The call came in on a summer Sunday morning about smoke showing from a warehouse in an industrial area in our fire district. I drove the pumper to the scene, alone, knowing that the other volunteers would be meeting me there with the remaining apparatus. I radioed in, parked, chocked the tires and discovered that the smoke was the result of a discarded cigarette, which had been tossed into the mulch, and was traveling up the side of the building. and as the other fellows arrived behind me, I uncapped a supply and let the water fill my helmet, which I then poured onto the mulch. The fire was quickly extinguished.
Such were the calls handled by the Port Dickinson Fire Department in 1969.
My grandfather was a fire chief and formed the department in 1929, my father was a volunteer firefighter there for 42 years and I served for 10, having first visited the fire station at four years old. Firefighting was an expected rite of passage like going to college or learning to swim. The old timers always asked how old you were and when you were going to join.
Volunteer firefighting was big doings in upstate New York in the 1950's. Port Dickinson had over a 100 members on the roster, including a woman's auxiliary and social members to boot. Chicken barbecues and carnivals were a fundraising staple and were held behind the local school. Training occupied every Saturday morning and Monday evening. Business meetings were often heated and reflected american democracy at its best. Officers were elected, just as they were in local regiments during the Civil War.
Local fire companies had intense rivalries. The Greene, NY, summer fair has incredibly intense hose fights, where departments from across the area would compete against each other by pushing a rubber ball suspended on a wire back and forth by means of straight tipped nozzles along its main street.
But somewhere along the way things began to go down hill. The numbers of volunteers has been in a slow decline, especially in the Northeast for quite some time. Sadly, New York State has been especially hard hit, with reports that its numbers of volunteer firefighters have declined over 30% in the past 15 years alone.
It appears that a number of issues of have served to reduce the number of volunteers available. The increasing numbers of working mothers and fathers, the growing number of hours required for mandated training, local companies who increasingly frown on employees who leave work to respond to fires in their communities, fewer factory jobs with shift workers available to cover day alarms, the increasing attention paid to children. The list of negatives seems to increase in number all the time.
and the fire calls have decreased over time as well. Improved fire codes have resulted in improved construction, while alarms, for the most part, are primarily a response to faulty equipment and to poorly trained workers at a certain site.
But having grown up at fire stations, I've noticed that there is a certain romance attached to them which can't be discounted and must forever be preserved. They provide a home away from home, a refuge and a gathering place.
a fire station offers a place devoid of braggadocio and a place of honor, where the departed and the fallen watch the latest generation across time and space. The forefathers remind them of winters when the engines ran without cabs and windshields, when men of iron entered buildings without air pacs and breathed through their beards, when ice rescues were performed without boats, by crawling on the ice tethered to ropes, just as they recollect pompier ladders, water towers, play pipes and other obsolete equipment.
The local fire house provides in its photographs and its books of meeting notes a treasure trove of local history, stretching, in many cases, for a hundred or more years. They'll speak of changes in the nomenclature from that of Foreman to Captain, and speak of motions quashed and passed and of tempestuous oratory. They'll illustrate great plans and smaller ideas and finally those adapted.
and most importantly, the oral histories about the actions of its bravest citizens are kept in these small brick temples. These unpublished iliads are passed down from father to son, and among fellow firefighters, within these humble walls, where they remain, heard only by their visitors. and all too often they feature those who appear most reticent among us, those who seemingly lack the physical courage associated with the entry into burning tenements or blazing terminals — the grocer, the baker or the gardener — for the volunteer fire departments have no entry qualifications and no need for particular trades. all may apply and all are free to crawl through the smoke and flames. Bravery wears no particular wardrobe.
Whenever I take a vacation I try to visit the local fire station to get a glimpse of the rigs, the turnout gear, to gaze at the photographs and to visit with the firefighters. For by doing so you can learn a great deal about the city or town. and the shine on the paint and the sparkle on the chrome indicate that the citizens are well served and that every dollar spent on the local fire department has been invested well and will be returned to the citizens with interest when it needs to be withdrawn.
Volunteer firefighting, like so much else in life, is one of those things that I guess we have decided to leave to somebody else. and the decreasing numbers show that it will be gone with the wind someday. But before it disappears, please, give it a try. The sense of belonging and the ability to give something back to your community is without parallel.
Let the smoke get in your eyes.
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