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: All okay, Oh.
Speaker 5: Those are rookie numbers.
Speaker 6: Welcome back to it again, serious podcast. It's deal and
Speaker 6: that brings to you the kitchen table, the firehouse kitchen table,
Speaker 6: you know, the one rough right, the whole of the
Speaker 6: thousand stories, thousand and one.
Speaker 7: Maybe it's eighty nine year old chiefs to come out
Speaker 7: and tell their story.
Speaker 6: We gotta I gotta really wind that way back machine
Speaker 6: up really tight, tonight, bro, I gotta get the crank going.
Speaker 6: We're going we fifties. Just this us pretty shabby. I
Speaker 6: gotta tell you, this guy's.
Speaker 7: We're gonna stop working on.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I only got a they saw a fire or two.
Speaker 6: This guy. I got a couple of stories to tell too,
Speaker 6: and a nice guy, very calm.
Speaker 8: Very calm, cool collective.
Speaker 6: Back there, Louis was losing his ship a little bit
Speaker 6: where the chief is. You're talking to the gods. Yeah,
Speaker 6: just like slow your role.
Speaker 8: Cool.
Speaker 9: I did text him, take it, don't worry about it,
Speaker 9: take your time, just hurry up.
Speaker 6: All right. That's not what you do with a fire,
Speaker 6: is it.
Speaker 7: That's not how it was. Take it easy, don't.
Speaker 5: Stay growing out.
Speaker 6: Hey, you know who's in the chat?
Speaker 8: Who do we having?
Speaker 6: Will Wolfgang is in the chat? You know what I
Speaker 6: say to him? W W You know what I say
Speaker 6: to him? He's a big Phillies fan. Suck it, baby around, baby.
Speaker 8: I no light note. I need another shield, so I
Speaker 8: gotta hit that guy up.
Speaker 6: You hit him up, baby, my mess. He's ounced to
Speaker 6: him yesterday.
Speaker 7: What a game?
Speaker 6: Don't let the door hit you the ass on the
Speaker 6: way out. All right, Phillies fans.
Speaker 7: Those guys could do it.
Speaker 8: I think they could do it.
Speaker 6: Don't don't give me in maloica, don't mylloy?
Speaker 7: Who would you out playing? You can do it.
Speaker 6: You can do it, man, Come on, I'm you can
Speaker 6: do it. Would rather I'd rather play the Uh yeah,
Speaker 6: I'd rather play the Dodgers. I think I'm not really
Speaker 6: afraid of that picture.
Speaker 5: Staff.
Speaker 6: But here we go, Oh, City City News support he's
Speaker 6: he's at a California year. He probably likes to either
Speaker 6: the Padres or the Dodgers. I bet I don't know
Speaker 6: I'm going to win, right, Look at Profaccini, he's got
Speaker 6: to throw in ranges. Look good for this home opener ready,
Speaker 6: I like, we gotta start it already.
Speaker 8: I think what Tom's saying looks like the hockey just yet.
Speaker 8: We got to finish baseball, all right.
Speaker 6: But you know I played the song just once for
Speaker 6: Procuccini bringing it up.
Speaker 8: Oh okay, give me get to it because it's on
Speaker 8: the back end.
Speaker 10: Nobody cares about hockey there, you.
Speaker 6: See, Thank you, Kevin Malone. Nobody cares about hockey. Let's
Speaker 6: get to our commercial, our only commercial in the evening, Yes,
Speaker 6: and then we'll get the chief And here I don't
Speaker 6: want to keep in the back too.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he's looking his patiently awaiting all He.
Speaker 6: Had a cohort in there that said something about a
Speaker 6: can flying down all land.
Speaker 8: You know, we relived a pretty full funny moment there.
Speaker 6: He lobbed that out of nowhere guy off the side.
Speaker 8: Right before we went live. Yeah, all right, here we go.
Speaker 8: Let's listen to mister Vince.
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Speaker 11: You asked me what the friction coefficient? Well, here it is, puppy.
Speaker 8: I had to leave the pup.
Speaker 6: Fat that's going I just something caught my eye forgot
Speaker 6: what it is. Really see, I'm getting old, bro through.
Speaker 6: I can't remember what it was.
Speaker 8: It was a free free uh.
Speaker 6: I was to give Mike a little heads out tonight,
Speaker 6: give Mike love. He passed his seat, Pat, What is it?
Speaker 6: Got a seat? Pap seat? Pat? God? Is that what
Speaker 6: it is?
Speaker 8: Sea?
Speaker 7: Pat?
Speaker 8: CP eight T.
Speaker 6: Says that so soon enough's gonna be on the job. Right,
Speaker 6: But we we dragged him, We did the form right.
Speaker 8: He's going to be a physician.
Speaker 7: Now we're gonna be worried every day.
Speaker 6: You better, you gotta worry about the kid every day.
Speaker 8: You're serious about that?
Speaker 6: How old we were said?
Speaker 7: How old?
Speaker 6: Before? He's on a dating page like, Hey, my name
Speaker 6: is Mike and I am I just found him.
Speaker 8: He's right on, he's already on it. Let's just see it.
Speaker 7: Here are going to.
Speaker 8: A chief in here all chief, you're ready and we
Speaker 8: can see it. I know we hear us getting.
Speaker 6: Very very anxious.
Speaker 7: He's coming to the stage.
Speaker 9: Eighty nine year old f d N Y Battalion Chief
Speaker 9: John McElroy.
Speaker 8: Welcome, Welcome.
Speaker 6: We couldn't get his name right, McIlroy. What we calling it?
Speaker 7: But I don't know what the hell you were calling him?
Speaker 4: Roy?
Speaker 8: I butchered the name. I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: Welcome, Chief, Welcome to yourselves. Thanks so much of getting
Speaker 5: me on here.
Speaker 6: Folks that talk about should be good patriotic first, Yes,
Speaker 6: a duty, a civil duty.
Speaker 8: All right, 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 6: Well, what's what the hacks night? You have no dipity do?
Speaker 8: No, no, no, that's uh a hurricane come through.
Speaker 7: For God's sake.
Speaker 6: It we gotta get We got to crank back the
Speaker 6: way back machine, chief, So we're going back way to
Speaker 6: crank this bid boy up, way back to nineteen fifty nine.
Speaker 5: Okay, today is the sixty fifth anniversary of my appointment date,
Speaker 5: which is today's date. Oh my god, holy yeah. We
Speaker 5: got sixty five years there. My first assignment was engine
Speaker 5: sixty five. So if you're looking for numbers, there you go.
Speaker 8: Wow, that's a good one.
Speaker 6: Let's go before that, where'd you grow up, chief? Tell
Speaker 6: us a little about the earlier life before you got
Speaker 6: on the job.
Speaker 5: Okay, I grew up in Staten Island, went to all
Speaker 5: the Catholic schools, of course, and then my father was
Speaker 5: on the job and he never talked about it at home.
Speaker 5: But as kids, my brother and I used to go
Speaker 5: to his firehouse, which was Engine fifty six on Broadway,
Speaker 5: and if they were out on a run, they used
Speaker 5: to be out on brushfires all the time. We slide
Speaker 5: the pole and go in the backyard and play handball
Speaker 5: and then disappear.
Speaker 6: So how farll was the files from your house walking distance?
Speaker 5: I guess about two miles? I guess, all right.
Speaker 6: On the bikes.
Speaker 5: No, yeah, bikes, for sure, that's true. Forgot about the bikes.
Speaker 6: Yeah, before I guess this is before the Versato too, right.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I think there was a Arizona was sixty seven.
Speaker 5: So before that time you took the bus, the boat
Speaker 5: and then the train to wherever we were assigned, whether
Speaker 5: I was in mid Midtown or Brooklyn. And when I
Speaker 5: was in rescue too, we had Joe Keller was there.
Speaker 5: He lived about six miles from the ferry and he
Speaker 5: would run there every day, so it was in bro right, Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So I guess we know how why you wanted
Speaker 6: to become a fire and your dad was a fireman.
Speaker 5: Well, actually I was in the telephone company in Jersey
Speaker 5: and I got married, and so when I did, I
Speaker 5: had to get a job, so I'd gotten a telephone company,
Speaker 5: and then about five years later I decided to come
Speaker 5: on the fire department. My father never pushed my brother
Speaker 5: or I for it, oddly enough, even though we knew
Speaker 5: a lot of guys he worked with, for sure, But
Speaker 5: I don't know where I actually got the motivation from.
Speaker 5: Maybe I don't know, but I was so happy I did,
Speaker 5: and like most of us, that one lucky Saturday when
Speaker 5: we took the test, that did it pass?
Speaker 7: Was your wife right? Is that that correct?
Speaker 6: He got on? He got out of fifty nine? What
Speaker 6: you had you take the test like fifty eight fifty seven?
Speaker 5: I would say the earlish would have been late fifty
Speaker 5: eight because it was very quick, and I was on
Speaker 5: the in the first batch. And who I come on
Speaker 5: with was Bill Fihan and tomb and they were all
Speaker 5: on the top of the list. So lucky for me too,
Speaker 5: since I'm not a big guy or anything, I got
Speaker 5: that one particular test was the physical was only qualifying,
Speaker 5: so it went by your written mark, which most of
Speaker 5: us could write a good today you'd probably write a hundred,
Speaker 5: But I didn't write a hundred, but right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 9: I wanted to say before chief that We've had a
Speaker 9: lot of other guys that came on that had their
Speaker 9: dads or in this, you know, on the job, and
Speaker 9: a lot of them say the same thing that you said,
Speaker 9: that they never really were pressured or the guy their
Speaker 9: father's never talked about the job really that much. That
Speaker 9: was like a strange thing to me. I didn't think
Speaker 9: that that would be the case most of the time, you.
Speaker 5: Know, looking back, I would say, particularly today, we have
Speaker 5: so many pops and kids on the job and every firehouse,
Speaker 5: so somehow they brought it up. I'm trying to think
Speaker 5: back then. I don't think we had like company picnics
Speaker 5: or Christmas parties or anything like that.
Speaker 6: Did How long did your father do the on the job?
Speaker 5: My father was on the job thirty six years.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 5: He wound up as a deputy chief in the Tent Division,
Speaker 5: and he was a fireman and a battalion chief on
Speaker 5: Staten Isle and a company officer, and he loved Brooklyn
Speaker 5: when he went there. And one time he got in
Speaker 5: trouble I don't remember what because he never would talk
Speaker 5: about and headquarters transferred him back to Staten Island and
Speaker 5: then somehow or other in those days, whether it was
Speaker 5: with the Holy Name or whoever, the union. He was
Speaker 5: one of the organizers of the UFOA. He got a
Speaker 5: conference with the mayor no less, and they transferred him
Speaker 5: back to the tent division. That was I don't know
Speaker 5: how the hell he ever pulled down.
Speaker 7: He called the.
Speaker 4: You know what I mean?
Speaker 6: What year did your dad get on chief?
Speaker 5: Nineteen thirty three?
Speaker 8: Wow?
Speaker 5: That was right after the depression, and at that time
Speaker 5: he had worked for the conetison. Then he come on
Speaker 5: the job and he was very smart himself too. At
Speaker 5: one time as a fireman, they had a contest and
Speaker 5: him and five other guys one going through the fight department.
Speaker 5: They won a scholarship to ccn Y because the Fight
Speaker 5: Department at that time wanted their own engineers. And then
Speaker 5: while he was going to c cn why he a
Speaker 5: lieutenants test come up and he said, I have to
Speaker 5: take the lieutenants test to make more money rather than
Speaker 5: going to CCNY.
Speaker 12: So he dropped out of that and took him a deputy.
Speaker 5: I want to be a deputy.
Speaker 6: I did your brother get out of the job, Not
Speaker 6: at all.
Speaker 5: No, he was also it's almost nepotism there too. And
Speaker 5: we were in the New Jersey Bell and our cousin
Speaker 5: was there and my brother and then my brother transferred
Speaker 5: to the telephone company down to Florida. But no pressure
Speaker 5: at all at home with that.
Speaker 6: No, Oddly when you're working for the phone company, have
Speaker 6: to do it.
Speaker 7: At least.
Speaker 5: It was.
Speaker 9: Benc and Hurst seven to seven seven.
Speaker 5: Actually when I went to work there in nineteen fifty five.
Speaker 5: We had the manual phones with the party lines too,
Speaker 5: and all the party remember the party line in fact
Speaker 5: on Staten Alam growing up, I still remember the telephone number,
Speaker 5: and I think we used to get three rings when
Speaker 5: it was ours. And then I'd find my sister. We
Speaker 5: only had the one phone in the house. She'd be
Speaker 5: sitting on the stairs and she'd pick up the receiver
Speaker 5: and listen in to whoever.
Speaker 7: You could listen, right.
Speaker 9: That was like, uh, it's a wonderful life when the
Speaker 9: mother was listening in on the on the extension.
Speaker 5: Right, yeah, very good, yeah, very good number please.
Speaker 6: That was like me and you listen to everybody's conversation
Speaker 6: sitting in your room. We had that what was that
Speaker 6: that radio that could hear people's phones, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh,
Speaker 6: so where'd you have to go to Proby School? That
Speaker 6: was at Ward's Island.
Speaker 5: Then no, we got assigned and we were assigned to
Speaker 5: divisions and I was in the fourth fourth platoon, I
Speaker 5: guess it was. And we were the last ones to
Speaker 5: go to Proby School, which lasted for six weeks. First
Speaker 5: two weeks you went to the shops and got first
Speaker 5: daid and lectures and stuff like that. Then the next
Speaker 5: two weeks you went to sixty eighth Street for the
Speaker 5: latter school, right, yeah, right, and then the last two
Speaker 5: weeks actually was Welfer Island. Yeah, and we'd have to there.
Speaker 5: I'd have to take the bus to boat the train
Speaker 5: and then get a train to take us from Queens
Speaker 5: onto the Rock and then you better not be late.
Speaker 5: And the beauty of that too was you went to
Speaker 5: school five days a week, but you still had a
Speaker 5: base company that you were assigned to before you went
Speaker 5: to school, So Saturday nights you spent the night in
Speaker 5: that firehouse as well, so you were in the fire
Speaker 5: department seven days a week.
Speaker 6: For were you in Staten Island, then at least they put.
Speaker 5: You always from Staten Island, yes.
Speaker 6: Right, so they put you in a firehouse at Staten Island,
Speaker 6: a home as a home fire house.
Speaker 5: Oh no, no, it was in Brooklyn. In fact, my
Speaker 5: base company was one O five truck, yeah, which was
Speaker 5: good then. And they were in the old house on
Speaker 5: Pacific Street by themselves, right, was it themselves?
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 5: George Kelly was the captain. John O'Rourke was there, Jim Duffley.
Speaker 5: They they had guys that you looked up to immediately,
Speaker 5: you know. And of course we had no gear, so
Speaker 5: whenever you went in you had a gearb whatever they
Speaker 5: had and probably was soaking wet to begin with from
Speaker 5: because they were busy for sure, so you gather up
Speaker 5: whatever you could.
Speaker 6: Did they allow you to go in the buildings, They
Speaker 6: really kept you outside as really you know, ab outside.
Speaker 5: They had a brand new fifty eight Mac and that
Speaker 5: was like the real first a lot of company truck
Speaker 5: I ever was on. But I'm trying to think. I
Speaker 5: guess we went in the building later, not right away,
Speaker 5: not right away. And actually there there were three of
Speaker 5: us assigned, so that was a lot of people who
Speaker 5: put on a fifty eight Mac the engine in the middle.
Speaker 5: But every run we came back, we had to wash
Speaker 5: the wheels, and they told me that was their tradition
Speaker 5: here from the old days with the horses and all
Speaker 5: the dog horsecrap, they had to wash the wheels to
Speaker 5: get rid of it, and that's what they did.
