top.
Speaker 4: Who's that? Wait a minute, capital Nope, not yet, dope
Speaker 4: there once a month, don't do that.
Speaker 6: Oh oh oh hey, sorry guys, we're not gonna do
Speaker 6: that right now. We're gonna ge ahead of New Jersey Fire.
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Speaker 4: Wonderful we got another one of that.
Speaker 7: Yes we do. We have the modified Armor tough.
Speaker 4: But you've been playing that I'll kill you? Do you
Speaker 4: play that one pot I'll kill you?
Speaker 7: I'll try not to.
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Speaker 4: One of a bitch. I just want little teaser listen
Speaker 4: even though they were only once a month. Capital Dude,
Speaker 4: I gotta give them a shout out. They are awesome
Speaker 4: family run business capital industries. Awesome. You aging helmet you
Speaker 4: need done? These guys are on it, man. I watched
Speaker 4: them do they work at one of the shows that
Speaker 4: we want to do next to us in the booth,
Speaker 4: and these guys are legit. Anything you need to don't
Speaker 4: your helmet to make it look like leather, They'll make
Speaker 4: it fits. Yeah, there's a little shout out for them
Speaker 4: because I love this family. Excellent, excellent. I'm gotta say
Speaker 4: one other thing. It's my girl and that I forget.
Speaker 5: Is it.
Speaker 4: Cindy Drake.
Speaker 1: Yep, she's there.
Speaker 4: Cindy Drake is the I'm gonna say she's the best
Speaker 4: fan of getting salted. She watches the Cup of John Flago.
Speaker 4: She's always commenting, she's always in the chat. I'm gonna
Speaker 4: say she's a super fan.
Speaker 5: Bro.
Speaker 4: I love me some Cindy Drake. She's always comed doing
Speaker 4: the right thing. I tried the friend of our Facebook,
Speaker 4: but I couldn't find it. I don't know, so Cindy
Speaker 4: friend me.
Speaker 7: Take the hint. Take the hint.
Speaker 4: Awesome, all right, let's bring him in here, bro, Mike,
Speaker 4: Yeah problem uh Luke. I mean Mike, bring him out.
Speaker 1: Mike, what's the different?
Speaker 2: He worked for her twenty six Our next guest worked
Speaker 2: for twenty six years and what's known as the Iron
Speaker 2: Horse in the Bronx, of which he'll tell us about tonight.
Speaker 2: A veteran of the FD and Wise Engine sixty. He
Speaker 2: comes in with roar and that for this episode two
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty to get salty experience.
Speaker 1: Retired FD and WI firefighter John Rorr.
Speaker 4: Here he is.
Speaker 5: What's that? Did he say retired or retarded?
Speaker 4: No? He said we're all anymore that my daughter goes crazy.
Speaker 4: You can't say that, dad.
Speaker 5: Like I do. We grew up old school. I could
Speaker 5: say God, you could say.
Speaker 4: Whatever you want to say, Bro, take it easy.
Speaker 5: You want an army that has a good man, Damn
Speaker 5: they are.
Speaker 4: I like this guy? You ready? So let me ask
Speaker 4: a question. If you're walking down the street and you
Speaker 4: see John Raw on the street with that mustache, what
Speaker 4: do you say, Mike, fireman? Right, he's got to be
Speaker 4: a fireman.
Speaker 1: Absolutely No, don't say cop, that's for sure.
Speaker 4: Oh Cop, to bite your tom. Listen before we get
Speaker 4: too far out of the week too. We gotta be
Speaker 4: a patriotic. We gotta do one duty from John. Play
Speaker 4: it up, brother, here we go.
Speaker 3: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States
Speaker 3: of America and to the Republic, for which it stands,
Speaker 3: one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you John for coming on the show. Not
Speaker 4: only is he a legendary I said, legendary firefighter, old
Speaker 4: school firefighter, he is a veteran and we can't give
Speaker 4: him enough thanks for that. So I'm gonna say right
Speaker 4: off the bat, thank you for your service in both
Speaker 4: Thank you firefighter and uh being in the service. So
Speaker 4: let's go back, John, Let's go back a little bit.
Speaker 4: Give us a little early of the of the Raw
Speaker 4: family where you grew up. A little bit about mom
Speaker 4: and dad. Stuff like that.
Speaker 5: Wow, mom and dad both come basically. My mother was
Speaker 5: born in Baston, Oh boy, somehow she got to New York.
Speaker 5: I met my father, my father at age ten or eleven.
Speaker 5: We're stricten with polio and he had to spend the
Speaker 5: rest of his life with a leg brace, and his
Speaker 5: right side was kind of weak, but his left side
Speaker 5: was over big. And when I would misbehave, which was
Speaker 5: not too many times, maybe once twice a day he
Speaker 5: would he would tell me get over here. Now I
Speaker 5: could outrun him in a heartbeat. But when he said
Speaker 5: get over here, I went over there, and his left hand,
Speaker 5: which was the big side, usually found my ass. And
Speaker 5: I learned a lesson that if I someone squealed on me,
Speaker 5: I beat him up. No, I didn't do that. Now
Speaker 5: you're nice.
Speaker 4: You have any brothers and sisters.
Speaker 5: I have two sisters, one who has passed away now.
Speaker 5: The other one lives in with Haveaven Queens Queens. I
Speaker 5: was born bred in Ozone Park, bought a house there
Speaker 5: in nineteen seventy three, moved to South Jersey, Oh Jersey
Speaker 5: in uh in two thousand, I bought the thousand and eight,
Speaker 5: moved in on nine And I'm still trying to figure
Speaker 5: out why do people vote for people who were going
Speaker 5: to raise your tax, raise everything. I could have been
Speaker 5: in South Carolina where there's almost no man.
Speaker 4: I don't understand, amen, brother, So you uh, you come
Speaker 4: out of high school? Right? Or do you finish high school?
Speaker 4: You go right into the army? What do you or
Speaker 4: the I don't know what's oh right? Because it's Vietnam War, right,
Speaker 4: we all.
Speaker 5: On the side of well, go go. Yeah.
Speaker 4: How old were you John when you got drafted?
Speaker 7: Uh?
Speaker 5: Just let's see, good question. Nineteen going on twenty, just
Speaker 5: about twenty. And in a few short months, I took
Speaker 5: five stops to get me into Vietnam and I spent
Speaker 5: fourteen months there. Twelve months is a normal tour. But
Speaker 5: if you spent extra time and you'll land it back
Speaker 5: in the States with one hundred and fifty or less
Speaker 5: days in the service, they just let you go. Really,
Speaker 5: I counted, I was good and mad, and I counted
Speaker 5: how long I would have to stay in Vietnam to
Speaker 5: go home. And I landed with one hundred and fifty
Speaker 5: days left, and they said, see, you wouldn't want to
Speaker 5: be and that was the end of that tour.
Speaker 4: Wow. So what was your experience like.
Speaker 5: Well, my worst experience was when night hit the airport
Speaker 5: after they let me go. I got the San Francisco
Speaker 5: airport to come back to New York. A young girl
Speaker 5: and a young guy walking down and she came up
Speaker 5: to me, spit on me and called me a baby killer.
Speaker 5: Oh wow, So you know, I said right there, and
Speaker 5: then should I kill her or go home? So I
Speaker 5: decided to go home. Fast forward many years later. Death
Speaker 5: the NY the best ceremony I ever seen. They honored
Speaker 5: all the Vietnam vets. And I'm sitting next to a
Speaker 5: marine and he says, you know, a similar thing happened
Speaker 5: to me. And I was called the baby killer. And
Speaker 5: I went like this, and I said, and they taste
Speaker 5: like chicken. I said, God, I wish I would have
Speaker 5: said that that girl would have fainted underground, but I didn't.
Speaker 4: When did they do that? John, What year of the
Speaker 4: annable of Vietnam? Guys?
Speaker 5: Well, it was fifty year anniversary, So I'm going to
Speaker 5: stay somewhere around ninety seven, ninety six.
Speaker 4: I didn't even know they did that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they had that death, that three star general, the
Speaker 5: Chief Department, another official from the department, and they mind
Speaker 5: us all up in alphabetical order, and they brought us
Speaker 5: up three at the time, and they had the active
Speaker 5: duty guys, five department guys that were in the service,
Speaker 5: and Congress gave us these little medals, and the three
Speaker 5: guys would come up, you know, and stand in Three
Speaker 5: active duty firemen would come up and pin the medal
Speaker 5: on you. And God, I'm not lying. I was in
Speaker 5: a big red one first Inftry division and a guy
Speaker 5: in sixty engine seventeen truck was over in Iraq as
Speaker 5: a fireman. He was in a big red one and
Speaker 5: not making it up. He was the guy that stayed
Speaker 5: in front of me and pinned the metal Army. Thought
Speaker 5: that was the greatest honor. Yeah, that one of my
Speaker 5: guys pinning the metal army. Well, that's the end of
Speaker 5: that story.
Speaker 4: What was the big red one?
Speaker 5: The first infantry division? First, you're going to be one,
Speaker 5: be a big red one. That was a It was
Speaker 5: the first infantry division in the army, but it was
Speaker 5: the first one to go to Vietnam and we were
Speaker 5: actually round Saigon up to the Cambodian border and a
Speaker 5: little north of that, and that was a pretty active
Speaker 5: you were in the ship. Well, yeah, at the time,
Speaker 5: I wound up being a platoon sergeant, which no big deal.
Speaker 5: But I didn't have to lift. I was in a
Speaker 5: mortar platoon, so I didn't have to lift all the
Speaker 5: heavy yo, get that that, you know, I was a
Speaker 5: semi boss.
Speaker 4: All right, So you did that fifteen months there?
Speaker 5: You said nineteen or no, no, no, twelve and uh fifteen months? Yeah, wow,
Speaker 5: three months? Fifteen months and it was time to go home.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: How do you know how I had a kid by then?
Speaker 5: My son, John was two weeks short of a year
Speaker 5: old when I got home because my wife was pregnant
Speaker 5: when I was leaving to go Vietnam.
Speaker 4: What year is this? John? Want you to go over there?
Speaker 5: I went there sixty nine, sixty eight, came back sixty nine, right,
Speaker 5: and you weren't even a dot on.
Speaker 4: This I was. I was born in sixty eight. But
Speaker 4: you said to us on the pre show that you
Speaker 4: grew that mustache in sixty eight. You've never shared that
Speaker 4: except for one day.
Speaker 5: One day, and then drove it back. My son was
Speaker 5: born in sixty eight, and he was in ten truck
Speaker 5: and he's got the best retirement date of any fire
Speaker 5: in there ever lived. That's six guys, I believe his
Speaker 5: retirement date nine ten oh one, nine ten oh one.
Speaker 5: He gets really hurt at a job and they put
Speaker 5: him out nineten oh one. Wow, how about that? And
Speaker 5: he would have his groups would have been working that
Speaker 5: day had he been whole, But he was.
Speaker 4: Wasn't his time?
Speaker 5: Brother, No, to tell you what was his time? His
Speaker 5: time was nineteen ninety nine. He worked one tour with
Speaker 5: me and we were put in for a unit citation.
Speaker 5: Really we went to a fourth alarm and a stupid
Speaker 5: deputy chief from he worked in thirty one truck in
Speaker 5: the eight days and he had medals up his yang. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and he says, now he did what an engine were
Speaker 5: first do you did what an engine was supposed to do?
Speaker 5: I said, are you crazy? Did you see what they?
Speaker 5: They deserved the unicitation? And then my boss Mike Waters,
Speaker 5: good guy, very good guy. He was a volley out
Speaker 5: in Long Island, in someplace out there in the row vollies. Anyway,
Speaker 5: they he goes to some meeting out of town where
Speaker 5: all the volleys go to shake hands. I guess, I
Speaker 5: don't know. And he sees the chief and he tells him,
Speaker 5: you know, chief, there was a father's son working that
Speaker 5: night and you said no to the uni tation. Chief goes, oh,
Speaker 5: I didn't know that. He said, you never read it.
Speaker 5: He said, we submitted, I'll approve it. So what does
Speaker 5: Mike Waters do? He says, no, you had your shot.
Speaker 5: And I'm sitting here going, are you crazy? I wanted
Speaker 5: that unity, it says, but I got the report and
Speaker 5: that's the main thing.
Speaker 4: So were you driving, and he was on the backstep.
Speaker 4: You were both on the back step.
Speaker 5: No, he was on the backstep. I was driving. And
Speaker 5: they all ran out of mask and the chief didn't
Speaker 5: relieve them right away, and they didn't come down. So
Speaker 5: after they came down and they all looked like crap,
Speaker 5: and he said, yeah, we ran out of masks, but
Speaker 5: we kept going. I said, why didn't want he just
Speaker 5: come down and get some more bottles of Then, well,
Speaker 5: your son was in there, and I couldn't leave your
Speaker 5: son in there. Then I asked my son. He said,
Speaker 5: this is your house. I couldn't leave your house. Go
Speaker 5: a bunch of assholes.
Speaker 4: Let's go back to it.
Speaker 5: You should have come down and got a bottom.
Speaker 4: When you first got on the job. What made you
Speaker 4: want to get on the job. Did you have family
Speaker 4: there or what?
Speaker 5: No, well that's a different story. My help I was
Speaker 5: an electrician, right union electrician, and my helper wanted to
Speaker 5: be a Fineman kid Santos Rodriguez, great kid, Can you
Speaker 5: bring me down to forty nine Thomas Street. I said, yeah, sure,
Speaker 5: I bring him down there, and he's filling on an application.