Speaker 6: Kept it going.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I kept you go home, for sure, but good,
Speaker 5: good experiences and guys to look up to. Stuff like that.
Speaker 5: And while you were waiting to go to Proby School,
Speaker 5: every week you would be assigned to different company away
Speaker 5: from your home company. I one, why be a week
Speaker 5: on Marine seven of Fulham Street. I guess two or
Speaker 5: one engine one fourteen truck each for a week, and
Speaker 5: each to gain knowledge. And the same time, of course,
Speaker 5: you had no gear, so you'd always be barring everything anyway,
Speaker 5: So when you wound up in a truck company, that
Speaker 5: stuff was kind of big, for sure.
Speaker 9: But chief do you remember even like back then, do
Speaker 9: you remember like saying to yourself, I wanted to go
Speaker 9: to a busy place, or like like since your dad
Speaker 9: was on Staten Island, like, I'm sure it was slower
Speaker 9: there than it was in other areas.
Speaker 7: What was your feeling then, do you remember?
Speaker 5: Well, my feeling there was since one hundred and five
Speaker 5: truck was my home company. My father was actually in
Speaker 5: the division then at that time, and I said to him,
Speaker 5: because he really wasn't much for doing favors, I said,
Speaker 5: you know, I'll take it out of private school. What
Speaker 5: do you think can I get assigned one hundred and
Speaker 5: five truck? And he said, no, you can't. He said,
Speaker 5: that's one of my favorite companies. You can't go there.
Speaker 5: And I wound up in Midtown. Thanks a lot, pal,
Speaker 5: that's good you didn't ask twice.
Speaker 6: But then you get assigned to Engine sixty five. That
Speaker 6: was your first assignment in January of nineteen sixty. Then
Speaker 6: by the Times Square, right.
Speaker 5: That's right, forty third Street. We were first to a
Speaker 5: Times Square and on New Year's Eve you had to
Speaker 5: be in full uniform and get down and stand me
Speaker 5: and other guys from another Every company had a detailed
Speaker 5: guy to guard the alarm box in full uniform. So
Speaker 5: you went in Times Square from eleven PM to one am.
Speaker 7: Then you all got like back then, was it crazy?
Speaker 5: Not as much as no. Actually, you could walk around
Speaker 5: all over the place, tell you truth. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 5: good one, Yeah you could. The best story is when
Speaker 5: I went to sixty five the battalion was still there,
Speaker 5: Battalion eight, because they were still building eight engine and
Speaker 5: two truck on fifty first Street. And then after a
Speaker 5: couple of months the house was done. They moved out
Speaker 5: and Rescue one moved up. So they come in and
Speaker 5: John Maloney was the captain of sixty five and Joe
Speaker 5: Rooney was the captain of Rescue won. And he got
Speaker 5: Rooney he said, Joey said, you're never first, du we are.
Speaker 5: We'll be in front all the time and every time,
Speaker 5: and they outran us by the way because they were
Speaker 5: covering all the boxes downtown still and up to Allum.
Speaker 5: But anyway, he said, every time you get a run,
Speaker 5: my shouff will move our rig out and when you
Speaker 5: come back, we'll move it again. And we always were
Speaker 5: in front, and that was it. And Rooney said, okay.
Speaker 7: That might have been the original house of paying their codes.
Speaker 6: Oh yeahs to nuts.
Speaker 5: They were the guys, they had their senior guys. They
Speaker 5: were just everyone you could look up to. You know,
Speaker 5: it's like WHOA look at these guys. The fires they
Speaker 5: go to and stories. They'd come back and I'd make
Speaker 5: coffee for them and toast. You never had much to
Speaker 5: eat because uh, the Commissary supplied almost nothing.
Speaker 7: Then.
Speaker 5: I think the only thing we had was evaporated milk
Speaker 5: for the coffees and that was it, with a little
Speaker 5: container to put on top of it and all. But
Speaker 5: it worked out good that the rescue got along good
Speaker 5: with us and stuff like that. And like I said,
Speaker 5: some of the guys there, you just looked up to
Speaker 5: all of them, for Grande. The one guy that Philly
Speaker 5: prior was a fire in there too, and another guy
Speaker 5: I think it was John, an Irish name. Any rate,
Speaker 5: they had a fire and the woolwarts and then he's
Speaker 5: in there and he's searching around and one of the
Speaker 5: other guys told me story and his flashlight went out.
Speaker 5: They all they had them with the regular de cell batteries,
Speaker 5: and he reached up and he got some batteries out
Speaker 5: of that one of the shelves and bulworth and put
Speaker 5: a dollar up for them and then left. These guys
Speaker 5: were incredible. And at night, everybody going to bed, they'd
Speaker 5: have their boots up there with them as we did,
Speaker 5: and then they'd be nailing kneeling next to the bed
Speaker 5: saying their prayers. Really, yeah, every one of them.
Speaker 6: Yeah, everyone, Yeah, Wow, I never heard that before, and.
Speaker 5: The engine did it the same.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 5: Wow, I guess most of them were Irish or Italian Catholics.
Speaker 12: That's you had a lot of World War Two vets
Speaker 12: at that time, Yes, yes, lots of them. And you
Speaker 12: know who was there with me too was Jimmy Elson,
Speaker 12: which you probably all. And he grew up and he
Speaker 12: was a buff and three engine and that's where John Maloney,
Speaker 12: the captain of sixty five, was a lieutenant there and
Speaker 12: they sort of adopted him. So when Jimmy got out.
Speaker 5: Of Proby school, he came to sixty five, and then
Speaker 5: later on the year or two we were there, he
Speaker 5: was a couple months behind me. We'd put in our
Speaker 5: transfers to go to the Ladder Company, and on the
Speaker 5: CD thirty and those years, there was a line for
Speaker 5: your heithe so I'd make out a thing one hundred
Speaker 5: and eight, truck, one hundred and two, one hundred and
Speaker 5: eleven whatever, because I Brooklyn. I figured that's where I
Speaker 5: should go. But anyway, every month I would come back
Speaker 5: with a red circle around my height disapproved. And then
Speaker 5: Jimmy put his in for Brooklyn too, and his would
Speaker 5: just come back disapproved. So it took us three took
Speaker 5: us three years to get out of there. So he
Speaker 5: went to one hundred and two. And I want to
Speaker 5: rescue too. And I always say I spent my three
Speaker 5: years under the bright life of Broadway and then the
Speaker 5: next thirty five in the ghetto.
Speaker 6: Does you have your first job that you caught sixty five?
Speaker 5: Yes, I remember we had some, you know, but they
Speaker 5: had a lot there, relatively a lot with buildings under construction,
Speaker 5: high rises, and I remember them in the winter a
Speaker 5: couple of times, like third alarms in these things, and
Speaker 5: the wind would be blowing and blowing all the two
Speaker 5: white fours around, stuff like that. And we didn't have
Speaker 5: that many fires. And they used to always kid that
Speaker 5: every big fire they had in Midtown had a name
Speaker 5: for it, like to want to make a fire or
Speaker 5: the Times Tower fire some and would just be kidding
Speaker 5: around and all. But I do remember getting a nozzle
Speaker 5: for the first time, and that was something else, and
Speaker 5: I did put it out, you know. It was probably
Speaker 5: an office something like that, But that was quite the thrill,
Speaker 5: for sure. But you didn't get the nozzle too much.
Speaker 5: But and the guys were good, a lot of senior guys,
Speaker 5: and I remember one guy, h Patti O'Connell. He said, Jack,
Speaker 5: you're here, don't listen to these other guys. Start studying.
Speaker 5: And I remember later on and it worked, of course.
Speaker 5: He said, you have plenty of time on your hands,
Speaker 5: your own watch and stuff like that, so start studying.
Speaker 5: And if you remember, well you might not. We used
Speaker 5: to when the boxes come in, you have to write
Speaker 5: right along the talk board. And when I first started
Speaker 5: in sixty five, Lieutenant gave me a piece of chalk.
Speaker 5: He said, here's your chalk, and wherever you walked around
Speaker 5: when about bells come in, whether there are or anybody's,
Speaker 5: you got to write them down on the wall so
Speaker 5: you wouldn't forget them. So and then when you're doing
Speaker 5: the coal furnace in the basement and you get the
Speaker 5: three rings, you run like hell because that was a
Speaker 5: phone alarm. So it's like we didn't get that many
Speaker 5: phone alarms. But yeah, but just things they did, you know,
Speaker 5: just traditions, stuff like that.
Speaker 7: You know what I wanted to ask your chief. So
Speaker 7: now you're on the job.
Speaker 9: Is your father talking to you now about want to fires?
Speaker 7: Is he talking about like where you should go after this?
Speaker 13: Like a couple of years, the zero nothing nothing, no, no.
Speaker 5: When I went to rescue too, he said later on,
Speaker 5: he said, what did you do that for? I said, well,
Speaker 5: I wanted to go to a ladder company and I couldn't,
Speaker 5: but I was able to get an interview with Captain
Speaker 5: Lawla and he had been an enginem in himself part
Speaker 5: of his career and all he was looking for, Yeah,
Speaker 5: that's him there with the cake. Uh. He looked for attitude.
Speaker 5: I was. I was like like an electrician. I could
Speaker 5: do telephone, I could do welding, some construction, carpentry, stuff
Speaker 5: like that, but his main thing was attitude. And I
Speaker 5: went over and got an interview with him. He said, okay, Jack.
Speaker 5: Of course he knew my father, but he never brought
Speaker 5: that up either. But he said, okay, you're going to
Speaker 5: be number five on the list, and when five guys
Speaker 5: get transferred out or promoted, you'll be on the order.
Speaker 5: And sure enough, the fifth guy was P. D. Easton.
Speaker 5: His name was on the order and mine was two.
Speaker 5: He got lieutenant and I got to rescue too. It
Speaker 5: was how they did things in those days without the computers. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: everything was.
Speaker 6: For two years on the.
Speaker 9: Job, I was just gonna say, what was that like
Speaker 9: walking into that place after sixty five? Not taking anything
Speaker 9: away from sixty five, but I mean, now you go
Speaker 9: from midtown, you're going into Rescue two. They had to
Speaker 9: be in nineteen sixty two sixty three. They were just
Speaker 9: probably just picking up a lot of work, right, I.
Speaker 5: Mean they were starting to pick up work. Yes, And
Speaker 5: we had I bet we had two hundred alarm boxes
Speaker 5: assigned on which Rescue one didn't. But we had every box.
Speaker 5: There were four hundreds in downtown Brooklyn, so as soon
Speaker 5: as you heard a four come in, you got up
Speaker 5: or wherever you were and get ready. They go out,
Speaker 5: and they had boxes for like the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel,
Speaker 5: things like that. But getting back to what you said,
Speaker 5: I'm there now, I'm looking at these guys, and I
Speaker 5: had no truck experience. I accept a couple of details
Speaker 5: to tow truck things like that, But and I was
Speaker 5: busy listening and watching and do my best making up
Speaker 5: with committee work. I guess stuff like that.
Speaker 6: You were on Calton Avenue, then.
Speaker 5: With Carlton Avenue, the thing there would surprise the hell
Speaker 5: out of me. But their kitchen table was behind the
Speaker 5: backstep of two ten engine originally in the house. It
Speaker 5: probably was on the third floor, which we also had
Speaker 5: like a sitting room up there with a barber's chair
Speaker 5: and stuff like that. And one of the guys running
Speaker 5: foot and interested, he cast a statue up there of
Speaker 5: an Indian. He made it in clay and then he
Speaker 5: cast it and talk about talents. But to get back
Speaker 5: to the other the kitchen table was behind the briarstep.
Speaker 5: On one side was the hose tower. The other side
Speaker 5: was a bathroom at least luckily, and then the small
Speaker 5: storage room in the back behind say like going out
Speaker 5: the back door of the firehouse, that was the kitchen
Speaker 5: with the refrigerator, a gas stove and supplies. It's and
Speaker 5: nobody complained, that's all. You just did it, and you
Speaker 5: figure what to talk about the environment and the smoke
Speaker 5: and whatever.
Speaker 6: So so you were doing it up in sixty five
Speaker 6: with rescue one back to bath and then you went
Speaker 6: to two ten, and you do it too ten, that's true.
Speaker 5: But with two ten we were in the front toe.
Speaker 5: That was for sure, like I just said before, they
Speaker 5: were really starting to pick up the running there. But
Speaker 5: I'll say one thing in Brooklyn, a lot of times
Speaker 5: at night. It would slow down when I'm we want
Speaker 5: the Low east side. We ran all night, probably rubbish
Speaker 5: and cars and crap like that, and then Rescue two.
Speaker 5: That was my original animal house. They built the guys
Speaker 5: that tore the talent to these guys. They built the
Speaker 5: salt water fish tank in the basement. It must have
Speaker 5: been four by four at least, and we used to
Speaker 5: take fifty five gallon drums to Coney Island to fill
Speaker 5: them with relatively clean salt water and bring it back
Speaker 5: and dumping in there. And we had a shark and
Speaker 5: various fish and things like that, and certain guys would
Speaker 5: take care of it. They just that was their thing.
Speaker 5: But the beauty there too was we had a monkey.
Speaker 5: The monkey was like, I don't know who the hell
Speaker 5: ever brought him in there, but the typical of a monkey.
Speaker 5: He'd be throwing his crap.
Speaker 8: All over.
Speaker 5: Guy how much. One day a kid comes up and
Speaker 5: he said, your monkey is down the street in the projects.
Speaker 5: He's climbing up the wall there and I think he
Speaker 5: just bit a girl and luckily the guy and watched it. No, no,
Speaker 5: that's not hard monkey. We're just always trying to catch him,
Speaker 5: given to find the owner. Of this, luckily for me,
Speaker 5: since I used to do the committee. Who are though?
Speaker 5: He wrote, he ripped up a twenty dollar bill that
Speaker 5: Captain Lawla had out for the House tax and the
Speaker 5: week the next very next week, the monkey was gone.
Speaker 7: It was gone. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they had.
Speaker 5: They had the tremendous guys in the rescue. There would like,
Speaker 5: uh three of them deputies later and all the time.
Speaker 5: One guy worked with a certain gas special gas lines
Speaker 5: and stuff like that. But you'd look up to all
Speaker 5: these guys and all these talents that you say, holy shit,
Speaker 5: you know. Plus we had probably three guys from one
Speaker 5: hundred and eight truck, all the busy two hundred and
Speaker 5: two stuff like that. Right, And luckily for me when
Speaker 5: I went there, I worked almost all the time with
Speaker 5: the Hamilton and he was Joe Rooney was probably the
Speaker 5: toughest rescue fire officer I ever saw. And Hamilton knew everything.
Speaker 5: He was a frogman in World War two. He built houses.
Speaker 5: He could do anything. And we'd go to like cellar fires,
Speaker 5: and I remember a couple of them. He wouldn't put
Speaker 5: his mask on. He had it on, and the rest
Speaker 5: of us would be die and they put their scots
Speaker 5: on and I asked him one time, I said, lou,
Speaker 5: what you know you didn't even put your mask on.
Speaker 5: He said, well, if we got in trouble, then I'd
Speaker 5: put it on and I'd get you out of There's
Speaker 5: the way it was. And he knew all kinds of guys.
Speaker 5: One time we went over the one hundred and eight
Speaker 5: were when I was still on Siegal Street, because he
Speaker 5: had a couple of friends. They just wanted to talk
Speaker 5: and chat. And I went in the back and in
Speaker 5: the kitchen there's a motorcycle hung up on the wall
Speaker 5: that they took off one of the civilians that gave
Speaker 5: him a hard time, and the guy never claimed the motorcycle.
Speaker 5: That was That was with the thirty fifth Battalion before
Speaker 5: the before they ever moved, and another tough ladder company.
Speaker 5: Woo these guys, these guys were good for sure.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I guess you learned a lot of fire duty
Speaker 6: over there too, right.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, And other thing I was saying before, we
Speaker 5: used to get in trouble. Sometimes I don't know how
Speaker 5: to rescue got into trouble. But we'd go to multiples
Speaker 5: out in the eleventh Division or fifteenth Division, and when
Speaker 5: we're ready to take up The deputy would say, oh,
Speaker 5: go help Squad three take up their line, and we
Speaker 5: got that done. He just did it, and he said, go, hurd,
Speaker 5: go help two thirty five take up their line. We
Speaker 5: must have taken on four or five lines before we
Speaker 5: get out of these places. And and then that disappeared.
Speaker 5: Somebody was on them for some reason. I don't even
Speaker 5: know who really, but U trying to think that too.
Speaker 7: Did you ever do that as a chief tell the
Speaker 7: rescue to pick up line?
Speaker 5: No? No, In fact, i'll tell you later. When I
Speaker 5: went back when I was a chief and went to
Speaker 5: the Bronx rescue three were still in Manhattan, but when
Speaker 5: before they even moved over, I used to love to
Speaker 5: see them because I was building up because with a
Speaker 5: rescue company, whatever I'm doing with the fire, in comes
Speaker 5: the rescue with five senior guys and a senior lieutenant
Speaker 5: or captain and would just come up to me and
Speaker 5: say what do you want and they do it. So
Speaker 5: I'll tell you some of that story a little bit later.
Speaker 5: But lots of experiences. We had no partner saw by
Speaker 5: the way, we had a chainsaw and rescue too. We
Speaker 5: had a saws all. We had a different. No air bags,
Speaker 5: but we did have plenty of wedges, and we had
Speaker 5: a settling stuff like that, and every once in the
Speaker 5: blue moon you'd get a spare. They had no real
Speaker 5: rescue expaars. We'd get an old hose wagon and we
Speaker 5: pible all the stuff when there with a big canvas
Speaker 5: on it and we'd sit in the back and I
Speaker 5: was it, you know, you do that's all the typically
Speaker 5: all of us. It's you did what you had to do,
Speaker 5: that's for sure. And there were some great guys there
Speaker 5: for sure. And the engine to the engine, even though
Speaker 5: they were slower than us, of course, they were just wonderful,
Speaker 5: you know, good stretch, steady guys. Two ten was a
Speaker 5: good engine. So but they weren't that busy then. I guess,
Speaker 5: well they got busier later, of course. But I can
Speaker 5: remember being on watch there in the summer and you
Speaker 5: had to write down every box and the whole box
Speaker 5: will before with the engine only engine not too ten,
Speaker 5: but every you got everybody's signals then, you know, and
Speaker 5: everybody there again was with the chalks writing it all down,
Speaker 5: stuff like that. But it was a good house too,
Speaker 5: and easy to get to. They were right up the street,
Speaker 5: from the Navy Yard, and that was probably the first
Speaker 5: we used to go down, like I said, all the
Speaker 5: four hundred boxes, and that was the projects down below
Speaker 5: two past the east of the Navy Yard. So I
Speaker 5: learned started to learn about projects there too, and when
Speaker 5: we would get in, no matter what floor was on,
Speaker 5: the rescue always ran up the stairs. It was incredible.
Speaker 5: That's just what they did. You know, So you joined
Speaker 5: in on that.
Speaker 6: Yes, why do you only spend two years? Did sheef?
Speaker 6: It seemed like an ideal spot to be in.
Speaker 5: Okay, it was tough to get there. I got told
Speaker 5: you before at the height. But while I was there,
Speaker 5: I had took the lieutenant's last test and I did
Speaker 5: very well on that as well. And then I figured,
Speaker 5: well I never was in a ladder company, so I
Speaker 5: better get to one to get real experience of a
Speaker 5: ladder company. And they approved that, and luckily, luckiest thing
Speaker 5: in the world. I put it in for eleven truck
Speaker 5: and probably eighteen truck different ones too, and I got
Speaker 5: eleven and that was wonderful. That a lot of work.
Speaker 7: Back then in.
Speaker 5: Those days, we were in the top ten every year
Speaker 5: runs in workers. It was the trucks district we probably
Speaker 5: did seventy five percent of hard working for some whatever
Speaker 5: reason for sure. And they were in a relatively new
Speaker 5: house on Second Street, and when they built it, it
Speaker 5: was I got the plans that were in the basement
Speaker 5: one time and in the front of the house that's
Speaker 5: had engine eleven ladder eleven up.
Speaker 6: On the wall.
Speaker 5: And they had done away with eleven engine which was
Speaker 5: on Houston Street. They moved it to Harlem and made
Speaker 5: ninety second section of ninety one engine and then they
Speaker 5: disbanded them. So twenty eight was a camp up on
Speaker 5: eleven Street and they moved to Second Street. It was like, whoah,
Speaker 5: time of real time is to leave.
Speaker 6: I was just gonna say, I said, what a lot
Speaker 6: of guys running right.
Speaker 9: Yeah, we've had a lot of guys from eleven truck.
Speaker 9: I can't think, I know. There was a bunch of
Speaker 9: guys that came through there. That was a busy place.
Speaker 5: They to me, it was like, wow, this is one here.
Speaker 5: I'm a kid from Staten Island. First day drive up
Speaker 5: drove them. We had to take the ferry to get
Speaker 5: the car across to bring my stuff there. And looking
Speaker 5: these all these old lord tenements with the fire escapes
Speaker 5: were old. Then it was a Jewish neighborhood, of course,
Speaker 5: but they were. This was the say sixty four something
Speaker 5: like that. I think that's when I went there, something
Speaker 5: like that. That's when the Jewish people were moving out
Speaker 5: to co Op City going north. And then the Puerto
Speaker 5: Ricans were coming from Puerto Rico as of waves then
Speaker 5: and just families, you know, and they took over the
Speaker 5: neighborhood that way too. And I used to always regret
Speaker 5: I never learned Spanish because whenever we went out, the
Speaker 5: kids would talk to us and they tell us what
Speaker 5: was going on whatever we needed to know, things like that,
Speaker 5: And I said to myself, no sense learning this, next grump.
Speaker 5: Everybody was speaking English, and of course I didn't know
Speaker 5: that at the time, and never change. You would want
Speaker 5: what they were yelling at us, you know.
Speaker 6: But did you uh, with the work that you did
Speaker 6: and rescue two, you think you were You were set
Speaker 6: to work and you were good. You knew enough about
Speaker 6: truck work to go to a busy truck like that.
Speaker 5: No, not at all, No, I have to tell you.
Speaker 5: Also when I was in rescue too, also in my
Speaker 5: provaate class was Jimmy Johnston he went to three ten
Speaker 5: engine and we had a multiple out. They were first
Speaker 5: due and Joe Keller and I had to go search
Speaker 5: for him and we found them dead up on the
Speaker 5: upper floor with an MSA mask also, that's all. And
Speaker 5: I gave him out the mouth, but he didn't come back,
Speaker 5: and that was that was the first time personally I
Speaker 5: had a dead fireman. So that was that was a
Speaker 5: tough one for sure. There. Then, of course much later
Speaker 5: on they put one seventy four in there. But uh,
Speaker 5: this guy was good as gold, you know. But that's
Speaker 5: part of our history for sure. But no, I didn't know.
Speaker 5: In fact, when I went to eleven, Uh, there were
Speaker 5: Bill Dunn was there too.
Speaker 8: He was.
Speaker 5: We had Bill done and another guy, Ray Nybro. They
Speaker 5: were the tallest firemen I ever saw in my life,
Speaker 5: these guys. And when we go on drill, I say,
Speaker 5: this is true, he said. I said, let's tell the captain.
Speaker 5: We'll go up on the roof and cut the roof.
Speaker 5: Because we had the vacant buildings, you know, start and
Speaker 5: starting a lot of them, and we didn't cut roofs open.
Speaker 5: Then we had you had two inches of the top
Speaker 5: paper and you're gonna cut this thing with an axe.
Speaker 5: I don't think so. So we used to do a
Speaker 5: lot of polling ceilings. But I said, anyway, I said,
Speaker 5: you know, show me how you do this stuff, because
Speaker 5: we didn't do it the rescue either, you know, we
Speaker 5: didn't have a sore or anything. A lot of it
Speaker 5: was pulling ceilings, particularly in row frames and stuff like that.
Speaker 5: You'd just go from building the building, pulling ceilings and
Speaker 5: having an engine follow you. But we did some of
Speaker 5: that there. And I remember, like I said, we had
Speaker 5: the fifty eight Mac there and I never went to
Speaker 5: show for school because I was on a lieutenant's list
Speaker 5: by that time and they wouldn't send me. But I
Speaker 5: was a tileman there in eleven trucks. That that was good.
Speaker 5: And we had one show for Joe Carber. If I
Speaker 5: held the wheel straight, he would back the whole rig
Speaker 5: in on Second Street. He'd do all the turns and
Speaker 5: everything like that. I said, the hell did you do this?
Speaker 5: But he did it, you know, I.
Speaker 6: Said, killd skill let man.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And then once in a while you'd get the wooden
Speaker 5: aerials for a spare. That was always a challenge with
Speaker 5: the overhang of the ladders in the back and we
Speaker 5: had an old show for there at George Highes and
Speaker 5: he said, I said, George, take it these going around
Speaker 5: his corners. He said, I got the front through that
Speaker 5: you back there, you fellow, no sympathy at all, but
Speaker 5: you learned. Uh, truck worked pretty quick there. Then of
Speaker 5: course we did have the fires, there's no doubt about it.
Speaker 6: And on average, how many jobs would you go to?
Speaker 6: I mean, we work at twenty fours? Then are you
Speaker 6: working straight tours?
Speaker 5: I'm we were working straight tours. You could of course
Speaker 5: get mutuals and then uh rescue, we're straight tours too.
Speaker 5: Very it wasn't a big thing to get mutuals for
Speaker 5: some reason. It came later, thank god. But straight tours
Speaker 5: and uh, that's so true. I'm trying to think of
Speaker 5: the runs. It wasn't overwhelming, but we were first do
Speaker 5: a lot. That was That was the big thing.
Speaker 7: And have you ever been down there?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 7: That city, right, I mean yes, tight with like whatever.
Speaker 9: They were four five sixty, just big buildings attached the
Speaker 9: hallway like everywhere.
Speaker 7: Right, It's incredible.
Speaker 5: It was an education too. You go in the old
Speaker 5: lord tenement and each floor a lot of them there
Speaker 5: were they weren't broken up into four on a floor.
Speaker 5: There were still the railroad flats and between the doors, say,
Speaker 5: the kitchen door in the rear for the each apartmente
Speaker 5: the side of the hallway, that's where the bathroom was
Speaker 5: and one door, and both those families used that, is
Speaker 5: that right, Yeah, And before that it was outhouses in
Speaker 5: the backyards, so that was a verse improvement. And then
Speaker 5: other tenements they'd have the bathroom was in between the
Speaker 5: kitchens inside the apartment and each door would have a
Speaker 5: lock on it, and god knows how many kids and
Speaker 5: stuff like that there too, But that's what you lived, and.
Speaker 6: It just heavily occupied.
Speaker 5: Then very heavily occupied. Yeah, i'd say so. The vacants
Speaker 5: were getting more and more for sure. And they found out,
Speaker 5: of course later that the landlords, they people weren't taking
Speaker 5: care of the apartments and stuff like that, and the
Speaker 5: land ward the land ward would have the fire up
Speaker 5: for insurance, right. And then sometimes you go into a
Speaker 5: flat and they'd have a drop cord from the whole
Speaker 5: way light into the apartment for their electricity to the
Speaker 5: refrigerator if you want that, but for electricity, you know, ye,
Speaker 5: stuff like that.
Speaker 9: We've had a few guys come back in that time,
Speaker 9: chief from eighteen truck as well.
Speaker 7: I frige.
Speaker 9: I can't think of names right now, but I didn't
Speaker 9: realize how the eighteen well, you know, was that four
Speaker 9: pit coves, right.
Speaker 5: They were on Broom Street then with.
Speaker 7: Separate the guys. You're really busy too, right.
Speaker 5: Oh yes, oh, definitely, definitely, And the battalion was with them,
Speaker 5: and they had the separate doors. The chief had his
Speaker 5: own door. And when I was on I was on
Speaker 5: a lieutenants list, and before I got promoted, I used
Speaker 5: to fill in driving down there to learn the paperwork
Speaker 5: and stuff like that. So I got to see and
Speaker 5: they were very busy. I won't say his name, but
Speaker 5: when we used to go the guys used to go sick.
Speaker 5: They the doctor would come to quarters to check you
Speaker 5: before you didn't go to the hospital. He came to
Speaker 5: quarters and one of the guy, the guys ever in
Speaker 5: eighteen Truck and seventeen lined up waiting to see the doctor.
Speaker 5: And one of the guys who won't say his name,
Speaker 5: he gets up to doctor Ginsburg and he had been
Speaker 5: had a mouthful of oatmeal and he threw up on
Speaker 5: the doctor's coat.
Speaker 6: Story story was my father was in seventeen engine from
Speaker 6: sixty to sixty four.
Speaker 5: Oh oh, okay, that was a good engine for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and again it was on Broome Street before they moved,
Speaker 5: of course there was they were second, du we were
Speaker 5: first and second due back and forth. Almost all the
Speaker 5: boxes we had, really, and that's crazy. They were very
Speaker 5: good Bill Bill Dietrich was there, Joe Sanson was there
Speaker 5: as fireman, any number of guys. It was just a
Speaker 5: good house also, and the battalion was good. Gus Beekman
Speaker 5: was a chief there when I was in the eleven truck,
Speaker 5: and then he quickly became a deputy, so he kept
Speaker 5: going up too.
Speaker 7: How do you remember all the names?
Speaker 5: Chief? Still I'm still pretty good with the names, but
Speaker 5: not all the time. Now. I'm old enough now, so
Speaker 5: when I meet somebody now, if I don't remember the name,
Speaker 5: I just say, sorry, what's your name? I'm go I
Speaker 5: know you, but what's your name?
Speaker 7: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I just.
Speaker 5: Want to see if I have a note here of
Speaker 5: anything with eleven. But that was amazing experience in in
Speaker 5: the Lower East Side, for sure.
Speaker 6: You said Gus Beakman came from over there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he was the chief in the fourth Battalion.
Speaker 6: I was wonderful just when when my father was on light. Dude,
Speaker 6: he drove Gus Beakman when he became the commissioner.
Speaker 5: Hot stuff.
Speaker 6: That's probably where they met each other.
Speaker 5: Over there, I would say that you met him right there, yes, yeah,
Speaker 5: and he was well alive, crazy, Yeah, he was always
Speaker 5: in busy. I think Beakman started in fifty eight engine. Yes,
Speaker 5: all and well lined, uh capable, you know, just just remarkable,
Speaker 5: just going to see uh, let's see. Then I'll go
Speaker 5: into getting into twenty eighth. But another thing with eleven
Speaker 5: and and twenty we had lots of a fair amount
Speaker 5: of reattenements and what the hell are you going the
Speaker 5: rear tenement in the backyard of an old lawer tenement.
Speaker 5: But they told me I'd listened that the rear tendement
Speaker 5: was built first with the front yard, and then later
Speaker 5: they built a new tenement in front of it. Right.
Speaker 5: We had them on Avenue C. We had them on
Speaker 5: Tenth Street above Tompkins Square Park. Stuff like that experience,
Speaker 5: because anything you did you had a carrier and the
Speaker 5: waterable ladders back there, which tell you truth, we never
Speaker 5: had to do too much of that. So that was fortunate.