Speaker 5: He said, John, do me a favor. I'll pay the
Speaker 5: fifteen dollars fill out the application. Said why, he said,
Speaker 5: just throw it out. This week they mail you stuff.
Speaker 5: I know I'm going to get stuff and full through.
Speaker 5: I said, yeah, all right, And so time goes by
Speaker 5: the union let me down. I was a shop steward
Speaker 5: and I told the guy who I did Bolton champ
Speaker 5: and Scotland for the apprenticeship program. And I go to
Speaker 5: a job and there's a non electrician doing a Bolton
Speaker 5: chap work of my company. But it was an electrician
Speaker 5: and I tell him, get your rest down here, go
Speaker 5: back to the shop, get done. Next morning, I go
Speaker 5: into the shop and my foreman, who I liked and
Speaker 5: he liked me, He goes, you ain't gonna believe this.
Speaker 5: I said, what he says? The owner of the company
Speaker 5: came down here. He says, I gotta fire you. He said,
Speaker 5: what how many shops do You can't fire me? He says,
Speaker 5: he says, you're gone. He says nothing I could do
Speaker 5: about it. I go down the union and the union
Speaker 5: Oh got nothing, Yeah, nothing, you're round. I don't have
Speaker 5: another job for you.
Speaker 4: He says, how do they do that when you're.
Speaker 5: The shot on the payroll? He was on six, no
Speaker 5: show payroll. I called every shop student in New York
Speaker 5: City that I did find, and they all called the
Speaker 5: Big Boss. He was the number two guys. They called
Speaker 5: the Big Boss. All of a sudden, I got a
Speaker 5: phone call an hour later, Oh, go to offer a
Speaker 5: shouts tomorrow morning, you're gonna work there. And I go
Speaker 5: there and then and the boss there goes, Hey, John,
Speaker 5: And I knew the guy. He says, I don't know
Speaker 5: what's going on. I was supposed to have you next week,
Speaker 5: but I got a phone call. I got to hire
Speaker 5: you today. I said yeah, and I explained to him
Speaker 5: what the asshole did. So now the fire departments makes
Speaker 5: me uh oh sixty. In nineteen sixty seventy seven, sixty
Speaker 5: five thousand guys signed up for the fire department tests.
Speaker 5: I don't want to break, but I was one seventy
Speaker 5: nine on the list. Nice, all right, So I'm top
Speaker 5: of the list. I go through physical, I do great
Speaker 5: on that. I'm on the top of the list. So
Speaker 5: I'm now that they've screwed me. In the local three,
Speaker 5: I said, you know what, I'm gonna join the fire department.
Speaker 5: Nineteen seventy eight, they call me. I got my whole
Speaker 5: bathroom in those o ball disassemble. You gotta be down
Speaker 5: at eight o'clock at city Hall. Gets warned, said I
Speaker 5: can't do this. I got no bathroom this you know
Speaker 5: I got. I said I can't. So I called a
Speaker 5: friend of mine up who was a boss on the job.
Speaker 5: He made me go down to uh Puree and I
Speaker 5: went down there and they they moved me back on
Speaker 5: the list. Okay, fine, So I wound up going later
Speaker 5: on no problem, and my help will who made me
Speaker 5: do this? He didn't do so well. He was four
Speaker 5: thousand on the list. So after a couple of years
Speaker 5: they get into four thousand. I called him a Santos.
Speaker 5: You know your numbers coming up, they're going to be
Speaker 5: calling you. He says, I haven't got anything done yet.
Speaker 5: They never called me nothing. He said, no, they had to.
Speaker 5: You had to be coming down for sudden, he said no.
Speaker 5: He goes home that night he says to his wife,
Speaker 5: he says, to my department, never sent me or call
Speaker 5: me anything. She goes, well, uh, he says, what happened?
Speaker 5: She says, I didn't want you to be a fineman,
Speaker 5: so I threw all the melt Local three, but that's
Speaker 5: another story. He was a good guy. But so I
Speaker 5: wind up Provy school and I wound up in one
Speaker 5: of the best flyinghouses.
Speaker 4: Uh, before you go there, any guys that we know
Speaker 4: who was in your proby class?
Speaker 5: Uh Steve Shemy, he might have.
Speaker 7: I might have heard, never heard never heard them, never
Speaker 7: never heard of them, never heard.
Speaker 4: Where are you in this picture? John?
Speaker 5: Right in the middle in the back? I got my
Speaker 5: hat all backwards.
Speaker 4: Oh you still got a mustard.
Speaker 5: Yes, I had a mustache.
Speaker 4: But not that mustache.
Speaker 5: Well, I was younger than it was dark and maybe
Speaker 5: allow you to.
Speaker 4: Have you didn't have a past.
Speaker 5: You have a mustache like this in the fly department
Speaker 5: when I was on I got charges for it.
Speaker 4: Yeah. My brother used to chase me around all the
Speaker 4: time I had. I had a mustache like that too.
Speaker 4: He used to tell that guy to shave that mustache.
Speaker 5: I went down for the medical and I got charges.
Speaker 5: And that's the way that I didn't care. I told
Speaker 5: him I'm not shaving it.
Speaker 4: Where are you a getting here? Where were you in
Speaker 4: this one?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 4: Bottom right?
Speaker 5: So somebody with a mustage all the way and the
Speaker 5: right on the bottom right there had the mustage.
Speaker 6: Look at that you looked at that.
Speaker 7: All right? Good?
Speaker 5: So almost every guy in there was a veteran except
Speaker 5: the squad.
Speaker 4: Leader, except us to meet the squad leader.
Speaker 5: The squad leader was I can't think of his name.
Speaker 5: He wound up being the he died in the trade center.
Speaker 5: He was the captain of the rescue one carne. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 5: he was the squad father. His father was the chief
Speaker 5: of department.
Speaker 6: Kind of hard to make out he's in this picture.
Speaker 1: His father was a Jeans that I do know.
Speaker 5: I'm trying to think of where he is. He's there somewhere,
Speaker 5: all right.
Speaker 4: So how do you get Here's the question we always
Speaker 4: ask guys, how do you get the sixty engine? Did
Speaker 4: you know somebody.
Speaker 1: It?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 4: Wait, lock or.
Speaker 5: No? No?
Speaker 7: If I had.
Speaker 5: My choice back then, which I didn't know, because I
Speaker 5: would have been stupid. If I did, I would have
Speaker 5: probably said, give me into the fifteenth division. It would
Speaker 5: have been easy, rob mute from all commute for you Bronx.
Speaker 5: You have to pay it twenty five cents toll you
Speaker 5: know what I mean? Noween dollars. So, but I wound
Speaker 5: up in the Bronx. It was the best thing ever happened.
Speaker 5: My first tour. You know, I know guys say this
Speaker 5: all the time. I wasn't in twenty minutes. First du
Speaker 5: Grand Concourse one four seventh Street between one four seven nine,
Speaker 5: and the captain, Oh, Patty, Patty mcgrel says, probe you
Speaker 5: got the noucle.
Speaker 4: Come on, he gave you the no.
Speaker 5: I'm going to myself. Holy shit. Back then, when I
Speaker 5: first got there, we rode the backstep and they only
Speaker 5: had two masks, and they were in that suitcase right right,
Speaker 5: and the two guys at the back they wound up
Speaker 5: going to the suitcase the nozzle in the backup. We
Speaker 5: went in. So I had Tom Kapiello as my backup,
Speaker 5: great fireman, and he pushes me in and where I
Speaker 5: didn't really want to go, but he's pushing me and
Speaker 5: I'm I'm waving this around down the hallway and I
Speaker 5: get to the door. Mind you, I still don't have
Speaker 5: a mask on, and he says to me, lift out
Speaker 5: your shirt and put your mouth down there and take
Speaker 5: a breath like that. Okay, holding my brother and I
Speaker 5: got in the door about three or four feet. That
Speaker 5: was it. I couldn't breed them on. And so he
Speaker 5: took the nozzle he went in a couple more feet.
Speaker 5: Then the rescue guys came in with till two other
Speaker 5: guys came in with a mask on and we went out.
Speaker 7: Thank God.
Speaker 5: And that job. Let me see who got Jimmy Corporate
Speaker 5: from seventeen truck out of medal? You wound up in
Speaker 5: rescue one, but he got a medal on that job
Speaker 5: for saving somebody in that apompment. So I was happy
Speaker 5: for that.
Speaker 4: So twenty minutes so you walk into the firehouse, right.
Speaker 4: Who is the captain at the time, Patty McGraw.
Speaker 5: Ah, he said, he come three thousand miles to be
Speaker 5: a boss and a box he'll be.
Speaker 4: Who was some of the senior men when you got there?
Speaker 5: Uh? In that well, you had Tom mahoney, you had
Speaker 5: uh oh shit, you had Joe mclough and you had
Speaker 5: Tom McDowell.
Speaker 4: What the fuck? Well, Irish guys.
Speaker 5: It is the Green Rays.
Speaker 4: Boy, Oh, it is the Green Rays. You're right minute?
Speaker 5: We had uh Julio him good?
Speaker 4: All right? Uh there you go, Mike, did you talken
Speaker 4: Spanish guy? Thank you? I was wondering.
Speaker 5: We had Vernon Richards died in the trade center, Captain Richards,
Speaker 5: and he was Captain Richards, good guy. Oh, we had
Speaker 5: quite a few senior men that my brain is not working.
Speaker 4: Well, you were the only probe that went there John
Speaker 4: at the time, rock Osentino came with me. Oh you
Speaker 4: went with a guinea Yeah right, No where he.
Speaker 5: Lived in his own park I used to be no
Speaker 5: way even better. You know anything about those who Parker
Speaker 5: say sound I thought he was. He lived right around
Speaker 5: the corner.
Speaker 4: I know what that is.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, he lived around the corner. Me and him
Speaker 5: coupled nice and uh, yesterday it was he sent me
Speaker 5: a thing yesterday. It was the forty fourth anniversary of
Speaker 5: our turning.
Speaker 4: Grade of the attorney first grade.
Speaker 5: Turning one of the grades. I don't know, uh, because.
Speaker 4: Back then it wasn't how many years was it?
Speaker 5: It was four grades four, three, two, one and thank god?
Speaker 5: And then you were then I got then I got paid.
Speaker 4: Right, I went. Guys in the truck, What guys did
Speaker 4: you have there in the truck at the time? Uh?
Speaker 5: Who cares?
Speaker 1: Jesus quite the table truck.
Speaker 5: The truck had some great guys. There was a fireman
Speaker 5: called Peter Zincas in the truck. Oh, you're showing me
Speaker 5: a picture of the Germans.
Speaker 7: That's what it was. Okay, Remember I was talking about sixty.
Speaker 5: These are Germans that came over.
Speaker 7: I don't want to start yourself.
Speaker 5: Rover bus ever around and the firehouse gave them a
Speaker 5: lunch and these guys were Germans were great. And I'll
Speaker 5: tell you a story about fter nine to eleven about Germany.
Speaker 7: Okay, we'll get it tod that I was the president
Speaker 7: of the.
Speaker 5: Students and the job thought I was a travel ager.
Speaker 5: They called me up and they said, bring all the
Speaker 5: Germans over. You're the president students. I said, yeah, we
Speaker 5: want you to get fifty people together because they're going
Speaker 5: to be sent over to Germany. I said, do I
Speaker 5: look like a travel as to you? Are you kidding me?
Speaker 5: What do I know? They said, yeah, get some you know,
Speaker 5: you could bring your wives or something like that.
Speaker 6: So I got.
Speaker 5: I said, I didn't want to get the guys from
Speaker 5: like the first division because they would get more money
Speaker 5: and more things and the Trona. So I got like
Speaker 5: forty one engine. I got something company you mean squad
Speaker 5: forty one? No, I won't.
Speaker 4: I knew it.
Speaker 5: They were forty one engine for most of my career.
Speaker 4: And trying to bait them bro I'm trying to bait him.
Speaker 5: You see that on that one. Real quick, I'll change
Speaker 5: the subject. I get detailed though Squad forty one. I
Speaker 5: walk in the door and there's a young lieutenant there
Speaker 5: and he goes, hey, hey, you doing. What are you
Speaker 5: here for? I said, I'm detailed from sixty to forty one.
Speaker 5: He says, oh, we don't need anybody go back to sixty.
Speaker 5: You probably get sent somewhere up. Okay. Well, at the time,
Speaker 5: Jimmy Lafferty, who I worked with for over twenty years,
Speaker 5: he was the man power pull for Sock. He did
Speaker 5: demand power and he calls up sixty. He says, who's
Speaker 5: the asshole that just sent to forty one? Oh? John
Speaker 5: Roup put them on the phone. So I get on
Speaker 5: the phone. He says, hey, asshole. I said yeah. He
Speaker 5: goes he went to forty one. I said, yeah, Well,
Speaker 5: he just called me and said, don't send me an
Speaker 5: Indian guy. I owed, you want sock guys or truckies?
Speaker 5: I said really, I said, you know what, send them
Speaker 5: a prob trucky if you can this way, I said,
Speaker 5: I have twenty five years on a job. Send them
Speaker 5: a prob right, I said. I did more truck work,
Speaker 5: probably than he did. Anyway, the battalion sends me the
Speaker 5: nineteen truck, one of the best truck companies around. I
Speaker 5: get there. They're going out to a job, so I
Speaker 5: rushing that I can hear them, and the boss goes.
Speaker 5: I said, who's gonna Who am I relieving? He says,
Speaker 5: the guy's not gonna go now he knows there's a
Speaker 5: job going on. Go in the the nineteen truck had
Speaker 5: that truck with the phone booth on the side. Just
Speaker 5: go in there. You're the second roofman. Not a problem.
Speaker 5: So I go. I go in there and we go
Speaker 5: to the job. Go up to the roof. We're doing
Speaker 5: it with pulling the siel and that doing it. Go down,
Speaker 5: go down to the search. Now I see there's one
Speaker 5: all by himself, all right, So I walk up to him.
Speaker 5: I go, hey, assholes, you're talking to me. I said, well,
Speaker 5: you're the only asshole here. I said, you know what,
Speaker 5: I couldn't work in your ship, Alfred, but the guy
Speaker 5: who does the man power pull I worked for him
Speaker 5: over twenty years. He told me you didn't want me
Speaker 5: because I was an engine guy. I got more experience
Speaker 5: than your hold backstep and guess what, I just had
Speaker 5: the roof with one of the best truck companies on
Speaker 5: the job. So guess what, You're an asshole. So he got,
Speaker 5: I can get you in trouble. I said, Well, is
Speaker 5: a friend of mine and I'm president of the studens,
Speaker 5: so I know a lot of people downtown. Try your
Speaker 5: best shot, buddy.
Speaker 4: Oh right.
Speaker 5: That was the end of that story.
Speaker 4: Did you work with him as a fireman, Vanison?
Speaker 5: He was in forty two, right, So a couple of
Speaker 5: times I was over here.
Speaker 4: He worked in busy place man.
Speaker 5: He was, oh yeah, forty two.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I'll tell you what. A lot of guys discounted and
Speaker 5: didn't like him because, oh, you can't be union guy.
Speaker 5: You can't be. You never hurt me, You never hurt anybody.
Speaker 5: I actually knew in the fire department. Guys had a
Speaker 5: heart on for him. That's their fault. I don't you know.
Speaker 5: I'm not. You do what you gotta do. I know
Speaker 5: what I got.
Speaker 4: We had him on the show, John. We had him
Speaker 4: on the show about two three months ago, and he
Speaker 4: pulled no punches. He answered any question. He's like I
Speaker 4: got on the high bro. He was.
Speaker 7: He was.
Speaker 4: He was great he's great.
Speaker 5: I've just seen him at the stupid decaraye, right, oh,
Speaker 5: and I gave him a little what for a little
Speaker 5: bit for what? He comes up behind me and he
Speaker 5: at the stupid decaray and he's rubbing my shoulders. Now
Speaker 5: I don't know who it is, and he's doing that,
Speaker 5: and I go, yeah, whoever you are, you must have
Speaker 5: been a trucky because she got soft hands. And I
Speaker 5: turned around and said, oh, this Tommy. I used to
Speaker 5: be able to call him Tommy. It's like ed when
Speaker 5: no one was around, he was around. Yeah, so that
Speaker 5: was that.
Speaker 4: Did you did they have thirty day details back then?
Speaker 5: Did you go to the thirty day details?
Speaker 4: Yeah? To the truck. They didn't have that.
Speaker 5: Oh you mean to go to the truck? No, No,
Speaker 5: I asked to go to the truck by Captain Canals.
Speaker 5: He was seventeen truck. But Patty even create the Irish spy,
Speaker 5: said you can't be going to those fakes body. We
Speaker 5: need you in the engine.
Speaker 4: That's what I was gonna say. You never wanted to
Speaker 4: go to the truck. You always liked the engine work.
Speaker 5: I was stating about going to the truck. But like
Speaker 5: I said, my captain when he put his hand on
Speaker 5: your shoulder and he said, no, you're staying in the end.
Speaker 5: I said, okay, And then I liked actually having a
Speaker 5: hose in my hand and putting fire out. You know that.
Speaker 5: I used to say to the truck my son was
Speaker 5: a trucky and my mother up for bid make she
Speaker 5: rest in heaven. She asked them. She goes, oh, what's
Speaker 5: the difference between the answer and the truck. So I said, well,
Speaker 5: the truck. They go up to the fire house and
Speaker 5: a fire building and they go, I break down out
Speaker 5: book and she goes and she looks at me, and
Speaker 5: I said, then the engine comes in and they put
Speaker 5: the fire out. The truck don't put the fire out. Now,
Speaker 5: why would they do? They can't put it out with them,
Speaker 5: they got these books. They can't with the fire. No,
Speaker 5: they standing there and watch her. No, they can't do that.
Speaker 4: I said, ay do Hey, John, I watched.
Speaker 7: He's been I am watching live. Is what he's saying.
Speaker 9: Honor to call your friend and brother, and I wish
Speaker 9: you all the best. Honor to call your son a brother.
Speaker 9: Firefighter Also in the job shirt Michael Tom Mike Thomas,
Speaker 9: thank you.
Speaker 4: Answer question for you, John, where they come up with
Speaker 4: the name Green Berets. Why do they call them the Berets?
Speaker 1: Stole my question?
Speaker 5: Or the the Emerald Society Band, the pipe band. Yeah,
Speaker 5: in the basement of sixty seventeen Billy, Yes, And there
Speaker 5: was a bunch of Irish.
Speaker 6: Bies fus seek oaks seek.
Speaker 5: I'm telling you now they were I'm German, German Irish,
Speaker 5: and I'm telling you I learned to hate the bag pipes.
Speaker 5: Pipes and it does squeak can kill that catter? Ready
Speaker 5: for Christ's sake, you know, I love the band, but
Speaker 5: you can only take so much, right, so they but
Speaker 5: they started that in the basement.
Speaker 4: And that's where they came up with the Green Beerrays.
Speaker 4: What what year is that about?
Speaker 5: Let me see, that would have to be sixties, the
Speaker 5: late sixties, I guess mid the late sixties.
Speaker 4: And when did they come up with the named Green
Speaker 4: Beer Rays in.
Speaker 5: The sixties before me?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 5: I got that. And there's still the Green Bereys, even
Speaker 5: though I venture to say that the Irish population in
Speaker 5: the firehouse has gone down.
Speaker 4: Yes, probably that wasn't the truck and the engine. It
Speaker 4: was just the engine that with the Green berays, both
Speaker 4: both and the chief.
Speaker 5: The chiefs would have a green beret Onto and Joe McLaughlin.
Speaker 5: You had a picture of him earlier standard of the firehouse.
Speaker 5: His mother, that guy, his mother made all the original
Speaker 5: green berets.
Speaker 4: Oh really, yeah, you would knit them.
Speaker 5: So if you had an original.
Speaker 4: You got the picture of them with the upstairs. I have.
Speaker 7: This one there you go.
Speaker 5: I would say she made half of those because some
Speaker 5: of the guys were new and I don't know where
Speaker 5: the how they got their bearrats from. Wow, but uh
Speaker 5: anyo at the time on the joble no other guys
Speaker 5: do have time.
Speaker 4: On We were talking in the pre show how you
Speaker 4: were talking about like in house watch with it you
Speaker 4: weren't allowed to watch TV that had like what year
Speaker 4: we talking about, like seventy nine.
Speaker 5: Uh, nineteen eighty, early eighties. They would have the television
Speaker 5: in a little cutout and a sliding door. And if
Speaker 5: you've seen it not the battalion chief they lived with us.
Speaker 5: It was fine with them. But if a deputy came
Speaker 5: or higher up live de door older and you pretend
Speaker 5: like you were reading now they got a uh what
Speaker 5: do you call folding bed comes out? Now? Right, all
Speaker 5: those things. Murphy bed bigger television. But it doesn't matter
Speaker 5: because they're all on this right, all on the phone,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean?
Speaker 7: Yes, oh, we know.
Speaker 5: What's amazing you have that.
Speaker 4: What was the busiest business?
Speaker 5: Get runs?
Speaker 4: What was the busiest night? You can remember that John.
Speaker 5: Fifteen, all hands are better and one night.
Speaker 4: Fifteen all hands or better? In one night three.
Speaker 5: Came up as chump change to you know, to relocate
Speaker 5: to sixty seventeen. And when two ninety hit the Sharborough Bridge,
Speaker 5: they are ninety to the Bronx, acting six to oh,
Speaker 5: and the Bronx said, yeah, two ninety you're sixth section
Speaker 5: of sixty engine sponsor box SO and SOS whatever. And
Speaker 5: then when you get done, if you go to sixty,
Speaker 5: don't hit the computer.
Speaker 4: You know, all hands are better and one night to one.
Speaker 5: Night to her, that's nice and that was fun. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I wound up going to about four of them, right, you.
Speaker 8: Was serious about that.
Speaker 5: And it was in April.
Speaker 4: It wasn't even in the winter.
Speaker 5: April I think it was, or maybe it was March
Speaker 5: something like that. It was not summer, and it was crazy,
Speaker 5: mostly all hands and you know what some of if
Speaker 5: they've seen smoke from five blocks. My it's in all hands.
Speaker 4: Yeah. But yeah, Well, any any fires that stand out
Speaker 4: to you?
Speaker 5: The fire with my son fought a long first two
Speaker 5: that stood out.
Speaker 6: The ship that's a I never heard that job before,
Speaker 6: nob A lot of those those moments.
Speaker 5: The tanks now the gas tanks. They were on fire
Speaker 5: down one hundred and thirty second Street day and me
Speaker 5: last fire by stood out.
Speaker 4: Oh what was It.
Speaker 5: Was a commercial building and we were second to eighty
Speaker 5: three was first due, and I'm following the line and
Speaker 5: it wasn't charged yet, and then when it charged, I
Speaker 5: didn't realize it was dark, completely black. I was by
Speaker 5: the truck entrance and you know the truck has like
Speaker 5: four feet around it higher. Well, when they've charged the line,
Speaker 5: I didn't know better, but I went down the four
Speaker 5: feet right on my right shoulder and that wasn't good.
Speaker 5: It's tore my rotor coff So that was my last job,
Speaker 5: being my last job.
Speaker 4: What year did you start driving?
Speaker 5: It depends on uh, you mean as a real chauffeur.
Speaker 4: Not a company, No, as a as a Saulfaur chauffeur.
Speaker 5: One of the chauffers might have been under the weather.
Speaker 5: You might say, you know he he caught a cold
Speaker 5: or something down in the basement.
Speaker 4: Ah, I got you and not fit for driving?
Speaker 5: Well, sorry, we're going down. He got to about one
Speaker 5: hundred and forty and the rick stops, and well, everybody
Speaker 5: on the backstep is going, what the hell is going
Speaker 5: on here? And we look in the front and his
Speaker 5: head is on the steeling road, allegedly allegedly on the steel.
Speaker 5: And the captain, who wasn't too far behind him, says, row,
Speaker 5: get up here. He said, what he says, I know
Speaker 5: you drive. You drove a truck in private life, so
Speaker 5: you're driving.
Speaker 4: I said, huh, how many? How many years you have
Speaker 4: on at this point?
Speaker 5: At that point? Eight?
Speaker 4: And when did you get the seat?
Speaker 5: Hey? So I got and so I got down there
Speaker 5: and I'm going, thank god that every Sunday morning we
Speaker 5: had drills. So I knew what a hydrant was, you know,
Speaker 5: So you know, so I hooked up to the hydrant
Speaker 5: and I sister took a line off me, so I
Speaker 5: knew where to put it in the water, and I
Speaker 5: gave it to him. Little did I know that forty
Speaker 5: one and eighty three also came down and took lines
Speaker 5: off me. Because it was sixty. And now they're calling
Speaker 5: for water. I'm going, why are you calling me? And
Speaker 5: I look in the backstep and there's two lines hanging down,
Speaker 5: so I grabbed one of them. I put it on
Speaker 5: and I said, here comes your water. I didn't know
Speaker 5: what you was rich.
Speaker 4: Oh make it.
Speaker 5: I'm happy. And when I'm not so happy, And now
Speaker 5: the deputy finally shows up and eighty three and twenty
Speaker 5: nine just get on hygrants and blah blah blah blah,
Speaker 5: and helped the shaw for for sixty leave me alone
Speaker 5: and finally get the water. And after the job, eighty
Speaker 5: three lieutenant comes down. He's yelling at me. I asked
Speaker 5: for water. I don't want water, And I said, what
Speaker 5: would be nice if you guys actually took the hosing
Speaker 5: handed to me? So I know what the hell I'm doing,
Speaker 5: I said, I only became a show for about an
Speaker 5: hour ago on the fire at the fire well and
Speaker 5: that was the end of that. That was my first job.
Speaker 4: That's when I had that ross relief valve. Right, you
Speaker 4: had the when you had to crank back when it
Speaker 4: trickled out of the pipe, right when you're in the max.
Speaker 5: Oh, we never had a back. American France did, yeah,
Speaker 5: American France, and I forget the first one was nineteen
Speaker 5: eighty something whatever it was, but never had a mac o.
Speaker 4: Susan Murray loves you.
Speaker 1: And Jennifer Foley want a chat as well.
Speaker 5: And Jennifer Foley she's on that. Another daughter.
Speaker 4: Now you let him marry an Irish guy, John, you
Speaker 4: let her mary an Irish.
Speaker 6: Kany you look at the irishman.