Speaker 5: I mean, didn't need it that often. The engine would
Speaker 5: put it out, that's all. You better get busy and
Speaker 5: put it.
Speaker 6: We were usually smaller buildings, right than.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there were probably three or four story.
Speaker 6: Yes, we had them by us, ruffy and a couple
Speaker 6: of them.
Speaker 9: Yeah, just to put them on the sidge chief so
Speaker 9: that uh, you know obviously.
Speaker 5: Of course, yeah, of course, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. There
Speaker 5: was so much to learn there and to listen to
Speaker 5: these guys with it just different, you know. They the
Speaker 5: old timers were there for years and they watched that
Speaker 5: whole neighborhood change completely from just nice. Oh. Also in
Speaker 5: the fifties, the whole east side there from Avenue Deer
Speaker 5: to the river was commercial, and with their urban renewal,
Speaker 5: they ripped all those commercials down, commercial building and built
Speaker 5: the projects. Talk about getting experience in projects, whoa boy,
Speaker 5: And they had them all up Avenue D and across
Speaker 5: the other side Columbia Street and Sheriff And in fact,
Speaker 5: when I was in sixty five engine, many afternoons you'd
Speaker 5: be on watch and we had one of those little
Speaker 5: halcraft the radios and you hear that, I forget the
Speaker 5: term they use. I don't think they use the term
Speaker 5: using all hands, but whatever. It was almost every afternoon
Speaker 5: that I'd be on watch to hear this stuff. They
Speaker 5: have a fire at box two ninety two Sheriff Brington Street.
Speaker 5: I said, where the hell is this? And it was
Speaker 5: vacants and there were so many of them. They used
Speaker 5: to have an engine patrol that would drive around and
Speaker 5: you hear nothing. And then by the time the engine
Speaker 5: driving around looking for things, they'd go back to quarters
Speaker 5: the box had come in. Somebody sought the fire after
Speaker 5: they went by. But just interesting, just that's pretty crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 5: great crazy stuff there.
Speaker 6: But in those sixties, when did the riots take place?
Speaker 6: What was the middle sixties?
Speaker 5: They I'll tell you, I didn't rescue two in sixty
Speaker 5: four in the summer, and we're responding to a box
Speaker 5: in Brownsville, multiple and we got out to Fulton Street,
Speaker 5: say two in the morning, it doesn't matter when. But
Speaker 5: and all of a sudden there was wall to wall
Speaker 5: people and I think that Hamilton was working. He called
Speaker 5: dispatcher and he said, we're stuck here. There's what's going on.
Speaker 5: And the dispatcher had no idea of all these people
Speaker 5: all over Brooklyn in Bedstein and stuff like that in Brownsville,
Speaker 5: not really causing trouble trouble, but block on every street.
Speaker 5: It was incredible. And that one he Aspatters said, they
Speaker 5: go back to quarters. He said, I'll have to find
Speaker 5: out what's going on, and then he called the police
Speaker 5: department to say. I said, oh, yeah, we'll have people
Speaker 5: gathering all over the place. And I don't know whether
Speaker 5: what started it to kind of early for the Vietnam War.
Speaker 5: I don't know, maybe just a social condition, maybe, don't know,
Speaker 5: but that was I would say sixty four was my
Speaker 5: first experience with that. Yeah, when I got to eleven Truck,
Speaker 5: we didn't have that, but we had gangs there that
Speaker 5: generally like the Lord something, the Lords was one of
Speaker 5: them their names. But they didn't give us trouble there.
Speaker 5: They'd go to other areas, then they come back to
Speaker 5: where they lived on the Lower East Side.
Speaker 7: The warriors did coops.
Speaker 6: Warriors come out.
Speaker 5: And play well in pacifically. When when I went to
Speaker 5: eleven Truck, there were no pharmacies, there were no banks,
Speaker 5: there were no supermarkets and not something else. Then all
Speaker 5: were shut down or burned down. It was like, what
Speaker 5: the hell happened? Here, so if you wanted anything, you
Speaker 5: had to go over to like Avenue A or first
Speaker 5: avenue for shopping and all.
Speaker 6: It was just like somebody dropped the bob over there.
Speaker 5: Probably nothing very interesting for sure.
Speaker 6: But what was the firehouse like back then? Like was
Speaker 6: there a TV in the kitchen? Did you guys?
Speaker 5: It was very good, very good. We had we must
Speaker 5: have had. We had a kitchen in the back on
Speaker 5: the right with the house was built in like nineteen sixty,
Speaker 5: just like one eleven and two fourteen almost thing, And
Speaker 5: we had a sitting room with the kitchen. We had
Speaker 5: a household, guest stove, house, whole refrigerator, two tables and
Speaker 5: chairs and that was about it. And had an oil burner,
Speaker 5: so that was a break. We didn't have any coal
Speaker 5: to do. We had a backyard and a side alley
Speaker 5: and on the second floor next to the engine officer.
Speaker 5: They had a patio on the second floor, and of
Speaker 5: course they had a palm tree grown there. But well
Speaker 5: why they ever put a thing something like that there,
Speaker 5: I don't know. But and another thing too, in the truck,
Speaker 5: I had a guy Charlie O'Brien came from eighteen truck
Speaker 5: every Christmas he painted the outside apparatus doors with Christmas
Speaker 5: scenes and fyless n nabadad stuff like that, and joined
Speaker 5: them with the neighborhood and stuff like that, and they'd
Speaker 5: give the kids candy at Christmas time. But he was
Speaker 5: a beautiful artist, this guy. I couldn't believe the stuff
Speaker 5: he did there. But otherwise inside it was just tile walls.
Speaker 5: And uh, that's a lost thing, right coops.
Speaker 9: Painting of the apparatus door that was always like a
Speaker 9: pretty cool thing to each firehouse.
Speaker 7: Different firehouses had it done different ways.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: Yes, it's just the tradition they did and and I
Speaker 5: don't know what the rest of the year he had
Speaker 5: to take it off. He must have repainted it read
Speaker 5: that's all.
Speaker 6: Yeah, right, I got to show you a picture, roof. I
Speaker 6: got the opposite here two blocks for me. The guy's
Speaker 6: painted his garage front garage door to look like Snyder Island.
Speaker 6: He must have been for one seventy four truck. It's
Speaker 6: a Snyder Island. It has their logo and it looks
Speaker 6: like a firehouse door all really yeah, his house, crazy picture.
Speaker 7: Yeah you got to take a picture of that man.
Speaker 5: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 7: Yeap.
Speaker 5: When I was in eleven and I studied and I
Speaker 5: I got to be Lieutenant left one, covering and stuff
Speaker 5: like that. And then the department didn't have a captain's list,
Speaker 5: so they wanted to make provisional captains. And the best
Speaker 5: whoeutendant in twenty eight John Gillen, he was a senior
Speaker 5: guy and probably the best officer there, just attitude and
Speaker 5: stuff like that. He took it and he went to
Speaker 5: be a provisional captain of six truck And like I said,
Speaker 5: in those days, when his name was on the order,
Speaker 5: the guy replacing him would be on that order. So
Speaker 5: I was covering in Brooklyn, covering in Brooklyn, and I
Speaker 5: called Ardie Laufer, who was a deputy in the first Division.
Speaker 5: I don't know whether I don't even know where I
Speaker 5: knew him from, but he was very influential too, and
Speaker 5: I asked him, I said, any possibility I could go
Speaker 5: back to twenty eight And he said, what do you
Speaker 5: want to go back there for? I said, oh, I
Speaker 5: like it there, just whatever. He said, okay. So when
Speaker 5: John Gillen got promoted, he was on the same order
Speaker 5: to twenty eight, and I inherited a senior group of
Speaker 5: his guys because the senior guys work with him, and
Speaker 5: the tru used to call them the professionals. Now now
Speaker 5: I'm the lieutenant of the professionals. But of course I
Speaker 5: knew all them anyway, because they were right, right, right right.
Speaker 5: But and I inherited the best chow oldest chauffeur, Hank Burlock.
Speaker 5: He knew every address, every hydrant, conditioned to the hydrant.
Speaker 5: It was just wonderful there too. And we're talking about
Speaker 5: if you want me to keep on talking about twenty.
Speaker 7: Eight, yeah, of course.
Speaker 5: We're talking about Rescue two being the animal house. Well,
Speaker 5: twenty eight and eleven, there were three different incidents I
Speaker 5: had there myself. We're stretching and crawling into one apartment
Speaker 5: and an iguana crawled out past me.
Speaker 8: Another time like Gonzo, they're all over downhill.
Speaker 5: Another time with a similar situation we were. He then
Speaker 5: that was for sure, we got a job or tour
Speaker 5: whatever every day. But in fact, Jay Jonas, when he
Speaker 5: was covering down there as a lieutenant, he uh, I
Speaker 5: think I told you he was covered in twenty eight
Speaker 5: one day his first day, and he told me later on,
Speaker 5: I said, that was the busiest day I ever had
Speaker 5: in my love and.
Speaker 7: He told us that, yeah, but I told us that.
Speaker 5: Yeah he would. But as we're calling into this other place,
Speaker 5: a bowl constrictor slid past me. One of those, just
Speaker 5: little probably only a couple.
Speaker 6: Of feet long, Yeah, only a couple of feet.
Speaker 5: But the best one was this. We got a box
Speaker 5: to go up Avenue D in Ninth Street, and was
Speaker 5: going up Avenue D. You could see smoke coming out
Speaker 5: of this tenement, and uh, you can see somebody on
Speaker 5: the fire escape. And every time my show for Hank
Speaker 5: Burlock saw smoke, it was pedal to the medal and
Speaker 5: up we go and stuff. And we get up there
Speaker 5: there's a nude woman on the third floor with at
Speaker 5: where the cat is bigger than a bobcat and.
Speaker 8: Which we talking about here where we go here, it.
Speaker 5: Was like, do you give it ten seventy five or
Speaker 5: do you call for the ASPCA at any rate? I
Speaker 5: don't We put the fire out. It was I think
Speaker 5: it was below her or something like that. The truck
Speaker 5: will never get inside, coached back into the apartment, shut
Speaker 5: the door and left the cat out on the fire escape.
Speaker 5: And what a sp A s p c A did
Speaker 5: show up and took it, took over the cat, so
Speaker 5: I figured that the rescue too anyway, But there were
Speaker 5: so many different things there.
Speaker 7: A lot of time there.
Speaker 9: Chief like you're back, so you did almost ten years
Speaker 9: there from fire.
Speaker 5: Yeah, talk about fun times. Huh. Oh, you have the
Speaker 5: busiest night I had there with just a night we
Speaker 5: had thirty five runs. I was going to Florida. The
Speaker 5: next day, we had thirty five runs. We had three
Speaker 5: real wall hands. Two were first due and then the
Speaker 5: second alarm. And that was it. It was like, holy
Speaker 5: was it? That was it? For sure?
Speaker 9: And then you went home and your wife said, all right,
Speaker 9: packed the car, driving.
Speaker 6: Driving down to Florida.
Speaker 5: You got all the way to rockby Mount, Florida the
Speaker 5: next day.
Speaker 7: Holy shit.
Speaker 5: But of course I wasn't eighty nine and either for sure.
Speaker 6: But the drugs started being a real prop down there, right, Yes,
Speaker 6: what year was that? Was that?
Speaker 5: The really the heroine got to be up upper seventies
Speaker 5: into the eighties. And the first one I remember down
Speaker 5: there were overhauling in the apartment and I found these
Speaker 5: two bags look like straw and stuff like that. It
Speaker 5: was marijuana. Of course, what the hell did I know
Speaker 5: at that time? And I gave him to the cops.
Speaker 5: Guy said later the fimers, what don't you give the
Speaker 5: cops the marijuana for? I don't know what this stuff was,
Speaker 5: but I don't know. Oh, in the eight I was
Speaker 5: out of there by this time, but Vinnie Romeo was
Speaker 5: a lieutenant. He was fireing one to eleven. Then came
Speaker 5: back and he was a lieutenant eleven truck and then
Speaker 5: the captain of twenty eight and him and the captain
Speaker 5: of the truck painted a double yellow line across the
Speaker 5: street from the firehouse to tene minutes across the street,
Speaker 5: and that's where the heroin addicts used to line up,
Speaker 5: and they'd be wandering over there and stuff like that,
Speaker 5: and when the dealer came to sell it, the deal
Speaker 5: would blow a whistle and they'd all line up by.
Speaker 5: And the police knew it, but they knew where the
Speaker 5: heroine was, so they figured they had to control. And
Speaker 5: it got so bad in front of the firehouse the
Speaker 5: truck over to the engine put an easy chair, and
Speaker 5: one year they had two hundred and eighty seven overdoses
Speaker 5: in that chair oly ship. And that was before we
Speaker 5: had the ambulances. So that the other ambulances would give
Speaker 5: the fireman some kind of shot to give these guys,
Speaker 5: and the fireman would give them a shot and revive them.
Speaker 5: One day there was a relocating truck company there and
Speaker 5: they had one of these incidents take place and they
Speaker 5: gave the guy the treatment and ship like that, and
Speaker 5: when eleven came back, they said to him, Yeah, we
Speaker 5: just had this guy overdose here and then we did
Speaker 5: this and we're going to the Lieuten's gonna put him
Speaker 5: for a unicitation the hell out of yesterday. The other
Speaker 5: part was, of course the engine had what the hell
Speaker 5: did we record? Were used to switch companies change interchange truck.
Speaker 5: The truck didn't have it, but eighteen truck had it.
Speaker 5: A little side store. I'm getting on too, uh. They
Speaker 5: used to interchange Hunt eighteen interchange with eight truck, so
Speaker 5: eight truck would come over invariably they'd hit cars there
Speaker 5: with the things, and the people always figured it was
Speaker 5: eighteen truck. They said, no, the eight was on it,
Speaker 5: you know, naturally. But anyway, our interchange company was thirty
Speaker 5: two engine and the first night we went down there,
Speaker 5: the refrigerator had a lock on it, so chauffeur went
Speaker 5: out got the boat cutters. I was ended that one,
Speaker 5: but it was also if you had twenty runs before midnight,
Speaker 5: I had to call the deputy and tell them and
Speaker 5: we went interchange then. So the trick there was I
Speaker 5: had all the slips of the runs under my tide
Speaker 5: pin and I just didn't put them in a book
Speaker 5: till three in the morning, so we didn't have to go,
Speaker 5: so that was good. But every other night you did
Speaker 5: have to go, and that was there's always a tussle
Speaker 5: who wanted to stay back and oh my god, and
Speaker 5: when we were interchanging with them, we used to have
Speaker 5: to go. The World Trade Center was being built, so
Speaker 5: on multi unit drill. Since we were an interchange company
Speaker 5: for thirty two engine we had to get down and
Speaker 5: do the drill, which was very interesting of course, and
Speaker 5: they would put us in the basement and we'd get
Speaker 5: down a huge earth ramp and the brakes squeal and
Speaker 5: the whole time getting down there. One time down there
Speaker 5: we found the leak in the settling tank, so that
Speaker 5: was something but interesting. We'd get down there, there were
Speaker 5: cement trucks down there were just the barrel and then
Speaker 5: they'd make the cement and then as the taller they got,
Speaker 5: they'd hoist the cement truck up. Also, just the crazy
Speaker 5: stuff you got to see was just good, you know,
Speaker 5: very very interesting for sure. But they also the Lower
Speaker 5: east Side, as busy as we were, we never got
Speaker 5: the trucks, never got adaptive response either. And the the
Speaker 5: one the confinement they used to get the one tour
Speaker 5: of overtime, our guys would have to go to the
Speaker 5: Bronx for it. We didn't couldn't fill our own companies
Speaker 5: or how to go elsewhere. Just an odd paperwork thing,
Speaker 5: that type of thing, and we also didn't get. At
Speaker 5: one time they set up a thing for the busy
Speaker 5: companies to give him an administrative aid, which we didn't get.
Speaker 5: So what I did. We had a guy had a
Speaker 5: lot of trouble at home with his wife and stuff
Speaker 5: like that. So I called the battalion. I said, Chief,
Speaker 5: I'm following the orders on't that's paid circle here, So
Speaker 5: I want to let you know what administrative aid we have.
Speaker 5: So I gave him the guy's name and Chief said, okay,
Speaker 5: okay with us. So the guy worked administrative aid until
Speaker 5: his wife got better and heat come in sometimes. But
Speaker 5: then make a long story short, you just how to
Speaker 5: deal with the situation and it worked.
Speaker 6: You know, the guy one of the brothers.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's all taking care of him in this case.
Speaker 5: What a perfect solution. But somehow the Lower East Side
Speaker 5: well as busy as we were. Of course we were
Speaker 5: the business and the whole division just the way it was.
Speaker 5: But we'd been on all the BI programs and tips
Speaker 5: programs and stuff like that, and you had to do
Speaker 5: the paperwork.
Speaker 7: So Chief, how did you I wanted to ask you
Speaker 7: this before.
Speaker 9: How was it coming back as a boss to the
Speaker 9: company that you just came out of as a fire fireman?
Speaker 7: Was it a little weird initially?
Speaker 5: Was it?
Speaker 7: Did you take some time to get you.
Speaker 5: Know, that's a good question. It was a very good question.
Speaker 5: If I one come back. One of the guys in
Speaker 5: the truck, Bob said what he said, Jack, what the
Speaker 5: hell are you coming back here for? He said, I said, Bob,
Speaker 5: I like it here, you know, I like all you
Speaker 5: guys it. I was straight as an arrow, as a
Speaker 5: fireman and stuff like that. I would do the committee work,
Speaker 5: I do this, and you know, stuff like that. And
Speaker 5: I was accepted better that way, no particular problem. And
Speaker 5: it was I guess I was lucky because I took
Speaker 5: over this senior group of guys that I had worked
Speaker 5: with as firemen, and it was okay, But actually everything
Speaker 5: was loo. It was never jack.
Speaker 7: It just yeah. They never put you in a position
Speaker 7: to make it feel like that.
Speaker 5: Like I say, with most things in the fire department,
Speaker 5: I always believe that too. Everything works out of mutual respect.
Speaker 5: It just works no matter what. So yes, go ahead.
Speaker 6: Had you been studying this whole time for captain while
Speaker 6: you were there?
Speaker 5: Or yes? I did. And I'm trying to think how
Speaker 5: that took place. I didn't come out on top of
Speaker 5: that list whatever. I guess it didn't study enough, but
Speaker 5: it finally it come out more.
Speaker 7: Than three jobs at night. How the hell are you
Speaker 7: going to study?
Speaker 5: Yeah didn't you didn't? Oh?
Speaker 8: And I used to go route a quick look at this?
Speaker 7: Yeah, all right, four to carry them all.
Speaker 5: And I was a smoker there too, so when I
Speaker 5: was working, i'd smoke two packs a day. All we
Speaker 5: run you a little cigarette, right, that's all salam and
Speaker 5: you come back. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 5: Anyway, I did that, got on the list, got promoted,
Speaker 5: and I got assigned to In fact, when I got
Speaker 5: a sign promote to lieutenant was the first time I
Speaker 5: worked on Staten Island. I became a covering relief lieutenant
Speaker 5: on Staten Island in my old neighborhood where I grew up.
Speaker 5: Was two of the houses or tow of the companies.
Speaker 5: But that was the only time I worked on Staten Island.
Speaker 5: But when I got promoted the captain, I was a
Speaker 5: relief captain in Coney Island, forty third Battalion, and I
Speaker 5: had six of the companies and I loved them there.
Speaker 5: That was a funny place. One house was superb, the
Speaker 5: next one was real good, and the other one was okay.
Speaker 6: But it worked. And that one.
Speaker 13: Oh.
Speaker 5: By that time they had the Arizano Bridge, so.
Speaker 6: That makes life easy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And depending what company I was working then, with
Speaker 5: the guys, I could even get in the car pool
Speaker 5: or drive them back and forth. So Coney Island was
Speaker 5: pretty close from Staten Island, so that worked out good.
Speaker 5: And I was covering there and I moved up. That
Speaker 5: was the when I moved out of Staten Island, moved
Speaker 5: up to Bloomingberg in New York seventy two and the
Speaker 5: last tour I worked was as a relief captain in
Speaker 5: Coney Island. The next Saturday, I got assigned to the
Speaker 5: fifth division covering So what a lucky break that was too.
Speaker 5: Staten Island was over one hundred miles to go from Bloomingburg.
Speaker 5: Saying that too when I was a little ten.
Speaker 14: Lucky my little Volkswagen, right, yeah, yeah, you kept a
Speaker 14: few and who were doing straight tours then too, So yeah,
Speaker 14: that was that was that was tough.
Speaker 5: But at any rate, Let's see I got assigned to
Speaker 5: the fifth Division. I'm covering up there, and Chief Fogy
Speaker 5: called me, uh, Jack Fogary he was a captain of
Speaker 5: twenty eight years before I was there, and uh and
Speaker 5: then oh yeah, the connect well, he was a deputy
Speaker 5: then in the first and he'd come over for his
Speaker 5: visits and he treated the engine like the super guys
Speaker 5: and he'd pick on the truck.
Speaker 7: There were professionals. That's why.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's he said, Jack, I want you to come
Speaker 5: down at the headquarters. He was in the assistant to
Speaker 5: John o'hagen in the Chief Department's office, and they had
Speaker 5: an office in there they called Pandora Planning in Operations Research,
Speaker 5: And he said, why don't you come down here and
Speaker 5: work here for six months and you know, do something.
Speaker 5: And what we were doing there were rewriting bulletins. They
Speaker 5: rewrote the bulletin on tower ladders, which I never worked
Speaker 5: in the tower ladder, so I wasn't going to continue
Speaker 5: too much. Except we used to call up the tower
Speaker 5: ladders and ask him what should we put in this thing?
Speaker 5: And we did all you init circulars stuff like that,
Speaker 5: and then luckily he said, I was there for six months.
Speaker 5: Thirty truck was well. I used to have to take
Speaker 5: the train from Middletown to headquarters and I leave the
Speaker 5: house at five thirty in the morning, get home seven
Speaker 5: thirty at night, and my wife had all the kids
Speaker 5: waiting for dinner.
Speaker 7: So he wrote some of those books, chief, Yes, yeah.
Speaker 5: I wrote one a little bit later. I'll tell you too.
Speaker 8: With that.
Speaker 5: What happened there? The captain of thirty truck, Joe Pettitt,
Speaker 5: was getting promoted, and yeah.
Speaker 6: There you go, a.
Speaker 5: What chief Fog, I said, I've been here six months now, jeep,
Speaker 5: He said, the thirty truck is opening up, and I
Speaker 5: checked up on it and he said nobody put in
Speaker 5: for it. So Fog he called a transfer desk and
Speaker 5: Maddy Hennessy was over there, who also retired from a
Speaker 5: was a fireman hunting five truck also, But anyway, by
Speaker 5: the way, one hundred and five truck, as you know,
Speaker 5: that's the west point of Brooklyn, right and eleven truck,
Speaker 5: which I didn't know at the time because things were different.
Speaker 5: Now their name they're twenty eight and eleven is House
Speaker 5: of Rules and the senior guys run the house from
Speaker 5: the kitchen, and the offices run everything upstairs. And it
Speaker 5: works like a charm. Isn't that amazing? House of rules
Speaker 5: in all this and everybody had to contend to it.
Speaker 5: But anyway, he said, okay, I'll let you go, and
Speaker 5: I got the thirty truck. When I was there, Bill
Speaker 5: Fien was the captain of fifty nine engine and we
Speaker 5: were ProBiS together too, and personal friends. So that worked
Speaker 5: out good. Except one day Fogarty came up. I don't
Speaker 5: know what I think it was, coming up just to
Speaker 5: see him and I and whatever was going on. He
Speaker 5: didn't like, so he got the tools and he said,
Speaker 5: next time I come back up here for a visit.
Speaker 5: If things aren't better, you two are gone. But what
Speaker 5: the what the hell?
Speaker 7: Oh cool? Could you imagine?
Speaker 9: Let me let let's turn back the clock going to
Speaker 9: thirty truck in nineteen seventy three. No, could you even
Speaker 9: comprehend what the hell was going on.
Speaker 7: In nineteen seventy three, could you do? I can't even
Speaker 7: imagine something.
Speaker 5: Yes, the buildings started getting built bigger. They had a
Speaker 5: lot of MDA's there. They were, I would say, even
Speaker 5: in the Lower east Side had plenty of chefs and
Speaker 5: tenements and stuff like that. In fact, we had one
Speaker 5: chef the guy was growing chickens on the Lower east Side,
Speaker 5: but off of his fourth floor window he put a platform.
Speaker 5: But in Harlem, I have to say they had more
Speaker 5: chefts than anything holy with old lord teneants, four story
Speaker 5: buildings with chaffs. I had one fifth alarm there. It
Speaker 5: in bulowed three old law tenements because the middle old
Speaker 5: Lord tenement had the fire and went out the windows
Speaker 5: and then across the shafts, and then it burned across
Speaker 5: the hallways to the other one. And that those chefts,
Speaker 5: it was like holy shit. And while I was there,
Speaker 5: they had two of them, two fifth alarms, and those
Speaker 5: guys were good. We ran with twenty eight and sixty
Speaker 5: nine most of the time.
Speaker 7: And who was that.
Speaker 5: Hlton Harlem Hill, Yes, I know, thirty was the Harlem
Speaker 5: zoo and I tried to get a change. Different guys there.
Speaker 5: We're talking about twenty six truck was the fire factory,
Speaker 5: so we're thinking about this and shit like that. And
Speaker 5: I said, somebody come up with we'll be the fire machine.
Speaker 5: But it didn't work. They still kept for sure, but
Speaker 5: it's in the sidewalk out in front of the when
Speaker 5: I put in new doors. We put it in his
Speaker 5: cement to fire machine. But it never worked. But tough
Speaker 5: engines up there, I'll say that.
Speaker 7: I mean.
Speaker 5: You might know Marty Coin. He was one of my lieutenants,
Speaker 5: Dick Gilroy, Bob Conrad. I can't give you all these
Speaker 5: different names of Maddy Baker and the engine and Tom Farady,
Speaker 5: but you have to say we were second do a lot.
Speaker 5: So we'd go up and sixty nine would have the
Speaker 5: hallway saying a new law tenement and something like that.
Speaker 5: You always he felt confident going above. They weren't going
Speaker 5: to back out until we came down. Never got stuck,
Speaker 5: never got stuck that way, got stuck other times where
Speaker 5: you'd come out the front windows onto the aerial, but
Speaker 5: the chauffeur would have the area lop.
Speaker 7: It just it just worked, you know, it's they were
Speaker 7: going to burn up. They were not. They were never
Speaker 7: backing out of there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was working there one day when they had
Speaker 5: the fire with Fitzpatrick and Frisbee died and we were
Speaker 5: a special call. I guess after the second something like that.
Speaker 5: I got up and we got up on the roof
Speaker 5: just after the rope broke, and there was nothing to do,
Speaker 5: of course, But what a tragedy like that, you know
Speaker 5: it was? I think it was. I'm not mistaken. There
Speaker 5: were seven law seven story New Law tenements, good buildings,
Speaker 5: but just too much fire and they got stuck. And
Speaker 5: when I work, when I used to do a lot
Speaker 5: of overtime in twenty six truck, I worked a lot
Speaker 5: with Fitzpatrick. He was another tough guy, was like a
Speaker 5: built like a fire plug and tough as nails, and
Speaker 5: he was the guy going over and it just broke.
Speaker 5: Never come up with an answer to that, and in fact,
Speaker 5: Beakman was I'm trying to think that Beatman was commissioner
Speaker 5: then or chief of department or something like that, because
Speaker 5: him and senior Brouthers took the blame for that rope too,
Speaker 5: and had nothing to do with it.
Speaker 8: Really.
Speaker 5: But in retrospect.
Speaker 7: I mean, what are you going to do at that point?
Speaker 5: The fire a huge tragedy.
Speaker 7: Yes, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 6: How was the fire, dude? If they compared to twenty
Speaker 6: eight eleven, are you're doing more or less?
Speaker 5: There was? It was less, but there was a lot
Speaker 5: of it and serious fires with because in the tenements
Speaker 5: on the lower east side, each floor was like a
Speaker 5: platform if you could get in there, which the guys
Speaker 5: did my professionals.
Speaker 7: Oh h h.
Speaker 6: Let me tell him how did that happens?
Speaker 8: I don't know.
Speaker 7: That's uh something. I have him go out and come
Speaker 7: back in.
Speaker 15: Yeah, let me see you just checked his No, he's
Speaker 15: not muted, jack, can you hear us? Your your volumes out?
Speaker 8: Maybe go out and come back real quick, right, I'd
Speaker 8: try to warn him ahead of time if we had
Speaker 8: a problem to go right to his phone.
Speaker 6: So it's got his technical advisor there.
Speaker 8: Yes, that guy is on point.
Speaker 7: Wow, this guy is something. Huh us.
Speaker 6: She's still got a nice out of hair.
Speaker 8: Look, yeah, come back, come back so anyway.
Speaker 7: Wow, I'm been trying this.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he's good.
Speaker 7: Remember I can't even remember anything. I don't remember. He's
Speaker 7: like Bob Bob bill Bags.
Speaker 6: The headquarter. Is this guy was there?
Speaker 4: That guy?
Speaker 8: And I can't remember what I did yesterday? Oh my god,
Speaker 8: it's crazy.
Speaker 6: The probably not much because that's like every day, right.
Speaker 8: It's amazing what they remember. I mean, it's like it
Speaker 8: just happened yesterday for them. Crazy.
Speaker 9: Oh that you could tell he's that's there, and it's
Speaker 9: branding and what else you can tell.
Speaker 6: He's very calm, very calm, must have been what they said.
Speaker 8: Let me see what they said about listen.
Speaker 9: Chief Daily said he was one of the most influential
Speaker 9: guys in his career. And uh, Keith Dickolo I'm going
Speaker 9: to bring up now when he comes back on. He
Speaker 9: said he was one of his favorite guys. Really calm
Speaker 9: under pressure.
Speaker 6: He's back.
Speaker 5: Oh we are kind of I'm on the telephone, all right, gotcha?
Speaker 8: What do you get a chance to turn the sideways?
Speaker 5: Ah, that's much better.
Speaker 6: There we go and then we can hear you.
Speaker 8: Yeah, if your nose, but that's good.
Speaker 7: All right, you look good there.
Speaker 5: Remember I was a professional at one time. Try don't
Speaker 5: forget that.
Speaker 8: You didn't lose too much of your touch.
Speaker 7: I'll tell you that was uh was a chief was
Speaker 7: Keith nicolelo was he your proby.
Speaker 5: Nicole was a proby there, Yes, just as I was
Speaker 5: getting from. I only worked with him a very very
Speaker 5: short time. He come up from thirty nine Engine or
Speaker 5: some place. He came three engine, thank you, and yes
Speaker 5: he was good as goal to of course, and talk
Speaker 5: about mister personality with everyone. He got off and he
Speaker 5: talked to everybody, and.
Speaker 8: I used to.
Speaker 5: I used to meet him up here at at Chinese restaurant.