Speaker 5: She didn't marry as good to Foley and Murray. What
Speaker 5: are you thinking on Maurial Murray, they're gonna marry Germans. No,
Speaker 5: I got three sons, they're old roars. And then my
Speaker 5: other daughter married a Greek glick.
Speaker 4: What do you got?
Speaker 5: Six kids? He's a great guy. He's upstate now killing
Speaker 5: for defense.
Speaker 4: Oh like louis nice?
Speaker 2: So you lleye quiet, I'm hunting weapons.
Speaker 5: You got? You got six kids? Six kids? Cause and
Speaker 5: gotta got a television. We haven't had one since.
Speaker 4: Good for you. Six kids and only one of them
Speaker 4: became One son became a fireman.
Speaker 5: And one became a correction officer who just he got hurt,
Speaker 5: had got hurt on the job, had a knee replacement.
Speaker 5: And it's hard to get out of the corrections. They
Speaker 5: put him back to full dirty. He goes back, they
Speaker 5: gets into another You know, the convicts don't give a
Speaker 5: crap job attacktic. So they attacked him again and he
Speaker 5: had to get a second knee replacement.
Speaker 4: That sucks.
Speaker 5: And I might as well tell you this. He beat
Speaker 5: the crap out of someone on the job. You know,
Speaker 5: they attacked him. So he was a big he's a
Speaker 5: big guy. He beats him up. They soon, so they
Speaker 5: go to their Bronx. Bronx convict, you're gonna win. So
Speaker 5: he lost and they don't. They don't cover you in
Speaker 5: a correction department.
Speaker 4: Wait a minute, wait you tell me that the convict one?
Speaker 5: Yes, well, no you didn't win the fight.
Speaker 4: He no, he won this the lawsuit. Yeah, what did
Speaker 4: not supposed to have? Right you was talking about.
Speaker 5: Top You see a correction officer in the Bronx. They
Speaker 5: always the copy gonna win and the correction officer ain't
Speaker 5: gonna win.
Speaker 4: Right now, Going back when you when you got to sixty,
Speaker 4: what was what was the neighborhood like? Was a like
Speaker 4: crime infested crack with I mean cracked eighties is the crack?
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, crackers, whack yeah. We had a liquor store
Speaker 5: next to the firehouse with about I would say fifteen
Speaker 5: eighteen locals, and within three years there might have been
Speaker 5: two of them left.
Speaker 7: They all.
Speaker 5: They didn't like move. They just died dead from We
Speaker 5: had more shootings i've been. I responded to quite a
Speaker 5: few guys that I have one guy this best. When
Speaker 5: I was a chauffeur at the end of my career,
Speaker 5: I had this captain. He was a real asshole.
Speaker 7: No.
Speaker 5: When when I pull up to the firehouse, you gotta
Speaker 5: turn a little bit, so you get back in and
Speaker 5: I'm facing the projects across the street. Here comes the
Speaker 5: guy out of the project and another guy behind him shoots
Speaker 5: him night in the back of.
Speaker 7: The head mob style.
Speaker 5: He's getting out of the rig yelling to the guys
Speaker 5: in the back, we got a guy shot across the street.
Speaker 5: Get the medical bag. I said, stay in the ring.
Speaker 5: We're gonna back this bad boy up. Get bricks between
Speaker 5: us and the guy with the gun. And he says,
Speaker 5: are you giving orders? I said, well, are you going
Speaker 5: to be an asshole? And go? With his shooters still
Speaker 5: off the seat. Now we go into firehouse. You can
Speaker 5: see the guy going down the block. I said, okay,
Speaker 5: let's go cross the street, and we got proby Branda Broby.
Speaker 5: I felt bad for him, first time he ever seen
Speaker 5: anything like just and they's got brain mattter coming out
Speaker 5: of his head. He's still moving a little bit. And
Speaker 5: I told the probe he's gonna be dead within the minute.
Speaker 5: I'm telling you right now. And he craps out in
Speaker 5: the provs like, oh, oh, I can't this, Oh this
Speaker 5: is bad. And the cops come and says, I'll get
Speaker 5: in your car. We'll go around there and let's see
Speaker 5: if we can find the shooter. I said, guys, he's
Speaker 5: going to get one of us killed, right comes back
Speaker 5: five minutes later, now that the project's over. Over there,
Speaker 5: got hundreds of people all around this, you know, watching
Speaker 5: what's going on. And he comes back and the cop
Speaker 5: walks away from me and he shouts at the cop
Speaker 5: if we see him, I'm going to pull you up
Speaker 5: and tell you I got him. I said, guys, let's
Speaker 5: go back in the fire house. This knit it's going
Speaker 5: to get us killed.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 5: And by the way, his name was Alanagan again wolf again.
Speaker 7: Oh.
Speaker 5: I was the Comisarf sixteen years. In my fifteenth year,
Speaker 5: calls me into the office. He says, you know, I
Speaker 5: don't like the idea of one commissof I want to
Speaker 5: make it second Commissar. I said, hold your thought, cap,
Speaker 5: I'll be right back. Ran upstairs, got the paperwork, got
Speaker 5: all the money, came down through it on his dests.
Speaker 5: I said, you'd better make two because I'm out. He said, well,
Speaker 5: I'll make two, he says, I said, you can't make
Speaker 5: any it's the firehouse. Everybody in the firehouse votes for
Speaker 5: commisar R. You got one vote. The sixty four guys
Speaker 5: in the firehouse, you're one of sixty four.
Speaker 4: Is that the same captain asshole?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 7: So I go.
Speaker 5: I go in the sitting room, which is right next
Speaker 5: to his office. He can hear every basically almost everything
Speaker 5: that's going on in the sittingroom. I'm there with some
Speaker 5: guys and I'm telling my tailor woe. All of a sudden,
Speaker 5: his door slams. He goes out to the house. Watch
Speaker 5: all in the front of the firehouse. Fireman rowed to
Speaker 5: the house to the engine office, and they going always calling.
Speaker 5: He's calling you now, So I said, well, I ain't
Speaker 5: going in there now. All you got, I said, I
Speaker 5: ain't going in there, and I don't go in there.
Speaker 5: Five minutes later, out there the house watching again, fireman
Speaker 5: rowed to the engine office. He says, a second goal,
Speaker 5: you gotta go in there. I'm still not going in there.
Speaker 5: I'm sitting there. Third time he comes out of the office,
Speaker 5: he comes into the sitting room. Can you hear me
Speaker 5: calling you? I said, you knew I was here. Why
Speaker 5: did you go out to the house watching broadcast that
Speaker 5: you want me to androw off? Why did you just
Speaker 5: come in like a gentleman and asked me to come
Speaker 5: back in? He didn't say a word. Come in your office.
Speaker 5: I go in your office, hands me back the paperwork
Speaker 5: in the money. He says, okay, you'll be the only
Speaker 5: housewatch only commissaw commissarw So. I said, well, okay, you
Speaker 5: could have started that conversation a long time ago. I said,
Speaker 5: but you only got one vote. Or if you want,
Speaker 5: you know, you can ask everybody to vote me out.
Speaker 5: It's fine with me. I doing it for almost fifty
Speaker 5: I was over fifteen years.
Speaker 4: It's a fucking factless job.
Speaker 5: Commisso, I have before letter name or HR four letters.
Speaker 5: He misspelt it twice on official paperwork. This spelled it.
Speaker 5: So I find this out and I said, okay, so
Speaker 5: I'm on the watch. He gets a phone calls name
Speaker 5: is Lonigan, and I'm going luka goo. One guy goes
Speaker 5: in the office. He goes, he's calling you any of
Speaker 5: my name? He says, no, that's your name for him.
Speaker 5: So he picks up the phone, captain and just chicks up.
Speaker 5: So now he gets another phone call and I do
Speaker 5: it again, lulau luka. Who picks up the phone. Then
Speaker 5: he comes out to me and goes, why are you
Speaker 5: doing this? I said, when you spell my name right,
Speaker 5: I'll pronounce your name right.
Speaker 9: Got it for you, broy.
Speaker 5: For you takes ship from nobody, takes.
Speaker 7: Ship from nobody.
Speaker 4: You the Were you the senior man when you left there?
Speaker 5: Yes? Bye bye?
Speaker 4: Quite a bit right.
Speaker 5: Oh, here's one thing. Being a chauffeur. I always took
Speaker 5: the junior guy in the engine. I don't care how
Speaker 5: many years or months or minutes he had on a jock.
Speaker 5: You I would clean the rake on a day tour.
Speaker 5: You polish your brass. That was that was my thing.
Speaker 5: Every day tour I cleaned the rake. The junior man
Speaker 5: would polish your brass. We had some things that were brass. Okay,
Speaker 5: talk about senior man. I'm retired. I'm retiring. I gotta
Speaker 5: show you this. I had to retirement party. Oh look
Speaker 5: what they.
Speaker 4: Gave me bread. That's nice, bro, Bring up a little higher,
Speaker 4: Bring it up a little higher.
Speaker 5: John turn, turn a little and he gives me a apology.
Speaker 5: Breath over and he said, polish your own goddamn brass.
Speaker 7: That is nice.
Speaker 5: It's heavy, too solid brass. God, But Joe, I pulled.
Speaker 4: Up some pictures from nineteen seventy nine in the Bronx.
Speaker 4: I want to know if this is what it looked
Speaker 4: like when you were up there, go ahead.
Speaker 5: Was there any fire? Yes, that would be closer to
Speaker 5: fifty engine eighty two engine uh north of eighty three engined.
Speaker 5: We had a lot of projects by us.
Speaker 4: You had, John guns, Oh yeah.
Speaker 5: That looks good. I think that the people probably moved out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 7: And then the other we have was just just uh
Speaker 7: kind of look right here.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I mean you know what, I feel sorry for
Speaker 5: those people.
Speaker 4: John. You know what, people, especially the young kids, they
Speaker 4: don't realize what that You show these pictures and they
Speaker 4: have no idea what it was like up there. In
Speaker 4: the box.
Speaker 5: Do you'll tell you what that Uh, it's it's said,
Speaker 5: Yeah that was said, and uh, you know what, what
Speaker 5: can you say? Yeah, it's it's terrible and they you
Speaker 5: know why, department did a lot of work. As you
Speaker 5: could tell we, uh, saved a lot of buildings.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to ask you though.
Speaker 7: Right, Foundations saved a lot of foundations, Mike.
Speaker 2: I didn't want to ask because you spent your whole
Speaker 2: career there. You didn't really bounce around too much twenty
Speaker 2: six years there. So sometimes progress is faster in other
Speaker 2: areas of the city than others slower, vice versa. By
Speaker 2: the time the mid nineties came around or towards the
Speaker 2: end of your career four to oh five, was the
Speaker 2: area substantially improved or did it take a longer time?
Speaker 5: Absolutely? Okay, I'm trying to think of his name. It
Speaker 5: was a priest, his brother was a politician whatever. He
Speaker 5: started coming up with money and they were building houses.
Speaker 5: They were kind of attached down the block, like you know,
Speaker 5: two story jobs, and they built a lot of them,
Speaker 5: and uh, you know you mentioned seventy three, forty two,
Speaker 5: they had a lot of them all around there, and
Speaker 5: everything and the neighbors started being nice.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 5: When built where Freedom Land was in the Bronx, they
Speaker 5: built co Op City that emptied out the Grand Concourse,
Speaker 5: the Green Concourse. Most of those people moved to co
Speaker 5: Op City, right, and a lot of the people that
Speaker 5: got burnt out in the South Bronx go to the
Speaker 5: Grand Concourse, which Babe Ruth lived on, by the way.
Speaker 4: Really, yeah, but you had I mean there are a
Speaker 4: lot of buildings. You would go to the same buildings
Speaker 4: over and over, sometimes in the same night, right, I
Speaker 4: mean you'd go to a fire and be back there
Speaker 4: not too long after.
Speaker 5: I'm not too proud of this, but I'm going to
Speaker 5: tell you an incident. I got the nozzle going upstairs
Speaker 5: to a fire. Say it's on the third or fourth floor.
Speaker 5: I forget, and here's a guy coming down with a suitcase. Okay,
Speaker 5: And as he's passed me, he tells me, oh, my
Speaker 5: son is in the apartment on the fourth floor. So
Speaker 5: I accidentally stuck out my foot and he tripped all
Speaker 5: the way down the stairs. And it was an accident, rightly,
Speaker 5: it happened. Yeah, it was the noise left in the apartment.
Speaker 5: But he could suitcase. Yeah, you know because uh sometimes
Speaker 5: and it's this is true. The landlords would tell them
Speaker 5: you better be out by Friday night. Of course they
Speaker 5: had lightning coming, and there was a derogatory term they
Speaker 5: used to call Jewish lightning. You know, I personally didn't
Speaker 5: care for that term, but they called the Jewish lightning.
Speaker 5: The neighbor would sell the building to the insurance company.
Speaker 4: Right, I mean back then too, if you got burnt
Speaker 4: out of your house, you you pushed to the front
Speaker 4: of the line for subsidized housing right to a lot
Speaker 4: of the people. A lot of these people would have
Speaker 4: their bags and everything packed sitting on.
Speaker 5: The curve fifty first Street and offered the Grand concourse
Speaker 5: was a watch the avenue or something like that, whatever
Speaker 5: it was, one to the left of it. They had
Speaker 5: the office there where you would go in and get
Speaker 5: the new apartment right and we would get cold there
Speaker 5: quite often because they'd have a line right then you'd
Speaker 5: go up to the front of the line and get
Speaker 5: a new apartment. We would get false alarms there quite
Speaker 5: often because every time they pulled the alarm, everybody have
Speaker 5: to get out, and now they're going back in and
Speaker 5: you know, to.