Speaker 5: He's come with his daughter and my wife and with
Speaker 5: Chad away the whole time. Yeah, what a what a
Speaker 5: great personality.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he's up there with I. There's only a few
Speaker 7: guys who loved the job, like everybody loves the job. Yeah,
Speaker 7: actually loves the job, right, he really loves the job.
Speaker 7: He can't stop talking about it or doing it. Even now.
Speaker 7: He's still running around all over the country doing stuff
Speaker 7: I forget.
Speaker 6: Yes, the Jersey show, you know it looked great too.
Speaker 6: He's in great shape, he's all tanned up, he's got
Speaker 6: the hang on, he's got the girlfriend.
Speaker 5: We're talking before too again with the chief foguny. When
Speaker 5: I was a captain of thirty he had me, boy,
Speaker 5: he didn't have me. He asked me he detailed me
Speaker 5: to the rock to help write firefighting Procedures multiple Dwellings,
Speaker 5: and that was an experience in itself. Wow. We used
Speaker 5: to go into the Bronx to watch the vacant buildings
Speaker 5: that burnt down. We'd leave the rock, the rock and
Speaker 5: goes look at him to see what we could put
Speaker 5: in his bulletin. But the section in there on fireproof
Speaker 5: multiple dwellings, which are the projects that considered like that.
Speaker 5: I wrote that whole action myself on every experience that
Speaker 5: we did on Lower east Side. So that right and there,
Speaker 5: that's where I got it from.
Speaker 6: I learned it.
Speaker 5: I'd learned it there, you know what. I and the
Speaker 5: other guys were on it, Joe short and trying to
Speaker 5: think of the assistant chief's name. But anyway, we wrote
Speaker 5: it there and I forgured.
Speaker 9: I'm still going today, Chief, Yeah, I guess we're still
Speaker 9: studying that today.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 5: In fact, there was only one change made when we
Speaker 5: wrote it, and that came from Joe Callen because inadvertently
Speaker 5: we put in a wrong picture and Joe knew everything.
Speaker 5: And one day he finally I was a chief already
Speaker 5: by this time, and he said, he said, Jack, you
Speaker 5: know there's something wrong with that one picture. And I
Speaker 5: knew it myself, but I said, yeah, so he sending her.
Speaker 5: He changed that. That was the only change he made
Speaker 5: out of that whole bulletins and all. That was just
Speaker 5: practical fire duty and stuff.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 5: It's the guys you listen to and taught you this,
Speaker 5: and uh, you practice it yourself and.
Speaker 8: You did it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, gotta be proud of that. That that's I mean,
Speaker 7: that's a pretty good legacy.
Speaker 5: That was a good one, Yes, I have to say that.
Speaker 5: And also another nice thing up there in thirty when
Speaker 5: I got promoted the chief. Oh, I'm back on together.
Speaker 7: Good thanks.
Speaker 5: Let me turn this off to him.
Speaker 6: Nice to have a technical adviser. Yeah, right, us.
Speaker 8: Did we get rid of this guy? All right? Are
Speaker 8: you there? Oh? We have to go back to the phone.
Speaker 6: I heard him.
Speaker 8: Yeah, we don't got him.
Speaker 6: No, I don't get him.
Speaker 8: But you still have the phone hooked up.
Speaker 6: You know it was here in the phone.
Speaker 4: That's what were his.
Speaker 8: Computer, Mike must because I don't on my end.
Speaker 15: He's uh, Mike, everything is uh is there automatically reducing
Speaker 15: can check this echo there pack If not, go back
Speaker 15: to your cell phone. Okay, we'll just keep you on
Speaker 15: the cell phone.
Speaker 5: It's all okay, wow.
Speaker 8: This okay, there we go. All right, we'll try what
Speaker 8: I have to do, all.
Speaker 5: Right, Just one day, I wanted to note the last
Speaker 5: night I worked as a captain in thirty and the
Speaker 5: next day I was gonna work my first tour in
Speaker 5: the fifty fifth Battalion. Bill Moore got everybody up in
Speaker 5: the morning out for fireman's roll calls to wish me well.
Speaker 5: I thought that was pretty damn nice.
Speaker 7: So yeah they did.
Speaker 5: They did all kinds of good things up there. And
Speaker 5: Mother's Day they give flowers to all the women on
Speaker 5: the street. And I think I said to the numbers
Speaker 5: guy who lived up the street, and his name, oddly enough,
Speaker 5: was Sonny Chance. So and one one of the firemen
Speaker 5: hit one time and we had a tremendous dinner that night,
Speaker 5: and then the week his all his money was gone.
Speaker 5: So but but he enjoyed himself. But getting back, there's
Speaker 5: plenty of plenty of fire duty we had up there,
Speaker 5: and serious fire duty.
Speaker 6: Sure, But to learn chief, I want to ask you,
Speaker 6: I could have my years off here. I'm not sure.
Speaker 6: But when you were in eleven truck, I don't know
Speaker 6: what years that? Yeah, they wrote lattice three, But the
Speaker 6: guy from twenty six truck wrote lattice three right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was John O'Rourke and O Rock. Here's a
Speaker 5: good one too. I'll interrupt you for a minute. The
Speaker 5: original Multiple Dwelling Fires bulletin was written by Mike de
Speaker 5: Late who was the captain then of Ladder thirty and
Speaker 5: one of his firemen was John. Was it o'rock that
Speaker 5: wrote the lattest three? General? He was his fireman there,
Speaker 5: and then later on when he became the captain of
Speaker 5: twenty six truck, he wrote latters three?
Speaker 8: Right?
Speaker 6: What year is that about?
Speaker 8: What?
Speaker 6: Before you were in eleven truck?
Speaker 11: Was it?
Speaker 7: There was?
Speaker 5: No, it was after I was in eleven truck.
Speaker 6: So how would you guys operate when you were eleven truck?
Speaker 6: Did you have your own way of operating?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Pretty much that They all all the trucks worked
Speaker 5: pretty much the same with we had five guys. Getting
Speaker 5: back to twenty eight engine that sometimes there with my professionals,
Speaker 5: we had six guys and we're first due. I'd get
Speaker 5: off the ridge that no, mask, I didn't have to
Speaker 5: ran up the stairs and the sixth man when they
Speaker 5: finished or almost finished, were stretching the line. We had
Speaker 5: two of the big scots. He'd put his gut on
Speaker 5: and bring one up for me.
Speaker 6: That's service bro.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and he he was a professional, the one guy
Speaker 5: that we made a terrific rescue up there. Of course
Speaker 5: we beat We beat the truck in all the time,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 7: Of course you did.
Speaker 5: Just want just.
Speaker 7: Want to say that.
Speaker 8: I just want to say what professionals do.
Speaker 5: That's what professionals do. Nothing like being a lieutenant in
Speaker 5: the first do, having being first do so often. I'm
Speaker 5: telling you what a what a great position that was.
Speaker 5: I'll tell you, wow, you're there were all the time
Speaker 5: right up.
Speaker 7: There, because the truck has to close the door. I
Speaker 7: used to love that take it off until I was
Speaker 7: in the truck. I did the same thing.
Speaker 9: I went to the truck in the same house and
Speaker 9: then I had to wait that and would take off
Speaker 9: and they'd be two blocks away before I we got there.
Speaker 5: We owed another thing we had there too. Herbie Geiser
Speaker 5: was a dispatcher, a real super guy. And he had
Speaker 5: a brother, George Isser was a chief and the three
Speaker 5: five later. But anyway, all of a sudden, one day
Speaker 5: we don't we all with the engine, always be going
Speaker 5: out the engine only i'll sure crap whatever like that.
Speaker 5: One day it turned out to be a five to
Speaker 5: seventh signal. The truck had to go, and I called
Speaker 5: up dispatched. I said, is that something new we're gonna have?
Speaker 5: I said, I didn't hear anything about this. I don't
Speaker 5: know who started it, but I don't know how extensive
Speaker 5: it was. But every run the engine had no matter
Speaker 5: what it was, the truck went with us, whether they
Speaker 5: whether they liked it or not, they were they were
Speaker 5: signed to go. Yeah, And twice we got them that
Speaker 5: we got in first, of course, and uh, I'd give
Speaker 5: it ten seventy five and the truck would say, ah shit.
Speaker 5: But just it just so many different things down there too,
Speaker 5: And like Herbie iSER too. We were going up to
Speaker 5: seeing fifth one time, or seeing seventh, and they called
Speaker 5: me on the radio and he said that twenty eight
Speaker 5: take a look into sixth Street when you go by,
Speaker 5: and see if you see anything. Sure enough, the fire
Speaker 5: was in sixth Street. How the hell Herbie now it?
Speaker 5: I have no idea, but it was out the windows
Speaker 5: on sixth Street.
Speaker 6: So, but of course dispatch worth his weight in gold man.
Speaker 5: Oh, and we had Bill Trainer in the Bronx was
Speaker 5: just as good. These these guys knew where everybody was
Speaker 5: at any time. I remember when I was a chief
Speaker 5: there forty four with Mike Finer and his crew. They
Speaker 5: always were out drilling and there I went to visit
Speaker 5: him just during the week. They would be doing something
Speaker 5: and they had all the crap laid out on Shakespeare
Speaker 5: Avenue and they got a call for a relocation. So
Speaker 5: I just called the dispatcher would radio wharf or speak
Speaker 5: mixer off and said, can you do something here because
Speaker 5: forty four has all this stuff in the street. He said,
Speaker 5: just say no problem.
Speaker 7: That was the end of it.
Speaker 5: They canceled it and they got another guy to relocate.
Speaker 5: That's all. So yes, I'm trying to think of so
Speaker 5: many different things happened in these places. It's just remarkable
Speaker 5: that and everything just worked, that's all. It just worked.
Speaker 5: The guys love to in the engine too.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 5: The guy with the nozzle would have his helmet on
Speaker 5: and his coat on top of the nozzle because who
Speaker 5: were on the back step still then? And uh, guy
Speaker 5: coming in for the night tour, he just take the
Speaker 5: guy's helmet and coat off, put it on the side
Speaker 5: and put his own on there, and we get to
Speaker 5: run the guy who originally who was there, say, what
Speaker 5: the hell happened to my stuff? Maybe maybe that's why
Speaker 5: we all have those dreams where we can't find our gear.
Speaker 8: Wow.
Speaker 10: Wow, I told you I had them all the time. Yeah,
Speaker 10: where's my health?
Speaker 7: Don't fit?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Uh? Anyway, let's see.
Speaker 6: You got to work in three really busy places in
Speaker 6: three different boroughs.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, three times in Manhattan, uh, sixty five, twenty
Speaker 5: eight and eleven, and then thirty. And then when I
Speaker 5: went to the Bronx. I used to always kid the
Speaker 5: guys to these professionals. But late later on we were
Speaker 5: out of there. I said, I got my back laureate
Speaker 5: in eleven and the rescue two and sixty five engine,
Speaker 5: I got my masters in twenty eight engine, and I
Speaker 5: got my PhD as a chief in the Bronx. The
Speaker 5: Bronx with those age buildings, that that really opened stuff up.
Speaker 5: And I listened to everybody there. I listened to any
Speaker 5: fireman who was busy there and stuff to tell me
Speaker 5: what the hell goes on with these age buildings here,
Speaker 5: with the vertical voids and stuff.
Speaker 7: And I was up there.
Speaker 5: One time. I was an all hands chief and the
Speaker 5: deputy said, go up and find out where forty two engineers.
Speaker 5: So I had my mask. I always had the mask,
Speaker 5: and I'd go up the stairs and forty two engine
Speaker 5: line went up and I followed. It was smokey, but
Speaker 5: he could with the line. That just followed it through.
Speaker 5: And I saying, what the hell could these guys be.
Speaker 5: I don't know why they weren't answering on the handy talkie,
Speaker 5: but they weren't. But anyway, I'm crawling along. I go
Speaker 5: into a closet and I keep going and I'm coming
Speaker 5: out of another closet in the next apartment, and that's
Speaker 5: where they were. It was two neighbors or relatives lived.
Speaker 7: In through they broke through the apartment.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they just broke through there. Holy shit, how did it?
Speaker 5: And then you say to thisself, how did these guys
Speaker 5: find their way through these places?
Speaker 7: Forty two engine that's a good engine man.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah, good good house. That's where forty four
Speaker 5: went to when they were remodeling Mars Avenue. And I
Speaker 5: used to always say, I love Mars Avenue. I'll tell
Speaker 5: you how I got there. I was covering there, and
Speaker 5: I went to a third alarm somewhere further north, and
Speaker 5: our good guy, Maddie Farrell was a city wide chief
Speaker 5: and he's there and I come in and I knew
Speaker 5: him in when I was in the fourth Battalion. He
Speaker 5: came there covering and he just stood out, another guy
Speaker 5: that you would just love, you know. And he's there
Speaker 5: and I'm I'm taking up I guess, and he says
Speaker 5: to me, Hey, Jack, what are you doing up here
Speaker 5: in the bronx? And don't ask me why he remembered
Speaker 5: my name. I have no freaking idea except you know
Speaker 5: the memory that guy has. And I did see him
Speaker 5: on the getting Salty. But anyway, I said, no, I'm
Speaker 5: up in the bronx. I said, I'm waiting around. I'm
Speaker 5: trying to get to the seventeenth Battalion. I said, but
Speaker 5: there's going to be two openings, and I'm not senior.
Speaker 5: He said, Jack, we decide who goes where. A month
Speaker 5: later on at the Department Order that was with McGrath.
Speaker 7: The scene.
Speaker 5: Luckily, the two with Haalian chiefs on the deputy's list
Speaker 5: weren't too far apart, so Tom McGrath came maybe, uh,
Speaker 5: two months later. But also when I was in forty four,
Speaker 5: I loved it there too. I used to always say
Speaker 5: Mars Avenue was my second street in the Bronx. They were,
Speaker 5: even though second street had no chief. But uh, just
Speaker 5: the attitudes and things like that. And forty four truck
Speaker 5: was the first towel ladder in the Bronx, which I
Speaker 5: never knew.
Speaker 6: Yep, you worked with uh, you work with George Daily
Speaker 6: up there?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, talk about a funny guy. George Daily. Yeah,
Speaker 5: he told me sometime one time. He said, we're driving
Speaker 5: up the concourse, he said, and the people were like
Speaker 5: daring you to cross the street and always said, all
Speaker 5: you do. I don't know what he was telling me
Speaker 5: for because I wasn't driving. He said, I just don't
Speaker 5: look at him. I just keep going. He said. They stopped.
Speaker 7: Shit to eat the car either.
Speaker 5: What we talk about a funny guy.
Speaker 6: Oh man, I was related him to marriage actually.
Speaker 7: Oh no kidding.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yes, Queens. Oh he's in Queens now. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he's a lieutenant now. But he spent most of
Speaker 6: his career as a fireman up in forty four.
Speaker 5: Oh yes, yeah, yeah, the day everybody it was just
Speaker 5: the chiefs were good.
Speaker 8: Oh.
Speaker 5: I want to tell you too. When we finally got
Speaker 5: the women in the job and eighty two, I guess
Speaker 5: it was. Uh we got Carol Boykin's and uh she
Speaker 5: came and I'm saying Jack Snider. He was a battalion commander.
Speaker 5: He had six good daughters. I have five daughters. Divine
Speaker 5: had two daughters. So I guess we figured, I guess
Speaker 5: we're not gonna have too much trouble here for that,
Speaker 5: and uh, everything got resolved out. And uh, the biggest
Speaker 5: lieutenant in the engine, Tom Latka, he took her under
Speaker 5: his arm, and everything eventually just worked out beautifully.
Speaker 6: So it seems to happen wherever you go. I don't
Speaker 6: know how this happens with everything just happens to work out.