Speaker 4: The front of the line.
Speaker 5: The line. Yeah, so they would do that jack asses.
Speaker 5: We would go there all the time. It's like Jesus Chris,
Speaker 5: you know, we're going back there again. And then we
Speaker 5: found out for one party. Yeah, they keep pulling up
Speaker 5: fregget alarm and and just to get in front of
Speaker 5: the line. And they get two thousand dollars for new furniture.
Speaker 4: Right yep. So you pull up to a job and
Speaker 4: people will be on the curb with all their bags
Speaker 4: and all that ship. Absolutely they would go to the
Speaker 4: front of the line.
Speaker 5: Man, I mean, you know, it's it's a shame, but
Speaker 5: it happened. And now on the bottom of the Bronx
Speaker 5: by Bruckn the boulevard there there used to be what
Speaker 5: would you say, not you know, off not off buildings
Speaker 5: that they used to manufacture stuff and this and that,
Speaker 5: and they turned it into like soho really yeah, I'm
Speaker 5: telling you all these yuppy yuppies people moving in there
Speaker 5: because they're only two or three stops on the fore
Speaker 5: train to get downtown, you know. And uh, all of
Speaker 5: a sudden you go to opt in the Bronx and
Speaker 5: Bruck the Bulvard. The old people are not the animal,
Speaker 5: it's the young regentrified. Oh yeah, yeah, I you know,
Speaker 5: I'm not used to walking into a bar the guys
Speaker 5: have a retirement party and want of the bars and
Speaker 5: bipructional bulbar. I'm not used to walking in the bar
Speaker 5: down there and see nothing but white people. Yeah, I'm going,
Speaker 5: where am I?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: This ain't the South Bronx that I know. And the
Speaker 5: guy goes to me, what are you doing? They said,
Speaker 5: I'm looking for retiring Oh that's the other bar down
Speaker 5: the other corner. And I walked down there and there
Speaker 5: was my guys down there, and there was a lot
Speaker 5: of govern white people of the guys in there too,
Speaker 5: And I'm going and then that's telling me, oh, yeah,
Speaker 5: this building here, this building here, and now if you
Speaker 5: went up to one hundred and thirty eighth Street, well
Speaker 5: your building, not all of them, but a lot of
Speaker 5: them are down and new projects going up and it's
Speaker 5: all jetified. And I'm going, well, I don't know if
Speaker 5: that's good bear and different because they kicked a lot
Speaker 5: of people out, I don't know where they're going.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I drove through not too long now,
Speaker 4: maybe a year ago. I drove to Bedstyle right, asked
Speaker 4: one eleven and two fourteen, and I'm like this yuppie
Speaker 4: moms pushing baby carriages, people on bikes. I'm like, what
Speaker 4: the hell happened at bed? Stuffy?
Speaker 5: Go on one eleven and two fourteen? Go to the
Speaker 5: stupid meeting every month. A whole bunch of them, about
Speaker 5: twelve of them. Good guys. But I give them the
Speaker 5: business every time I get. Of course you do, of course,
Speaker 5: I said, you know, I tell them you guys do
Speaker 5: any work at all.
Speaker 4: You're like, oh, you don't have a we don't have
Speaker 4: a partner on, but you're gonna tell them if he
Speaker 4: popped on he's not in DV.
Speaker 6: Come on, Oh jeez, it's still he said, between nine
Speaker 6: and we had there's still a slight chance.
Speaker 7: He was struggling chat.
Speaker 5: Why was their house the only building on their block?
Speaker 5: But all that it's so good? Why they lost every
Speaker 5: other building?
Speaker 4: Now? Actually there's a lot of uh those two stories, yeah,
Speaker 4: two story projects on the board.
Speaker 5: We got a cap they're old. There was a lieutenanty
Speaker 5: I became a captain of seventeen. Dave Maxwell, big guy
Speaker 5: could take all the smoke you ever wanted to give him.
Speaker 5: He was a great fireman. But that's Probrary left. Now
Speaker 5: they're good. They're a good house, except Canossie hates them.
Speaker 4: Kenosi hates what oh right, right right right?
Speaker 5: Yeah? You know why?
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, I do.
Speaker 5: It also life and and Canossi still blames them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what the hell was I just gonna ask you
Speaker 4: ship while.
Speaker 1: You while you pondered that, I was just gonna I
Speaker 1: want to real quick.
Speaker 4: Before while you go to the bathroom.
Speaker 2: That's I'm talking with John Roar here in episode two
Speaker 2: Hudred and thirty to get Salty Experience. I mean, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of debate with gentrification that's not going to
Speaker 2: be settled here, that's for sure. But I'll ask you
Speaker 2: this as someone again he spent twenty six years watching
Speaker 2: one neighborhood evolve from one direction to another from seventy
Speaker 2: nine to five.
Speaker 1: I mean, is there a little bit of pride from the.
Speaker 2: Standpoint that had you guys not done the work you did,
Speaker 2: the neighborhood would have never have been a position to
Speaker 2: change in the first place, because.
Speaker 1: A lot of that was due to the good work
Speaker 1: of the FDLI.
Speaker 5: There were a lot of good people. Don't get me wrong.
Speaker 5: South Brons had a lot of good people of course, yeah,
Speaker 5: and they had networks young.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And we used to give a lunch to the seniors
Speaker 5: from my Downald block was the Senior Center and we
Speaker 5: used to make a big lunch. Itb be about one
Speaker 5: hundred and some people. We would give lunch show every year.
Speaker 5: And one woman told me, she says, do you notice
Speaker 5: that a lot of old people past your firehouse early
Speaker 5: in the morning. I said, well, not, you know, not that,
Speaker 5: not that I'm outside looking at old people, I said,
Speaker 5: But yeah, I say, she says, because the old people
Speaker 5: early in the morning go shopping and go back into
Speaker 5: their house because all the young guys that are not
Speaker 5: so nice, they're out to at night and they sleep
Speaker 5: late in the morning. So we go out so we
Speaker 5: don't get robbed or picked on or whatever. And I said,
Speaker 5: I never really noticed that, but that was from one
Speaker 5: of the seniors that we know. And I said, wow,
Speaker 5: I never noticed that, but I feel bad for that.
Speaker 5: You know, we have people shot all over the place,
Speaker 5: and there's nothing like going to you know, somebody that's
Speaker 5: still living, you know that's shot and you're waiting for
Speaker 5: an ambulance. Which Lincoln Hospital was a block away from
Speaker 5: the firehouse, and we get there, and we got to
Speaker 5: wait fifteen minutes for an ambulance. So one time a
Speaker 5: guy gets a woman gets shot and one of guys,
Speaker 5: me and him go down.
Speaker 7: We see it.
Speaker 5: He puts his finger in the bullethole to stop the
Speaker 5: bleeding because the engine didn't get out yet and a
Speaker 5: cop car was dead, and he he dumps her in
Speaker 5: the cop guard with his finger and he says, Lincoln,
Speaker 5: hurry up and brings it to link it fifteen minutes
Speaker 5: later and Enables showed up. Now they're gone, sorry too late. Yeah,
Speaker 5: you know, and they would happen all the time. Uh Ams,
Speaker 5: they pick and choose, you know, unless, of course they
Speaker 5: got so many calls that they couldn't make it. But
Speaker 5: you know, because up there there are a lot of.
Speaker 2: Coals, especially back then, and they didn't have a lot
Speaker 2: of resources either. This as well before the FDNY merger.
Speaker 5: Uh well, you got news for you. The only reason
Speaker 5: they want us be cauld We get there first and
Speaker 5: we kind of stabilize the situation. Yeah, and then there's
Speaker 5: a lot of people that might be a little bit overweight.
Speaker 5: And when two girls show up and you look at
Speaker 5: the patients and they're not going to pick him up.
Speaker 5: So the engine of the truck has to pick him
Speaker 5: up up and bring them downstairs and put them in
Speaker 5: the air blots. And there's some mighty big people. Yes, no,
Speaker 5: they might eat too much a little bit, you know that. Ye.
Speaker 4: I want to ask you about the scene we're talking
Speaker 4: about Brooklyn and the Bronx, the legends, the turnout between
Speaker 4: Brooklyn and the Bronx where they're running everybody's rock because
Speaker 4: I started at Brooklyn too, So you're running to the
Speaker 4: rig or you're sorry, so you tell me about it.
Speaker 4: What was the turnout like in the Bronx? Your first,
Speaker 4: do your first, do your second, do your second. Do
Speaker 4: there's no beating anybody in.
Speaker 5: You're right if you if I'm going to a job
Speaker 5: on the show, I'm going.
Speaker 4: To a job.
Speaker 5: I can see it's a job, and I could see
Speaker 5: eighty three coming their first two I'm second to. I
Speaker 5: don't want to let them have the hydrant. I'll take
Speaker 5: the next hydrid because their first I'm not gonna Oh,
Speaker 5: I'm not like Brooklyn. You know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 5: Here we go companies in Brooklyn, they beat your ass in.
Speaker 5: If they were fifth due, they're racing down like I've
Speaker 5: broke details in Brooklyn and I've seen the act that
Speaker 5: I'm going, Are you shooting me? You're trying to beat
Speaker 5: that engine in their first your second, dude, give them
Speaker 5: their duke, because if you get them their duke, they'll
Speaker 5: give you your duke.
Speaker 4: Don't work.
Speaker 5: Yeah, forty one is a different story. No, they're not
Speaker 5: a squad.
Speaker 4: Oh they're in a hance tension.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well they they had a Captain Adams. I love
Speaker 5: that guy. He would try to get on the rigging.
Speaker 5: You know, we only had first do boxes going west
Speaker 5: to the firehouse, the second due box going west. Basically
Speaker 5: it was a harlem all right, going north with fifty
Speaker 5: one engine was we only went three blocks and then
Speaker 5: we were second due go in the other direction south
Speaker 5: and east three blocks. In eighty three we had a
Speaker 5: keeny weeny little first do area, but we still do.
Speaker 5: You know, we were doing five thousand change runs there
Speaker 5: the year, and uh a lot of them were first
Speaker 5: do because for some reason, the projects were a nemesis,
Speaker 5: you know, and uh a lot of it was some
Speaker 5: of it was bullshit.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: They go to uh they went from to compactors. They
Speaker 5: used to not be compactors. But they went to compactors
Speaker 5: and for some reason they loved to light the compact
Speaker 5: us up on fire. Then it was bullshit though unless
Speaker 5: one hundred and thirty Hry. We had a report of
Speaker 5: a man on fire and we got there and we
Speaker 5: went in the door and they were shut shitting in
Speaker 5: the hallway. There was a man on fire ship. Yeah
Speaker 5: the movie.
Speaker 4: What what are the buildings did you have there besides projects?
Speaker 5: Well, when you got down the next block was all.
Speaker 4: All tenements as those are.
Speaker 5: They were a lot of fun. Yeah, and then you
Speaker 5: went south you would have you know, businesses, you know,
Speaker 5: one three Atry was like a stores and all that
Speaker 5: commercial good stores down there. And uh, I gotta admit
Speaker 5: we didn't do too well.
Speaker 4: Sometimes that's what says we can do.
Speaker 5: So good, you can do so the head star and
Speaker 5: you know, and we had one show for Patty McAndrews.
Speaker 5: I love the guys. He's no longer with us. But
Speaker 5: the more fire he's seen, the more pressure he'd give you.
Speaker 5: And if you had a juice and a half, you know,
Speaker 5: two and a half inch hose and you're trying to
Speaker 5: hold a hose and he's pumping that bad boy up,
Speaker 5: you he off the ground and you go were off
Speaker 5: the ground and going, yeah, can you lower the pressure? Yeah,
Speaker 5: there was a lot of fire. Yeah, but I can't
Speaker 5: put it out because I'm flying.
Speaker 4: How did you h How was your relationship with Rescue three?
Speaker 5: They were good? Yeah, good, Well, seventeen trucks sent a
Speaker 5: couple of guys up there, you know, yeah, and uh,
Speaker 5: you know, they were all right by the time. We
Speaker 5: had a great job with Rescue three. And a lot
Speaker 5: of times a lot of companies would come back to
Speaker 5: our quarters and somehow they would disappear from them, you know,
Speaker 5: from the operator's floor. I don't know exactly where they went,
Speaker 5: you know, but they would disappear. So the one night,
Speaker 5: you know the brons, you know, you steal stuff and
Speaker 5: the fire you know, a relocated steal something, and they
Speaker 5: eventually you'd have to go to their firehouse and steal
Speaker 5: it back. You couldn't see you steal it back. So
Speaker 5: Rescue three came to our quarters and they back then
Speaker 5: the quarters. So we stole the bumper, the bumper, the
Speaker 5: bumper of the off the truck, and they didn't realize
Speaker 5: until they got home. The back bumper.
Speaker 4: We talked.
Speaker 5: Went home and they called us up, your son of
Speaker 5: a bitches.
Speaker 4: I didn't know that was a Bronx thing. I was
Speaker 4: told it was a prob be doing. I would go
Speaker 4: to another firehouse and not steal something.
Speaker 5: It was all over. There was a thing that looked
Speaker 5: like a bomb or a torpedo or something like that.
Speaker 5: I bet you that made twenty firehouses in the Bronx.
Speaker 5: Everybody stole that, really, and no one, no one to
Speaker 5: this day knows where it started. You know who owned
Speaker 5: it because they went to every firehouse, and we had
Speaker 5: to show that this is great. Forty two engines stole something.
Speaker 5: Of matter of fact, I think it was the torpedo,
Speaker 5: and we go up there to relocade and we're looking
Speaker 5: at it, but they came back. We could steal it, right,
Speaker 5: So our show for Tom Mahoney, good guy, Greg guy,
Speaker 5: He goes, all right, I'll figure this out. So forty
Speaker 5: three would run in with forty forty two would run
Speaker 5: in with forty three engine. Right, So they get a
Speaker 5: fire together forty two, two and forty three. He calls
Speaker 5: up the dispatcher, which I wasn't too crazy about, and
Speaker 5: he says, we want to relocate the forty three. So
Speaker 5: we said, do you want to go to forty two
Speaker 5: so we could steal that thing back? He says, we are,
Speaker 5: but we're signed to forty three. They're at the fire
Speaker 5: We're going to forty two. Steal that they they'll never
Speaker 5: know who was up to. And it was good. We
Speaker 5: took it back and it wasn't a week later it
Speaker 5: was gone.
Speaker 4: It's gone.
Speaker 5: Yeah, somebody stole it.
Speaker 4: We had I'll tell you a quick story. We had
Speaker 4: a plaque about this big it said to eighty eight.
Speaker 4: It was yellow gold with chrome letters. Right, So we
Speaker 4: go to a job and we didn't realize it. We
Speaker 4: get back to the firehouse. It's gone. Somebody stole it
Speaker 4: off the ring. About six months later, we start getting
Speaker 4: postcards from guys who are going all over the country
Speaker 4: on vacation and they send a picture of the thing,
Speaker 4: like Hey, I'm in Disney World having a great time.
Speaker 4: To see you soon.
Speaker 5: That's good.
Speaker 4: They were all over the world send the pictures. You know,
Speaker 4: they would cover their face, but they would have the
Speaker 4: plaque like yeah, I'm in Germany, I'll see you soon
Speaker 4: and take care right. So yeah, yeah, and then.
Speaker 5: You got what's with us? Yeah, Well, hasn't it before
Speaker 5: has Matt was there that that was a you know
Speaker 5: what they did inspects upstairs? Yeah, on the second Florida,
Speaker 5: I did six weeks there doing inspections. Oh man, yeah,
Speaker 5: not nice. No, I didn't like that at all. Yeah,
Speaker 5: you know you had to go out and give violations out,
Speaker 5: and so you know, every once in a while they're going,
Speaker 5: how many violations did you give out? I mean, well,
Speaker 5: you know I have to see them. They said, you're
Speaker 5: going to go in those buildings and you didn't see
Speaker 5: a violation? I said, no, don't I know? Yeah, give
Speaker 5: me a list of what violations I should be looking for.
Speaker 5: You know, I gave out something, but it was like
Speaker 5: what am I going to bust people's shops for now?
Speaker 5: If it was a real violation, you know, bad fun.
Speaker 5: But yeah, oh that you had two doors going out.
Speaker 5: One of them you know, like you know that have
Speaker 5: two doors. One of them was kind of not you
Speaker 5: couldn't open it or if you didn't give them a
Speaker 5: violation for that, But I had the other door next,
Speaker 5: But now I would give it out.
Speaker 4: See you learned. Yeah, so let me let me tell you.
Speaker 4: Let me tell you the end of that stories, Like
Speaker 4: did you ever get it?
Speaker 5: Back.
Speaker 4: Eight months later, there's a knock at the door in
Speaker 4: the morning before roll call and the the plaque sitting
Speaker 4: outside the door. I'm like, nobody else, Nope, just a plaque.
Speaker 4: We put the plaque back on the rink. Right about
Speaker 4: three months later, they send photos in an envelope of
Speaker 4: some she had to be about four hundred pounds girl
Speaker 4: in the shower urinating on the plaque.
Speaker 7: Whoa man? Now, some of the guys that think we
Speaker 7: discussed that before.
Speaker 5: What you might know where they're from.
Speaker 4: Oh, I know who they were. I know exactly who
Speaker 4: they were.
Speaker 5: And they didn't tell you the girl. So this way,
Speaker 5: you go knock on the door and say I want
Speaker 5: to thank you for somebody.
Speaker 4: Somebody called over there and said, you know what's you know,
Speaker 4: it's great of that fuck of that chick pissing on
Speaker 4: that plaque. But you know what's terrible. One of you
Speaker 4: guys is probably fucking that broad.
Speaker 5: I'll tell you what. None. Yeah, that's terrible.
Speaker 4: I know why you're laughing.
Speaker 2: It's not the visual I was hoping to witness Monday Night.
Speaker 2: But nevertheless, I tell people the truth.
Speaker 5: I tell people that the best comedy show you'll ever
Speaker 5: see in your life is a firehouse kitchen.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, absolutely, yeah, absolutely, you'll learn that you
Speaker 4: can't make up the ship that happened to learn that.
Speaker 5: I don't know about that happened. They might be a
Speaker 5: little dry.
Speaker 4: And we're getting him ready, though, John, We get him ready.
Speaker 4: He knows.
Speaker 5: And I hope you put a fire out your first day.
Speaker 7: Thank you're putting out fires. He's putting fires. We don't
Speaker 7: even know about it. He's putting out fires.
Speaker 4: Oh God, tell about the women that come up with
Speaker 4: the uniform.
Speaker 7: Oh man on the batch monies.
Speaker 5: Yeah, what we had one of the first women on
Speaker 5: the job. You did sixty zales.
Speaker 7: Hmmm, related to me.
Speaker 5: We got by it.
Speaker 7: Oh with.
Speaker 5: The one that was a lawyer that started the whole thing.
Speaker 5: I can't remember her name.
Speaker 4: Bred Brenda Burkley, all right, Brenda Berkman.
Speaker 5: Brenda Burkman, the two of them. You know, back then,
Speaker 5: if you were proby, the captain get you laid off
Speaker 5: for no reason at all. He just said zero on
Speaker 5: the account and you're gone. Well, they both of them
Speaker 5: got laid off, and they sued. She sued, and they
Speaker 5: got went to court and the same liberal judge said,
Speaker 5: down the Stuffisco ecosps door. You're back on the job.
Speaker 5: But Zey couldn't come back to us. She went to
Speaker 5: in Harlem where they do the inspections on the second floor,
Speaker 5: like to eighty eight. So she was doing inspections for
Speaker 5: like the next ten twelve years. Then the job, in
Speaker 5: their wisdom, let her go out to the Rock and
Speaker 5: teach show for training. She never drove a day to life.
Speaker 4: That's a minor technicality, John, come on, mine of technicality.
Speaker 5: And then she went to seventy engine got to be
Speaker 5: the busiest firehouse in the world. And this is the truth.
Speaker 5: If you guys can look it up. Look up nineteen seventy.
Speaker 5: I think it was five, maybe three, but seventy five
Speaker 5: or seventy three. They did twelve runs.
Speaker 4: Twelve runs.
Speaker 5: Where are seven the engine not the city island?
Speaker 4: Oh it is city Island.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, twelve runs, twelve And New York City Fire
Speaker 5: Department does not allow you to put a report in
Speaker 5: a monthly report runs runs a working report negative you
Speaker 5: have to have a positive number. So one is a
Speaker 5: positive number.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I've heard a lot of.
Speaker 5: Stud over the year.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've had months.
Speaker 5: They didn't do any runs back then.
Speaker 4: Guys used to go home, right who lived over there
Speaker 4: and leave the two doors away?
Speaker 5: Yeah, and what he do is he put his boots
Speaker 5: on his too, and that told the boss he was working. Yeah.
Speaker 5: They didn't get because what we're doing allegedly, Yeah, and
Speaker 5: allegedly were you working when the college kids came around
Speaker 5: and were teaching you about being nice on the job,
Speaker 5: You mean, you know, inclusion and this is nice. Well,
Speaker 5: they went to sixty seventeen and I want to tell
Speaker 5: you the right groups were working. Boy, oh boy, he
Speaker 5: went up one side of these people and down the
Speaker 5: other side of the people. It wasn't nice. I have
Speaker 5: to admit it was not nice. Right because these young
Speaker 5: college kids, they they did didn't expect this. Well, fast
Speaker 5: forward about four months, three months, we go to seven
Speaker 5: the engine relocate because they were going to get this
Speaker 5: instruction and they're out of service, so they had to
Speaker 5: get someone else there. They can't go out of service
Speaker 5: or off the island without someone else being in their fire.
Speaker 5: So sixty engine gets called to go there. Same college
Speaker 5: kids over there giving them the instructions. So we're out
Speaker 5: by the house, wash mind ow business and I'm a
Speaker 5: coffee drinker and I said, I gotta go get a
Speaker 5: couple of coffee. You I don't care what's going on.
Speaker 5: So I go in there and I hear them talking
Speaker 5: about my firehouse. How rude and how nasty these guys were.
Speaker 5: They're the worst human beings that God have created. So
Speaker 5: I got my coffee. Excuse me, I got to leave now.
Speaker 5: But you're saying about how being nice. Well, you're talking
Speaker 5: about my firehouse and my guys and me, I said,
Speaker 5: I don't think that's very nice to you. And I
Speaker 5: walked out the door, and you should have seen the
Speaker 5: expressions on their face, like, oh crap, what did we
Speaker 5: just do? Well, you don't learn about people if you
Speaker 5: if you're not going to be nice.
Speaker 4: But nice goes both ways.
Speaker 5: Bro, try to be nice, but if you're not nice
Speaker 5: to me, I'm going to be up one side and
Speaker 5: down the other.
Speaker 4: Let me ask you a question, John, what do you
Speaker 4: think was the best time in your career? Like, if
Speaker 4: you look back now, what was your favorite years in
Speaker 4: your career?
Speaker 5: My first when I was down the chauffeur.
Speaker 4: When you first got to the firehouse.
Speaker 5: When I was down the chauffeur, and well, I'll give
Speaker 5: you an example. I always love to be a nossel man.
Speaker 5: If I couldn't be a Nacevan. I wanted to be
Speaker 5: the backup you guys. You know I was always wanted
Speaker 5: to be in the frog.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: So this kid, Dennis Hodgs, great guy. Me and him
Speaker 5: used to have little rivalries. And I'm on the back step,
Speaker 5: he's on the back step, and you know we actually
Speaker 5: now we're inside, not actually on the back step of work,
Speaker 5: we're inside the rig. And I said, yeah, I'm going
Speaker 5: to get the nozzle today, said bullshit, I'm getting the
Speaker 5: nossele today. Well, we go to a caught fire. I
Speaker 5: get out the rig and run to the back. I
Speaker 5: got the the hose. He comes back, gives me an elbow,
Speaker 5: loosens my teeth up. But I go down to the
Speaker 5: ground and I'm like, shake it up. Now. The other
Speaker 5: guys come out and all like trying to help me up,
Speaker 5: and oh, John, what's going on? I said, Oh, my
Speaker 5: tooth just loosen, losing to tooth. And civilian comes over
Speaker 5: and he goes, hey, guys, you think you could put
Speaker 5: that car fire off?
Speaker 4: I hope you beat his ass after that. Bro uh.
Speaker 5: M hmm. I was all shaking up and I'm going
Speaker 5: I don't know what to do.
Speaker 4: Because the guy came over and said, you just got
Speaker 4: knocked the funk out, son.
Speaker 5: It couldn't have been an even fight, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean? He was, so we kind of left it alone.
Speaker 5: And then later on that day we had another little
Speaker 5: fire and I got to the backstep and there was
Speaker 5: no Dennis back and punched me this time.
Speaker 4: Listen, no elbow. What happened to the Bronx and gentleman
Speaker 4: bro What?
Speaker 6: I don't.
Speaker 4: Exceptions to every rule there are?
Speaker 5: Which Bronx are you talking about?
Speaker 4: Ah?
Speaker 5: No, you know we were gentlemen to the other companies.
Speaker 5: Oh have your little in all right. One more incident
Speaker 5: Vietnam VET. I had a guy in the fire house
Speaker 5: and will not mention his name, but he's called me
Speaker 5: a baby coller and I said that bullshit.
Speaker 6: Stop.
Speaker 5: He said, oh, you're a Vietnam VN. You were baby killers.
Speaker 5: He said. I said no more. He calls me again.
Speaker 5: I said, you do that again. I want to beat
Speaker 5: the balls off you. He did it, and after about
Speaker 5: three shots, he's down on the ground and I got
Speaker 5: two or three guys jumping on me trying to get
Speaker 5: me off of him. They go wow, you went crazy,
Speaker 5: I said, I told him, you warned them. Bro, that
Speaker 5: phrase hits me hard. I said, because I was called
Speaker 5: the baby killer in the airport going home, I'm not
Speaker 5: going to take it.
Speaker 4: Good for you.
Speaker 5: And since then we were good friends up until then,
Speaker 5: and we still are good friends.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 5: We got over the apology and I said, yeah, I'm
Speaker 5: not apologizing for hitting. You deserved it, he says, yeah,
Speaker 5: I kind of. I kind of get where you were
Speaker 5: coming from now.
Speaker 4: I said, well, do you still go back there?