Speaker 6: It flows.
Speaker 7: You know what he said before, you know, that's what
Speaker 7: happens if you know, you respect. I think.
Speaker 5: What was good there too. Of course, the department did
Speaker 5: nothing about the bathrooms yet at the time, were you there, Bill?
Speaker 5: But when she came, yea did what did she get
Speaker 5: assigned there when.
Speaker 7: You were there? No, she was already there able Okay, when.
Speaker 5: They we came. The city, of course did nothing about
Speaker 5: the bathrooms and stuff.
Speaker 8: Like that.
Speaker 5: So the chiefs decided, well, we'll just let her use
Speaker 5: our bathroom because we had a separate office and stuff
Speaker 5: like that. But in the meantime they the finement resolved it,
Speaker 5: that's all, and they put locks on the doors and
Speaker 5: stuff like that. So eventually it worked out very nicely,
Speaker 5: and Tom Lattet took her right under his wing and
Speaker 5: Greg Greg grew along with the hose line and she performed.
Speaker 9: So it's surprising, chief because that's really not a sort
Speaker 9: after firehouse, you know, yes, not the least. I can't
Speaker 9: I can't imagine that happening over there, you know. Really,
Speaker 9: they guys taking care of business.
Speaker 5: So many, so many. Oh here, we have a dog there,
Speaker 5: Rocky Salad shoot board the dog in and he was
Speaker 5: a wonderful dog. He never did anything in our parking lot.
Speaker 5: He'd always go elsewhere to go to the bathroom and stuff.
Speaker 5: By that, and uh me and the aid were driving
Speaker 5: on College Avenue one day and I look out the
Speaker 5: window and on the sidewalk is our dog, Rocky. So
Speaker 5: I opened up the window, I call him. He came
Speaker 5: right over to the car. He got out, open up
Speaker 5: the back door, he jumped in, sat on top of
Speaker 5: my gear. We got back to the firehouse and back
Speaker 5: and then there's the real Rocky in the firehouse. It
Speaker 5: had to be his son.
Speaker 7: I looked just like him. Huh you got a couple
Speaker 7: of kids. Yeah, none that I some that I don't
Speaker 7: know about. Forget about.
Speaker 5: There was There were so many great guys there. I'm
Speaker 5: telling you, it's it's hard to mention the different names
Speaker 5: and all like that.
Speaker 7: I told you we were talking to the pre show.
Speaker 7: I came on with Brian Fox. He went to forty.
Speaker 7: I went to ninety two first, I think, and then
Speaker 7: he ended up going to the truck.
Speaker 5: Yes, yep, he was good. I'm going to say something
Speaker 5: about that later. One time I was out of there
Speaker 5: and I was coming to visit and in the morning
Speaker 5: and they had a job and he made a rescue
Speaker 5: and uh, I'm trying to it doesn't matter what. Yeah,
Speaker 5: what street to okay? And later on somebody said something
Speaker 5: to him about being in there and stuff, and Brian
Speaker 5: said it was alright. He said, if I got stuck,
Speaker 5: I knew somebody was coming after me, and that it
Speaker 5: is one of the things I have to say later,
Speaker 5: No matter what you knew, somebody would be coming, that's
Speaker 5: for sure. There was no and we all felt that way.
Speaker 5: There was no trouble at all. Yeah, it was just
Speaker 5: so many good things there, and learning about the size
Speaker 5: of these H buildings and all, there was something there too.
Speaker 5: I had my own idea of this later on, after
Speaker 5: I learned a lot of stuff, and of course you
Speaker 5: learned this by listening to the senior chiefs. And if
Speaker 5: we had a fire in an H building and it
Speaker 5: was the third floor or below of say a five
Speaker 5: or six story H building, before I got out of
Speaker 5: the car right given all hands, extra engine and truck,
Speaker 5: it was on the fourth coming out the windows on
Speaker 5: the fourth floor to the top, I'd give a second
Speaker 5: alarm before I got out of the car. And the
Speaker 5: stretches that like ninety two and sixty eight did up,
Speaker 5: they're like nothing, twelve ninth stretches.
Speaker 8: And then find the right.
Speaker 5: Stairway in the building to make sure you were going
Speaker 5: to be in the right wing at the time, or
Speaker 5: or hope the truck found it. So but the guys
Speaker 5: just did it, tell you, honest truth. Never saw a
Speaker 5: short stretch. I saw a plenty of hose, but there
Speaker 5: were no short stretches, And they were long, and that
Speaker 5: was if when you found the hydrant, of course, and
Speaker 5: then you'd have to find out when you got into
Speaker 5: the lobby of some of these places, what wing am
Speaker 5: I going up to? And with all the hills in
Speaker 5: the bronx too, we'd be coming down, like say one
Speaker 5: six seventh Street looking at Shakespeare, which a hill, and
Speaker 5: if you saw the fire coming out of the windows there, uh,
Speaker 5: right away we would designate the fireflow would be whatever
Speaker 5: number it was from the roof down, because in the
Speaker 5: front it'd be completely different from right in the backyard.
Speaker 5: It might be eight stories.
Speaker 7: Eight stories, you might have five in the front.
Speaker 5: Yes, And I learned that two of these things that
Speaker 5: were like eight stories, the top six stories were fire
Speaker 5: non fireproof, but the sixth floor, I mean say the well,
Speaker 5: say the first, second and third floor on the hill,
Speaker 5: they were fireproof ceilings because you can only go so
Speaker 5: many feet without it being fireproof. So that was that
Speaker 5: was interesting and paid off many times too, because from
Speaker 5: the front of the building you think you had a
Speaker 5: five story h building. And uh, the education they're listening
Speaker 5: to the you had to listen to everybody. The officer
Speaker 5: would tell me stuff. The chief did you see this?
Speaker 5: Did you see that? And you'd have to listen, because honestly,
Speaker 5: I didn't know. You know, I never saw these buildings
Speaker 5: before in my life.
Speaker 7: You've seen every type of borrow and building before.
Speaker 8: Well, Chief, did you? You did? B I?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 8: How's your feelings on b I. You can get that
Speaker 8: information from b I too, or maybe even Steles. Won't
Speaker 8: you take on something.
Speaker 5: That was not one of my I think the fire
Speaker 5: part of it was my highlights. The fire prevention was
Speaker 5: I could check the books, and luckily Tom McGrath was
Speaker 5: the BI chief.
Speaker 7: So exactly we need we need the one guy Fishers,
Speaker 7: my b I guy.
Speaker 9: That was just all right, chiefs. So now I got
Speaker 9: a question for you. Good you become a chief. Hopefully
Speaker 9: your dad was still around. You look at him and
Speaker 9: you say, hey, pop, you got any information for me?
Speaker 9: Now that I'm a chief and you were a chief?
Speaker 7: Did he give you anything? Who was that? You're dad?
Speaker 5: My father?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 5: Well, oh wait, I have to take that back. He
Speaker 5: was in Florida by the time I became a chief.
Speaker 7: So all right, all right, we'll let him slide. We'll
Speaker 7: let him slide him. Uh yeah, that was That's funny.
Speaker 5: But at one time I failed the deputies test and
Speaker 5: I told him I failed and he said, well, did
Speaker 5: you study? I said no, He said, well what do
Speaker 5: you expect.
Speaker 8: That was? That was easy.
Speaker 5: Being a battalion chief was to me, well, first two
Speaker 5: engine officer that I was that you couldn't beat that.
Speaker 5: But h being a battalion chief was superb, superb. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I have to say I loved that job.
Speaker 9: I was going to say, what was your favorite looking
Speaker 9: back at your career, what was your favorite spot?
Speaker 7: Your sweet spot like that?
Speaker 9: You know, obviously there's a lot of sweet spots, but
Speaker 9: where where was the one that you if you had to.
Speaker 7: Go back, where would you go back?
Speaker 5: Well, if I was young enough, I'd go back to
Speaker 5: twenty eight engine if I if I was older, I'd
Speaker 5: be a chief in the Bronx. But I have to
Speaker 5: say both of those fireman, I love being too. I
Speaker 5: like being a captain. But uh, the first two engine
Speaker 5: and the battalion chief in the Bronx they hard to
Speaker 5: beat for sure. And luckily too. When I was a
Speaker 5: chief in the Bronx, the Rescue three was still in Manhattan,
Speaker 5: and they there were a lot of when they'd committed
Speaker 5: the Bronx for all the fires and stuff like that.
Speaker 5: There was always competition and jealousies with a certain lot
Speaker 5: of companies and stuff like that. So it worked out
Speaker 5: good because I was the rescue come over, and when
Speaker 5: they come over, I would I enhance their position.
Speaker 7: They were.
Speaker 5: They were there to help me, and I knew it
Speaker 5: being in a rescue company. But as you know, most
Speaker 5: other superior officers were never in rescue companies to even
Speaker 5: know them. They they just knew they could do fantastic
Speaker 5: jobs for them. But I knew, damn well they'd be
Speaker 5: there to help me and bail me out if I
Speaker 5: needed it. For sure. They were.
Speaker 7: They were good.
Speaker 5: If we had one guy in rescue three Ray Phillips,
Speaker 5: he's another gonzo.
Speaker 7: I remember Ray. I remember Ray.
Speaker 5: When things were under control, they'd come out and get
Speaker 5: ready to take up, and he come up behind me,
Speaker 5: Take my helmet off, put it on his hat, put
Speaker 5: his hat on, helmet on my head, and then he
Speaker 5: start barking orders to everybody. Okay, you can take up rescue.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 5: The things were just so good, you know. It's you
Speaker 5: learn so much stuff by listening to these guys, that
Speaker 5: which we all should. Of course, And another thing I
Speaker 5: learned in the Bronx Chief I finally I've used to
Speaker 5: be ABC many times when I was a Captain of
Speaker 5: the thirties, stuff like that. But being the real chief,
Speaker 5: I learned, I'm watching Jack Schneider and Don Devine and
Speaker 5: other senior guys. I used to see Joe de Bonardo
Speaker 5: all the time, and Phil Phil Burns and stuff like that.
Speaker 5: And I realized, I'm not stretching down the hallway anymore,
Speaker 5: and I'm not forcing door pulling ceilings and stuff like that.
Speaker 5: My job was the fireman. They the fireman would make
Speaker 5: the rescues, they put out the fires, and I was
Speaker 5: just there. But my job really was there watching them.
Speaker 5: When they needed help, I'd get help. When they were
Speaker 5: ready to take up, I let him take up. And
Speaker 5: it was just I finally realized chief is a different
Speaker 5: job is And my guys all went home. They all
Speaker 5: went home.
Speaker 7: And how lucky was I?
Speaker 9: Huh, Yeah, yeah, I was gonna stay Chief. Jimmy Daily
Speaker 9: Chief Daily mentioned.
Speaker 7: Something I saw. I know he was up there too
Speaker 7: with you. Yes he was.
Speaker 5: I never knew how smart he was till he passed through.
Speaker 5: I didn't even know he studied and he probably didn't.
Speaker 5: He just had that memory.
Speaker 6: Yeah, some guy's a wicked smot.
Speaker 8: Everybody says it's good.
Speaker 5: Another thing I learned too. I'll say it later too.
Speaker 5: Every tour I worked, I looked who was working in
Speaker 5: all the units that I would respond to on the
Speaker 5: first alarm, and I'd know what officer was working, and
Speaker 5: if it was a covering officer, I'd find out who
Speaker 5: the senior man was in that company. And it just
Speaker 5: made things so much simpler, just so, and the officers
Speaker 5: were good, the firemen were good, all that mutual respect. Oh.
Speaker 5: I was there sixteen years. One morning, just once I
Speaker 5: had to go in the kitchen and said, hey, guys,
Speaker 5: how about if I be the chief today? And they
Speaker 5: were probably having a fit over no fires or something
Speaker 5: like that, you know, so they get a little crotchety.
Speaker 8: But it.
Speaker 5: Worked out like a job for sure.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but sos, you got to tighten the bolt chief.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, I recently to do what you keep saying. Later,
Speaker 6: is that in your thing that you want to read
Speaker 6: to us?
Speaker 8: Is that what you?
Speaker 13: Oh?
Speaker 5: Yeah, are you ready for that?
Speaker 13: Now?
Speaker 6: I'd like to hear it. You're piquing my interest with
Speaker 6: all these laters.
Speaker 5: So okay, yeah, that's true.
Speaker 6: We're gonna give you. We're gonna give you a full screen,
Speaker 6: right guns, Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 8: We're doing the at that time.
Speaker 7: This is the tip.
Speaker 6: This is something else that he wants to read.
Speaker 5: Right, okay, all right, you wanted the tips that you
Speaker 5: wanted to want what you want to do first, I'll
Speaker 5: do the tips first, because very quickly.
Speaker 8: Okay, don't do nothing yet. We gotta do a little
Speaker 8: intro here we go.
Speaker 6: We gotta give you the introduction, all.
Speaker 8: Right, tip, wait one more second, alright, chief.
Speaker 6: And then you watch.
Speaker 7: Okay.
Speaker 5: For the engine companies and guys, of course, everything was
Speaker 5: always to listen to the senior guys in the offices
Speaker 5: because they've been through it all and all you have
Speaker 5: to do is listen to them and follow it. But
Speaker 5: the engine that said, when you're crawling down on the hall,
Speaker 5: get out of the hallway, because that's the flu that
Speaker 5: if this thing blows back on you, you're gonna be
Speaker 5: right in a flu. And one of the other things
Speaker 5: was for the truck company, forcing the door always looked
Speaker 5: behind the door because of the victim was there trying
Speaker 5: to get out their front door and collapsed. He'd be
Speaker 5: behind the door that you're forcing open, So always check
Speaker 5: on that. And I learned that with two truck. One
Speaker 5: time when I was a Probian sixty five engine, I
Speaker 5: was up. I must have been detailed, and the guy
Speaker 5: forced the door and went right behind it and found somebody.
Speaker 5: It was like, Oh, I guess, so we'll listen. We'll
Speaker 5: listen to this guy for sure.
Speaker 7: Okay.
Speaker 5: The other thing is it might be a little hokey
Speaker 5: to some people, but I always have this thing about
Speaker 5: the fire department family, and that's sick. I always figure
Speaker 5: that the chief is the grandfather in the family. He's
Speaker 5: generally older, experienced, worked in many areas and firehouses, and
Speaker 5: it's hard to imagine, well, I'm looking here, like the
Speaker 5: grandfather being like Mike McParland or Tommy Jensen or Richie McVay,
Speaker 5: guys like that. Then the captain would be the father
Speaker 5: of the house. Just like at home. He sets up
Speaker 5: the rules and standards, separates personalities. This is his firehouse,
Speaker 5: particularly if he's the engine captain and proud of it,
Speaker 5: and guys like that would be like Dennis McCool and E. J. Tierney,
Speaker 5: Dick Collins and Steve Louisey stuff like that. Lieutenants were
Speaker 5: your uncles, especially the senior lieutenants. And we had one
Speaker 5: Dick Gilroth for sure in thirty truck. He was a
Speaker 5: fireman in fourteen truck and then a lieutenant in thirty
Speaker 5: for over thirty years. Anyway, senior lieutenant is the guy,
Speaker 5: the perfect go between the captain and the members, and
Speaker 5: like Bob Conrad would do that, and Jimmy McCluskey and
Speaker 5: Marty Coin, a sweetheart of a guy. Then the senior firefighters,
Speaker 5: they were the big brother, the senior firefighter, respected for
Speaker 5: his status and influence. He runs everything outside of the office.