Speaker 5: That was yeah, but you know I got mad and
Speaker 5: that was the only time I actually lost my temper
Speaker 5: in twenty five years.
Speaker 4: Do you still go back there at all?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 5: Yeah? We have Christmas ing uh December eleventh at the
Speaker 5: in by the Thrives and neck Bridge. There's a thing,
Speaker 5: and then they have the Christmas Party. And every summer
Speaker 5: on September they have Long Beach Party on Pennsylvania Avenue
Speaker 5: and on Long Beach on the beach and we get
Speaker 5: about one hundred and fifty one hundred and seventy five guys.
Speaker 5: You know, they go all the way back as.
Speaker 4: Far as you can go Long Long Beach, Long Island. Yeah, Oh,
Speaker 4: I look right, Yeah, yeah, you're on the beach. I
Speaker 4: look right there. Well, i'll come on down.
Speaker 5: I'll let you know.
Speaker 4: Thank you. Well, I'm going to see you at the stupid.
Speaker 5: Day John John Rice goes there.
Speaker 4: Oh does he? Oh? Yeah, the son of a gun.
Speaker 7: Yeah, these things happened in your backyard. You don't know
Speaker 7: what's going on.
Speaker 4: John Rice will be coming on the show.
Speaker 5: He'll be all about him. So I don't know.
Speaker 4: He was a seventeen truck guide, right, He wasn't in
Speaker 4: the engine.
Speaker 5: No, no, he was one of the ponies.
Speaker 4: Yeah, one of the pies.
Speaker 5: But he did.
Speaker 4: He did go to ninety one engine as a lieutenant. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, what can I tell you? Yeah, good, good house.
Speaker 4: I think we got him on. I don't know what
Speaker 4: this is the twenty third of December.
Speaker 5: John's Rice is a good guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a little too tall for me. But he said
Speaker 4: the anything about you. I don't know what the fuck
Speaker 4: he was talking about.
Speaker 5: That. He's a he's a good guy. Good find me.
Speaker 5: And I don't know how he was as a boss
Speaker 5: because I never worked on him. I didn't only imagine
Speaker 5: it would be good guys, so you can imagine good
Speaker 5: guys and bad guys.
Speaker 4: You know, Wait, which guys are, because sometimes the brothers say, oh,
Speaker 4: he's such a good guy, a good guy, good guy,
Speaker 4: But you're like, yeah, I don't know about that. What
Speaker 4: is your definition of a good guy? You know?
Speaker 5: I was going to save that for what you say
Speaker 5: to a new guy coming in.
Speaker 4: Well, for your old school tip of the day. Yeah,
Speaker 4: don't bring it up yet. We're not there yet, We're
Speaker 4: almost there. Not yet. Favorite porch you ever worked with?
Speaker 5: John favorite bors? Yeah, John Lennard. He came from Harlem,
Speaker 5: musician fifty nine and I believe yeah, right, And he
Speaker 5: came over a little bit of a nut job. Well
Speaker 5: you gotta be and good guy, really good guy in
Speaker 5: short working and sometimes things would go a little astray
Speaker 5: when he's working. We called it the Lenny factor, right,
Speaker 5: And but he was a good guy to work with
Speaker 5: and fun, fun, fun guy to work with. And I'm
Speaker 5: still in touch with him. He lived down he lives
Speaker 5: up in Rockland, but he has a US down at
Speaker 5: South Florida, and uh, he invited me down a couple
Speaker 5: of times. I gotta go see him down there sometime,
Speaker 5: and uh, we go out on buildings and I did
Speaker 5: a lot of my you know, shopping, I might say
Speaker 5: when we were out on building for the house and
Speaker 5: we were doing shopping one morning and the deputy calls
Speaker 5: and give me a ten ten or whatever that thing was.
Speaker 5: Where are you because we're supposed to bet a building.
Speaker 5: So he has all the cards, and it says and
Speaker 5: he picks out a card and he tells this pressure
Speaker 5: to tell the deputy where we are, and everyone in
Speaker 5: the riggage.
Speaker 4: No, not that rite, anyone but that one.
Speaker 5: And it wound up being the whole first alarm with
Speaker 5: uh where you worked has matt and a lot of
Speaker 5: because it had more has mad ship in it, and
Speaker 5: and goes, why would you give me this.
Speaker 4: Because she was shopping?
Speaker 5: Well, I didn't say were no, Oh my god, it
Speaker 5: was everybody's gone. Thank god. I was a show outside,
Speaker 5: going this is not good because more and more rigs
Speaker 5: are coming, and rescue come and and uh and all
Speaker 5: that other fake of forty.
Speaker 4: One, oh, picking up a little friction.
Speaker 5: I love the old The guys are great, but then
Speaker 5: when they became a squid, guys from Brooklyn and Manhattan,
Speaker 5: the rescue wannabes would come, and you.
Speaker 4: Know, it's all coming back to me now. Gods, because
Speaker 4: when I would go to the Christmas parties. He would
Speaker 4: say the same thing. Oh you're from squid ah uh.
Speaker 5: You know that they all want to be rescue guys.
Speaker 5: So they go into the squad to jump up to
Speaker 5: be a rescue guy.
Speaker 4: See, I wanted to be I wanted to do work,
Speaker 4: and I still wanted to go to first two engine works.
Speaker 4: So that's why I went there.
Speaker 5: I was, well, now that we've brought this up, I
Speaker 5: don't know if I told you, but I was in
Speaker 5: squad before that other incident. We go up by seventy
Speaker 5: five engine and we're told to go above the fire
Speaker 5: and certain. So I'm up there and I hear help me,
Speaker 5: help me, help me. A little Spanish guy take the door,
Speaker 5: go in. It's a little biking and he's got his
Speaker 5: hand on the mattress of the bed. He's got this
Speaker 5: little voice, help me alby, all right. So I pick
Speaker 5: him up. I said, can you walk? Yeah, take him
Speaker 5: out of the apartment. I rush him to the stairway.
Speaker 5: I get him below the fire, I said, can you
Speaker 5: walk you? See, I said, go downstairs. They got an
Speaker 5: ambulance down, they get some oxygen. I go back up
Speaker 5: there and searching again. Guy from forty one. Hey, you
Speaker 5: made a grab, Paul Good, I said, I didn't make
Speaker 5: you a grab. I made a removal. All of a sudden,
Speaker 5: at the end of the job, the boss comes up
Speaker 5: to me, I'm going to write you up, as said,
Speaker 5: what did I do? I thought I did something wrong.
Speaker 5: He goes, no, you made a grab. I said, I
Speaker 5: made a removal. Don't write me up for nothing. He goes, no,
Speaker 5: but I was told I said you were told wrong,
Speaker 5: But he didn't write me up.
Speaker 1: That's good frog.
Speaker 5: You know, this is the second time I turned something
Speaker 5: something good Vietnam. I turned down the Purple Heart.
Speaker 4: All right, what do you mean you turned down of
Speaker 4: Purple Heart?
Speaker 5: Because it was stupid. That's why I was too target right,
Speaker 5: And we're getting shelled, and we're shelling out, but we're
Speaker 5: running out of rounds, and the rounds come in a
Speaker 5: box with metal bandits. We only have one band cutter,
Speaker 5: so one guy's cutting, but we needed more. So I
Speaker 5: grabbed an axe and I got the box between my
Speaker 5: legs and I'm hitting the bands and breaking them, taking
Speaker 5: the rounds out and all that motor rounds. Well, just
Speaker 5: as I'm swinging the axe, a round comes down and explodes.
Speaker 5: I don't know close to me, but I didn't get
Speaker 5: injured by it. But I was swinging the axe and
Speaker 5: went right in my foot. Oh, it went in about
Speaker 5: an inch into my side of my foot right now, medic. Medic,
Speaker 5: I'm walking over to him, and he goes, why would
Speaker 5: you put an axe in your foot? I said, asshole,
Speaker 5: I didn't just put it in man, you know. So
Speaker 5: I take my boot off and it's January of February,
Speaker 5: which is the rainy season in Vietnam, and he wraps
Speaker 5: my foot up so much I can't get the boot
Speaker 5: back on and it's not but mud. So I said, well,
Speaker 5: this ain't gonna work. I took it. So I took
Speaker 5: a lot of the bandage off and got my boot
Speaker 5: on the best I could, and I was went back
Speaker 5: to try to get some work done. So the lieutenant goes,
Speaker 5: I see what happened. I said, yeah, you know, that
Speaker 5: was kind of bad. He says, yeah, I seen it.
Speaker 5: When the round hit you lost your axes and you
Speaker 5: went right in your foot. I said, yeah, So I'm
Speaker 5: going to put you in for purple heart. You'll get one.
Speaker 5: I said, I'm going to get a purple heart for
Speaker 5: putting an axe in my own foot. I said, I'm
Speaker 5: going to tell guys who got shot up almost a leg?
Speaker 5: Oh what'd you do? I put an actione in my foot? Yeah,
Speaker 5: stupid for you. Now now go back to go coming
Speaker 5: fifty sixty years later, I said, oh shit, I wish
Speaker 5: I took that purple off because in Jersey, or at
Speaker 5: least in my township, you got purple heart. You don't
Speaker 5: pay any house, you know, property tax?
Speaker 4: What, No, man, you should have taken that purple hot.
Speaker 5: Bro that's ten thousand dollars. Hell yeah, so in it
Speaker 5: this way, that's that's a story and a half.
Speaker 4: But damn, John, let me ask you a question. Seeing
Speaker 4: what you're sawing Vietnam, you feat that when you went
Speaker 4: to the fire department, you're a little more uh, I
Speaker 4: guess calm or prepared for what?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Yeah? After?
Speaker 4: What's going to rattle you? After Vietnam?
Speaker 5: Yeah, wouldn't rather be I had snipe, but we killed
Speaker 5: al barber on the wire. A guy would come in.
Speaker 5: A lot of the Vietnamese would come on, you know,
Speaker 5: any anywhere you were. They cut your hair, They do
Speaker 5: this or do that for a couple of you know,
Speaker 5: of the Disney money that they got out the Monopoly
Speaker 5: Bundy looks like Monopoly Bundy over there though that the
Speaker 5: US had, well, you know, you give us so many
Speaker 5: a dollar in Vietnam, it's like a million dollars to them, right. Well,
Speaker 5: a guy would come in and cut your hair for
Speaker 5: the next like pennies. And one night we're getting income
Speaker 5: and in the from the on the wire and we're
Speaker 5: killing them and one of them was al Barba. Well
Speaker 5: that's nice in the daytime and he's trying to kill
Speaker 5: you at night. Should happened, you know, so you.
Speaker 4: Were ready for anything you saw. The job was nothing
Speaker 4: compared to what you saw.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well you know, uh tell me that some bad luck.
Speaker 5: We lost guys in seventeen, but they we didn't lose
Speaker 5: the guy since the seventies.
Speaker 4: Right right, and.
Speaker 5: You know, well other than you know, uh not eleven.
Speaker 5: But it was like, no, you know, everybody goes to
Speaker 5: the fire. Some guys get hurt, but they you know,
Speaker 5: nobody gets hurt to where they're gonna die. You know,
Speaker 5: they might get an injury like this billy loss and
Speaker 5: a freak accident. He's forcing the door and he twisted
Speaker 5: his leg when he's forcing the door and he snapped
Speaker 5: his bones in a couple of places and that was
Speaker 5: the end of him. He never came out. And I'll
Speaker 5: tell you what a great guy, this guy, Billy Losson
Speaker 5: was great firemen. He had nineteen years and ten months
Speaker 5: on the job. I was the commisar and you've got
Speaker 5: twenty years. We get your ring. He wouldn't take the ring.
Speaker 5: I didn't do twenty years.
Speaker 4: God didn't we have him on the sholf Billy Lawson
Speaker 4: save you might have?
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, what guy right right five? Did you know
Speaker 5: that after he did his fire duty he became a
Speaker 5: nurse out Long Island?
Speaker 4: Yes, I think I remember retire from that registered nurse.
Speaker 4: But he was a short guy right like a little ye.
Speaker 5: With me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Rice was telling me about how he would never
Speaker 4: wear a mask never ever. He had a little band
Speaker 4: downery were once in a while.
Speaker 5: He's in one of the pictures I gave you worried
Speaker 5: at a fire smoking. Oh yeah, yeah, you go, that's
Speaker 5: him right there. And I want to tell you something.
Speaker 4: What a tough son of a bitch, right, tough.
Speaker 5: Son of a bitch. And uh, yes, when my when
Speaker 5: my son worked with me. But he wasn't working, but
Speaker 5: he went to the fire anyway.
Speaker 4: All right, John, one more question here, best nozzle man you,
Speaker 4: best nozzle man you've ever seen other than yourself? Can't
Speaker 4: count yourself best nozzle man you've ever seen me?
Speaker 5: No, that would be wow. Wow. I actually sold a
Speaker 5: lot of guys if I you know, you have a
Speaker 5: lot of good nozzlemen. Yeah, wow. I'll tell you what.
Speaker 5: I'll reserve that for another day, because all right, I
Speaker 5: don't want to just say oh him and then put
Speaker 5: five other guys that were really good.
Speaker 4: I put you on the spot, I know it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but there were a lot of good nozzlemen. Hell yeah,
Speaker 5: a lot of good guys, A lot of guys. Sixty
Speaker 5: engine had an abundance of good guys. No to admit
Speaker 5: that seventeen truck was excellent toke, And don't you know,
Speaker 5: I kid about the truck and I kid about you know,
Speaker 5: forty one does the job, you know even though this quids.