Speaker 5: And you'd have guys like Tom Flaherty, Pete Carroll, Matty Baker,
Speaker 5: stuff like that. Then the regular firemen, they were all
Speaker 5: the brothers in the family and they were looking out
Speaker 5: for all and each other. The proby he was the
Speaker 5: baby brother. He was protected, helped, taught by all and
Speaker 5: watched out for and was taught the traditions and history
Speaker 5: of that firehouse. All the other fire all the other firemen,
Speaker 5: they were like from other units. They were like cousins.
Speaker 5: And whoever you met covering and stuff like that, or
Speaker 5: interchange in overtime, they were cousins, and everything works because
Speaker 5: of mutual respect. And this is the important part any firefighter,
Speaker 5: whether you're detailed on overtime or a covering officer, they're
Speaker 5: guests in our firehouse, which is our home, and they
Speaker 5: are relying on us all the time. After they leave,
Speaker 5: they carry and spread our reputation. He was a good
Speaker 5: one too in the Bronx where the guy promoted from
Speaker 5: Rescue two is a covering lieutenant and when he covered
Speaker 5: in ninety two and forty four, he made up the
Speaker 5: thing that they were the crown jewel of the Bronx.
Speaker 5: That was a good reputation to spread. Huh. And the
Speaker 5: other thing would be our saving factor is whenever we
Speaker 5: perform the jobs and or you get jammed up or trapped,
Speaker 5: we always know someone or more are coming to get
Speaker 5: us out. And when typically wherever you go, you're always
Speaker 5: asked where you worked, and when you say, in this case,
Speaker 5: I'm going to say fifteen nine or thirty or twenty
Speaker 5: eight and eleven, ninety two and forty four, the atmosphere
Speaker 5: just gets better. And when I got promoted at BC,
Speaker 5: I went to five to five Battalion, and of course
Speaker 5: the guys asked you where you worked, and I said, well,
Speaker 5: I just got promoted from thirty truck.
Speaker 7: That was the end of it.
Speaker 5: That was nobody asked anything. I was the chief. It justotes.
Speaker 5: But you know that yourself.
Speaker 8: We all do.
Speaker 5: And anyway, one last thing is a quote from Oscar
Speaker 5: Wilde and it's experience is the hardest kind of teacher.
Speaker 5: It gives you the test first and the lesson afterward. Okay,
Speaker 5: now that he wrote that in the eighteen hundreds, and
Speaker 5: my sister told me that one, but I had to
Speaker 5: write it down.
Speaker 7: That was that was some quote.
Speaker 5: But anyway, I think that's all I have to say.
Speaker 7: Wow, that could be up there, Kobe, that's in the
Speaker 7: top five.
Speaker 6: I think that last quote, what was it? Could you
Speaker 6: say that last quote again?
Speaker 5: They see it's a It's a good one, isn't it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it.
Speaker 5: Experience is the hardest kind of teacher. It gives you
Speaker 5: the test first and lessons and and the lesson afterward.
Speaker 5: So you get the job first and then.
Speaker 7: You have to learn from it after. That's great.
Speaker 6: Exactly, that's great.
Speaker 5: I guess just like the Fight Department, there's so many
Speaker 5: superior guys. It's I was trying to mention names because
Speaker 5: they make such an impression on you and like all
Speaker 5: you have to do is listen and then there they are.
Speaker 6: You know it's now did you make up the whole
Speaker 6: thing with the family?
Speaker 8: Was that?
Speaker 6: Did you make that up?
Speaker 8: That one?
Speaker 5: I made up myself? Yeah, that was great too. Oh God,
Speaker 5: I'll send it to one of you. And the thing too. Also,
Speaker 5: no matter no matter where you work, whether it's in
Speaker 5: Brownsville or one hundred and three truck from first second,
Speaker 5: second section, everything was in the long run, mutual respect.
Speaker 5: It works.
Speaker 7: That's all.
Speaker 5: It just works. That's that's who we are. And also,
Speaker 5: uh get guys in the company, they get sick and
Speaker 5: tired of going out on gas leaks and water leaks
Speaker 5: and stuff like that. And I'd say, because you know
Speaker 5: they'd be grumping about it. I said, you know, every
Speaker 5: time they go out, you're really helping somebody, and they're
Speaker 5: calling us because they know we're going to come to
Speaker 5: help them. And so no matter what you want to
Speaker 5: say about it, we are the only help they get,
Speaker 5: and we get it every time, and we give it
Speaker 5: to anybody, okay who they are. We never ask yeah, nope, nope,
Speaker 5: and uh last I'll let it go My last thing
Speaker 5: is my new nickname now is I should have said
Speaker 5: this years ago. My nickname is lucky Jack. They were
Speaker 5: Lucky Jack, Lucky Jack, and there.
Speaker 7: I am, and you got and you got twenty five
Speaker 7: more years to go chief at.
Speaker 8: Least at least.
Speaker 5: I always like the backstep. That was a good one. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and they're carrying on and stuff like that. But the
Speaker 5: carrying on everybody everybody's yeah, everybody's inside now with the
Speaker 5: air conditioning or the heat, right, imagine those old days.
Speaker 5: I get those big responses and queens.
Speaker 7: They go for miles and miles on the backstep.
Speaker 5: I can't imagine backstep. And I always got to kick
Speaker 5: out of the ladder companies, particularly with the windchild wiper
Speaker 5: on the inside any outside because there.
Speaker 7: Was no cover. So where did you stop smoking?
Speaker 5: Oh? I stopped smoking when I was a captain of
Speaker 5: thirty truck. I got hypnotized and Jimmy Harrison and the
Speaker 5: engine I went for hypnotism down by two truck and
Speaker 5: the gal who gave it it was a group of
Speaker 5: us and she said, if you smoke again, you're really
Speaker 5: going to be in strong And for some reason I
Speaker 5: gave mine up. Jimmy didn't. He smoked again, but then
Speaker 5: he went back a year later and gave up after that. Yeah,
Speaker 5: your son's on the job too.
Speaker 7: Yeah, what the smoke lucky strikes? While were you smoking?
Speaker 8: Camel?
Speaker 5: I smoked the Alpine mentalated when my brother and I
Speaker 5: were kids. We had to go on the bus and
Speaker 5: it was a block away from the house, and we
Speaker 5: get down there and we pick up all the butts
Speaker 5: because the people dropped them. Some of them were big,
Speaker 5: you know, when they got on the bus. And we
Speaker 5: buy the papers and we roll our own cigarettes.
Speaker 6: Oh the memories as a kid, cheap out.
Speaker 7: Sign the paper for eighty nine. Hell yeah, I'll sign
Speaker 7: the contract.
Speaker 5: I'm happy I gave it up, for sure. But I
Speaker 5: have to say it was a good social thing too.
Speaker 5: I did enjoy smoking, for sure. Thank goodness.
Speaker 8: We gave it up, don't Yeah, you just have to
Speaker 8: do you get an oral fixation. It's okay. Oh.
Speaker 6: My my stepdad spoke five packs a day. He would
Speaker 6: just light one of them. All he had to do
Speaker 6: is like one in the morning. That was it. For
Speaker 6: the rest of the day, that he would go from
Speaker 6: one to the other.
Speaker 5: I never heard I never heard that many in my life.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and then he one day he just threw him
Speaker 6: out the window of his car and he never smoked again,
Speaker 6: really quit for thirty years. Yeah, he died when he
Speaker 6: was ninety ninety one, ninety two.
Speaker 5: Oh, I'm glad I gave it up. So are you
Speaker 5: gonna guarantee I'm gonna.
Speaker 6: Get to be ninety two, You're gonna get to be
Speaker 6: one hundred. We're gonna have you a hundredth anniversary. We're
Speaker 6: gonna have it on this show. Yeah, one hundredth birthday.
Speaker 8: Oh, he's gonna make the boat trip now by then
Speaker 8: he'll forget.
Speaker 7: Oh, yeah, he has to. He has to forget something
Speaker 7: for God's sake. This guy he hasn't know.
Speaker 6: There was one guy he couldn't he could remember, and
Speaker 6: then he remembered like three sentences later. So I'm gonna
Speaker 6: give him a one hundred.
Speaker 5: That the best thing for all of us was again
Speaker 5: I said it before that lucky Saturday when we took
Speaker 5: the entrance steps. Wow, how lucky who he became?
Speaker 7: What a great what a great life? Huh?
Speaker 5: I would easily say most of my friends are firemen,
Speaker 5: for sure. I go to lunches, I go to breakfasts
Speaker 5: and meetings and it keeps me going, for sure keeps me.
Speaker 6: Now you get to come on our annual boat ride.
Speaker 6: We have all past guests come on a boat ride
Speaker 6: in August.
Speaker 5: I didn't know you had that.
Speaker 8: We have.
Speaker 6: We have a friend who owns the John J. Harvey,
Speaker 6: and we go around in second week of August, all
Speaker 6: the year's past guests. We take a cruise around the
Speaker 6: Statue of Liberty, drink our faces off, and you know,
Speaker 6: eat some good food.
Speaker 5: You're right, I did know about the Harvey.
Speaker 7: Yes, very true.
Speaker 6: Well, now you'll be on that boat cruise this year
Speaker 6: in August, so I'll.
Speaker 7: Pick you up.
Speaker 5: I hope they don't have a gold room, because when
Speaker 5: I was appropriate, I spent a week in Marine seven.
Speaker 5: Shine in the brass in there, shining brass here, buddy,
Speaker 5: Okay there, you're right that I forgot.
Speaker 6: Go home and get your fucking shine box.
Speaker 7: I hope.
Speaker 8: Put the little patch, get the little patch from behind
Speaker 8: the gear. Yeah, it's not that bad.
Speaker 6: Great show, great career, Chief, great insight, great memory, fantastic career.
Speaker 6: I really appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 8: Chief.
Speaker 7: You really did have a wonderful life.
Speaker 5: Chief and two guys, Bill Haney and ron Cappell tought
Speaker 5: for me, wanted me to come on here a long time.
Speaker 5: You guys that I can't go on. I be too
Speaker 5: embarrassed and stuff like that. All of a sudden, here
Speaker 5: I'm telling them I'm gonna go. And Bill made the
Speaker 5: phone call.
Speaker 6: So well, now you got to get another guy. We
Speaker 6: need another guy from your area. You go to these breakfasts,
Speaker 6: get us some more guests.
Speaker 7: Going, I'm going to the breakfast.
Speaker 6: You're going.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, we'll look for you there and and see, yes.
Speaker 6: Take phone numbers. Roough, get the phone numbers.
Speaker 7: I'll get them.
Speaker 6: Then we got to get a contract. Get the contract.
Speaker 5: That Bill said he'll make sure we text him to
Speaker 5: you for sure.
Speaker 13: All right, right right, Wilson, maybe Bill, what about Phil?
Speaker 13: Bill's coming on, Bill's coming on? Okay, all right, you
Speaker 13: got any shoutouts? Roof, I'm done?
Speaker 7: Oh actually, hold on one second, I had. I did
Speaker 7: have a shout out for.
Speaker 9: Okay, yes, hold on, hold stay stay uh stay right there, Chief,
Speaker 9: don't go away.
Speaker 5: I give I'll give you a while. You gay guys
Speaker 5: gave me a retivation. When I come on, I come
Speaker 5: out of it. We had a second alarm on sixty
Speaker 5: seventh Street, and it's over. And I come out of
Speaker 5: the building and I get a standing ovation and my
Speaker 5: driver's there, and I said, George, what the hell is
Speaker 5: going on here? He said, Chief, you come out of
Speaker 5: the building. We can all go home now. Thanks.
Speaker 9: Good thing you reminded me. Coop so Philly Peter Ruley
Speaker 9: a guy we worked with. He was at Squad two seventy.
Speaker 9: Uh he said, Louis, my Volley department is doing a
Speaker 9: fundraiser on October nineteenth. It's a firefighter captain from South Camden,
Speaker 9: North Carolina, who was in a uh call, was sustained
Speaker 9: when he was struck by a ball during a fire
Speaker 9: department softball game.
Speaker 7: Could you imagine? No, he's his dad is an ex
Speaker 7: chief here in Massapequa.
Speaker 9: He was his uncle is in latter one forty two
Speaker 9: who passed away from nine eleven cans.
Speaker 7: I was wondering if you can mention it on the show. Uh,
Speaker 7: so I guess, uh nineteen.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I'm gonna get the information on that and uh
Speaker 9: we'll put it in and maybe I'll post it up.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we'll post it up on the fence. All right, excellent,
Speaker 7: all right, gee, thank you very much. It was it
Speaker 7: was an honor.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you for that, and thanks for putting up
Speaker 5: with the stories.
Speaker 8: Putting up love the stories because they love them. I
Speaker 8: love it.
Speaker 7: Eat them up my face, hurt my face.
Speaker 8: A little bit of wisdom is the best way to
Speaker 8: the best way to learn from an old fireman is
Speaker 8: to work with an old fireman.
Speaker 5: I'm going to give you one one more last story.
Speaker 5: I just go ahead, my guys, totally. Early, if I
Speaker 5: saw a fire coming out the windows, I'd give a
Speaker 5: second right away. And if it was out, nobody mind coming,
Speaker 5: and I would look around, and if I saw companies
Speaker 5: there with Proby helmets on them, I get the lieutenant.
Speaker 5: I said, do you want to stay you guys, Let
Speaker 5: you guys go in and do the overhaul and then
Speaker 5: washing down and stuff. And every lieutenant took me up
Speaker 5: on it. And in the meantime I could let the
Speaker 5: regular guys go.
Speaker 7: Home too, So yeah, right, yeah, perfect.
Speaker 5: It was a perfect thing for the Proby's. It's just
Speaker 5: like get a chance.
Speaker 7: That's perfect. That's why they loved the chief. That's why
Speaker 7: they loved you.
Speaker 6: There you go, Thank you, you got the Chief Hoff,
Speaker 6: Imber Chief Hoff. He was the chief of Chicago Fire Department.
Speaker 7: I was watching.
Speaker 6: He said, great, great show. Tell Louke appreciate these show.
Speaker 5: So yes, I'm sure they do for sure.
Speaker 6: Yes, Well right, guys, well we have Monday or Thursday.
Speaker 8: Thursday, Thursday's leave chief.
Speaker 6: Oh oh, that's this book right here. It is thirty
Speaker 6: fires you must know. So we're gonna bring a couple
Speaker 6: of guys out on at a time to tell these stories.
Speaker 6: Thirty fires you must know.
Speaker 4: Thursday.
Speaker 6: All right, God's good luck down there, stay dry.
Speaker 5: Yeah, for sure, Florida, we're good now, man, we're good now.
Speaker 5: Part of it wasn't too bad. Yeah, people down.
Speaker 8: There, Yeah they had the This was the worst tornado
Speaker 8: breakout for us ever, I think in history.
Speaker 5: Couldn't believe the number of tornadoes.
Speaker 9: Yeah, this was one of the Uh, this was definitely
Speaker 9: the worst list that usually it doesn't happen like that.
Speaker 6: You know, it was usually happened too. But my wife
Speaker 6: says to you know, there could be tornadoes in a hurricane.
Speaker 6: I'm like, what are you talking about? This tornadoes and
Speaker 6: a hurricane. This tornados over the placebody. I feel like
Speaker 6: an asshole. Now I gotta go apologize for my wife.
Speaker 8: What am I an asshole? One of my.
Speaker 6: All right, alright, guys, thanks for the assistance over the bill, rather.
Speaker 5: Bill, Thanks guys.
Speaker 7: Don't don't hang up.
Speaker 6: Don't hang up. All right, ladies and gentlemen, you know
Speaker 6: what I said. Stay load and go.
Speaker 7: All right, everybody will see it the big one. Thank
Speaker 7: you again, cheap.
Speaker 8: Sorry, a good night all of our brothers out there
Speaker 8: operating and sisters too. Sorry, be safe out there. Good
Speaker 8: night of one.
Speaker 2: Disclaimer