Speaker 4: Were you there when they had a seventeen second section?
Speaker 5: No, uh no not. That was just before I got there.
Speaker 5: And we still had a couple of tours where they
Speaker 5: would line up some other engines outside, right, you know,
Speaker 5: and you know because we were doing the work. But hey,
Speaker 5: I rode the backstep when I first got there, which
Speaker 5: was unbelievable. And they had John John John Mitchell. I
Speaker 5: don't know if you heard of him. We called him
Speaker 5: Hollywood because he got so many metals. But he's the
Speaker 5: truck officer. And we're riding the backstep and one or
Speaker 5: two of the guys you know, on the side because
Speaker 5: they want to see where we're going, and they're blocking
Speaker 5: the tail lights and selled screaming at us. You can't
Speaker 5: block the tail lights. We don't know when you're going
Speaker 5: to stop, and we go, hey, look not to nothing,
Speaker 5: but you know where we're going, so you know where
Speaker 5: we're going to stop. You know we're not going to
Speaker 5: go past the fire. Yeah, you stop at a hydrant? Yeah?
Speaker 4: So who was that? Garrett? Guy?
Speaker 5: Schneider is the father. You want a good one?
Speaker 4: There you go. You asked for it, we got it.
Speaker 5: We got on the screen. Then I'll give you Yah.
Speaker 4: We had a couple of guys from seventeen too, and
Speaker 4: I don't remember who the hell they were now, I
Speaker 4: can't remember.
Speaker 7: Yeah who, Yeah, on your show.
Speaker 4: Of seventeen too? Was he seventeen two? Holy Ship with
Speaker 4: two hundred and fifty shows in right, Mike, what do
Speaker 4: we got thirty shows.
Speaker 5: And you do it once a week?
Speaker 4: How many weeks we were doing twice a week? We
Speaker 4: got to get back to twice a week. You know,
Speaker 4: we get a guy like you that'll last for over
Speaker 4: a week. John, you know we got a guy. No, yes, no, no.
Speaker 5: It's easy to talk to you guys.
Speaker 7: You know I've done hurt.
Speaker 5: Don't you just tell me when it's wisdom time?
Speaker 4: Is it wisdom time? Do you have any other thing
Speaker 4: you want to share before we get to wisdom time? John?
Speaker 5: Uh, twenty five years goes like lightning if you start
Speaker 5: on the job and all of a suddenly, oh real quick, Yeah,
Speaker 5: I get hurt my last job, all right, And I
Speaker 5: lost my lungs at the World Trade and I was
Speaker 5: there for about four months, right, So I got bad lungs,
Speaker 5: but I don't I keep going on the job. I
Speaker 5: don't tell anybody about my lungs. And I lost them
Speaker 5: in oh one. But now I'm getting my operation at
Speaker 5: the latter stage of four because I lost my shoulder.
Speaker 5: So I get an operation in again, No. Four, and
Speaker 5: I finally I have to go down to the medical
Speaker 5: office because my shoulder bad. And I go down. Then
Speaker 5: the doctor looks at my paperwork and he goes, hey,
Speaker 5: you haven't had medical in years. I said, that's bullshit.
Speaker 5: It's in the medical you're missing it somehow, that's in it.
Speaker 5: He said, bullshit, he says, go in the back. I
Speaker 5: wanted to complete medical, so I know I'm gonna.
Speaker 4: Pick it up. That's it. He's over.
Speaker 5: I can't get past the first thing on the lot,
Speaker 5: so they mark it down. I go back and he goes,
Speaker 5: you're done. That's exactly what he said. You're done.
Speaker 4: That's the worst part. Somebody tells you you're done.
Speaker 5: He says, your lungs are gone. I said, really, I
Speaker 5: was wondering why I could breathe. So anyway, that was
Speaker 5: the end of my career. And now I knew I
Speaker 5: wanted to do like four or five more years, but
Speaker 5: I couldn't do it. But anyhow, I go on light
Speaker 5: duty for a little bit, and I said, this is blody.
Speaker 5: I went up put my papers in. I said, I
Speaker 5: can't do five years of like duty. It's not going
Speaker 5: to work. I said, that's what I'm done.
Speaker 7: And that was the end of my career.
Speaker 5: If I didn't tear my shoulder, probably just four or
Speaker 5: five years.
Speaker 4: You gotta run around, you gotta you gotta hide from
Speaker 4: the medical bro for the three years.
Speaker 5: I had other guys. You know, I need a mutual,
Speaker 5: I know, you know, medical was coming up. I need
Speaker 5: a mutual and they to do it.
Speaker 4: That's a great well they take care of the see
Speaker 4: you man. That's the right thing, the right thing to do.
Speaker 7: Bro.
Speaker 4: All right, gons I think it is time now for
Speaker 4: some words of wisdom from five more?
Speaker 7: Is that is it that time?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 5: We get.
Speaker 6: Hold on, hold on all right, I don't want to
Speaker 6: get there you hold on you ready, premature, premature?
Speaker 7: Two seconds?
Speaker 4: Sorry, all right, where we go.
Speaker 6: I'm gonna hit the sound effects for you right now
Speaker 6: and then we're gonna we're gonna bring you right in here.
Speaker 7: Sorry, here we go. It's time for the old school
Speaker 7: tips of the day, day day, and dr you.
Speaker 5: Are my timp of the day is for the roby day.
Speaker 5: Just comes in the firehouse first, Turk. When you get
Speaker 5: to the firehouse, listen to all the senior men. Some
Speaker 5: are really really great, some are not so great. It's
Speaker 5: up to you to know find out the difference, because
Speaker 5: who's who's the good guys and who's the not so
Speaker 5: good guys. Take all the advice and the good guys,
Speaker 5: and take the advice from the not so good guys
Speaker 5: and take that with a grain of salt, or you judge.
Speaker 5: But do great guys, everything they say is golden, and
Speaker 5: remember it and do it for the next twenty years.
Speaker 5: That's my tip of the day.
Speaker 4: Thank you, John, excellent John. I never worked with you,
Speaker 4: but you seem like a great senior man. I wish
Speaker 4: I could have got a chance to work with you.
Speaker 5: But I appreciate that. And once again, your own press.
Speaker 5: It's my breast element they gave me. And when the
Speaker 5: said goddamn bread.
Speaker 4: Ah, all right, we got to do a couple of
Speaker 4: quick commercials guns. What do you got? Oh?
Speaker 7: Only thing we have is uh health and safety tip.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 7: That's it. We have the two play it.
Speaker 5: Here we go.
Speaker 2: The First Responder Center for Excellence is a not for
Speaker 2: profit organization dedicated to protecting their lives and livelihoods of
Speaker 2: first responders. Their education and research initiatives aim to bring
Speaker 2: greater awareness and understanding the challenges to the health, safety,
Speaker 2: and well being of firefighters, EMS, personnel, and other first
Speaker 2: responders too. They are an affiliate of the National Falling
Speaker 2: Firefighter Foundation.
Speaker 4: Alright, I got two health and safety tips tonight. The
Speaker 4: first one is try not try not to avoid your
Speaker 4: medical for years and years in here. No avoid early
Speaker 4: detection is the key. The second ding you're going to
Speaker 4: bring up with Thanksgiving approaching and all that comes with
Speaker 4: the gluttony and the drinking. Everything everything in moderation. That
Speaker 4: includes exercise, that includes drinking, that includes eating everything in moderation.
Speaker 4: That's what I got, John, great career. I'm glad I
Speaker 4: get to know you a little bit better tonight. Uh
Speaker 4: just from the Stuben Day I got to say too.
Speaker 4: John was the one who recruited me in Provy School
Speaker 4: to join the Stuben Society. And I loved every year
Speaker 4: that he broke my balls about being a squid, even
Speaker 4: though he doesn't remember. And I will see him at
Speaker 4: the Stuben Day Christmas party with my brother. I just
Speaker 4: put it on the calendar.
Speaker 5: Excellent, good, good, Yep, we will see that. Enjoy it, guys.
Speaker 5: I want to thank you. Guys. You were great for me,
Speaker 5: and you know I have a great holiday season.
Speaker 4: Yeah, John, thanks man.
Speaker 5: You stay safe when you become a fineming young man.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks excellent, Mike, Thanks for you going. It goes
Speaker 4: quick like that, Mike. Thanks for filling in for Roofie tonight,
Speaker 4: probs coming in even though he's under the weather a
Speaker 4: little bit. I appreciate that. So good. You got a
Speaker 4: stuff at that moment?
Speaker 5: Is that?
Speaker 4: Man?
Speaker 7: It's like right there, I'm my God, right at the
Speaker 7: end of the show. Now it's gonna still give me trouble.
Speaker 4: All right, we are back. I think next what is
Speaker 4: it next Monday? Next Monday? I think we got Deputy
Speaker 4: Chief Di Dominico coming on. Yeah, I know him. Yep.
Speaker 4: And have a great Thanksgiving fellas. Oh before I forget man,
Speaker 4: oh man, look at this what I got today from
Speaker 4: my buddy Paul Hanshagan. It's his next book called Rescue Squad,
Speaker 4: The Origins of Rescue One Fire Department, the City of
Speaker 4: New York, nineteen fifteenth and nineteen twenty five. It is
Speaker 4: available right now. We will be carrying it on the
Speaker 4: website for Christmas. Uh. It's a great, great book. It
Speaker 4: goes along with this one hundred Years of Valor. Yes, missus, Foley,
Speaker 4: we love you too, Love you dad. Awesome. Johnny did
Speaker 4: a great job with your kids. It shows with the
Speaker 4: fire department, with being your senior man and everything involved.
Speaker 4: Don't forget to watch a cup of Joe and Tim
Speaker 4: Fuego send it into Coops podcast at youmail dot com.
Speaker 4: And started a new segment also. It's called the what
Speaker 4: is it? Mike the Unforgotten Heroes. I'm gonna go back
Speaker 4: and I'm gonna go over every single line of duty
Speaker 4: death back from eighteen sixties until present.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 4: So catch that out, you know, like that and again John,
Speaker 4: hang around for the post show. And we appreciate you
Speaker 4: coming on a great career, great mustache. Thank you for
Speaker 4: your service both in the fire department and protecting this country.
Speaker 4: And all those people say baby killer fuck, then they
Speaker 4: have no idea what they're talking about.
Speaker 5: Amen, Thank you, appreciate it. Yep, stay safe to you guys. Care.
Speaker 4: Oh, Mike got two shout outs. We have a lot
Speaker 4: of duty death. I'm sorry, Yes, that's what we're here. God,
Speaker 4: thank you.
Speaker 7: You want to do yours first? You want to do Mikey's.
Speaker 4: Let's do os first, okay, and then Mike you can
Speaker 4: do his.
Speaker 7: I was gonna bring this little image up here that
Speaker 7: we have.
Speaker 4: Yes, last night, Wednesday, November twentieth, Chief of the third Battalion,
Speaker 4: John Walsh lost his life while in command of a
Speaker 4: fire in Wilkinsburg District. Chief Falls was sixty years old
Speaker 4: and a thirty seven year member of the Pittsburgh Bureau
Speaker 4: of Fire. Please transmit the five five five five. We
Speaker 4: will rest in peace. Brother, rest in peace. Sorry about that,
Speaker 4: Johnny Albanize, We got it done, all right, Mike ed
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 2: Let me just share the screen real quick. I want
Speaker 2: to give a shout out to some of my colleagues here.
Speaker 2: So if you can see my arrow from left to right,
Speaker 2: this is Christy Crescenzo, Nick Amandola, Bryan Sweeney, and Joji Aquino.
Speaker 2: Congratulations to aw for these gentlemen. They were just promoted
Speaker 2: this past Friday and the ceremony the rank of lieutenant.
Speaker 2: Uh So, Chris will be on a lieutenant on our
Speaker 2: D shift, Nick on the B shift, Brian on the
Speaker 2: A shift, and Joe G as we affectionately call him,
Speaker 2: on the C shift. They worked hard, they passed their
Speaker 2: written exam and look forward to seeing those gentlemen in
Speaker 2: those next chapters as fire officers.
Speaker 4: So congratulations for I still be telling you. Hold on
Speaker 4: to my coat, young Michael, follow me.
Speaker 7: Hold this. You'll be doing the introduction. I'm I'm Michael,
Speaker 7: and I'll be saying I'm sorry.
Speaker 4: All right, guys, Thank you, Happy guys. I love you, guys.
Speaker 4: You guys are the best. Man as always, off fans
Speaker 4: are the best. Be safe, remember everything in moderation. Watch
Speaker 4: some football, eat some food, and take a big.
Speaker 1: Watch the Giants.
Speaker 4: All right, guys, until next week. You know what I
Speaker 4: always say, stay low.
Speaker 7: And go go ahead, Mike, but you got off, you
Speaker 7: do Off.
Speaker 4: Hurts signed off ahead.
Speaker 6: No, No, I'm gonna give a little shout to uh
Speaker 6: to Ronzi tonight. The Knob is the job, baby, you know.
Speaker 2: On behalf of Kob's Gonzo John Roar and all of
Speaker 2: you on my colonne. We'll see you next time. Be advised,
Speaker 2: tones are dropping. Transmit the seventy three.
Speaker 4: Good night, Happy Thanksgiving, your boise