BY ALAN BRUNACINI
I am asking for your kind patience while I indulge for a couple of columns in a moment of geriatric reminiscences. I became a firefighter at about this time of the year in 1958, so I am currently going through the nostalgic reflections of a 50-year occupational adventure. I was barely 21 years old, completed all the applications, and somehow survived the initial testing process. I then got to go through the two-week (!) recruit indoctrination. Our “drillmaster” taught us how to operate the basic tools, how to roll hose (over and over), and how to hang on so we didn’t fall off the tailboard. There were a lot of “hows”not many “whys” (in those days, a Booter didn’t ask why).
When our class finished recruit school, I was assigned to Station One, the “big” downtown central fire station. It was a very large reinforced concrete two-story monster built before World War I. The station housed the administrative offices, three fire companies, and a battalion chief. There were 22 to 23 shift personnel assigned to the response units. There were also 10 to 12 senior command officers and staff support folks in the office area. The station served as the nerve center for the department.
I assumed the regular role of the youngest person (in every way) assigned to my shift (B). My zero seniority position required answering the phone faster than anyone else, cleaning anything that needed cleaning, and doing whatever was scheduled to be maintained that day of the week. We did windows on Monday, floors on Tuesdays, walls on Wednesday, and so on, throughout the week. (I never asked why we cleaned clean windows or polished shiny brass.) We washed the tires and mopped the floor under the rigs every time a fire truck moved (a holdover from the horses).
The Station One crew was made up mostly of World War II veterans. They were all men who typically had crew cuts, tattoos, and a pack of cigarettes rolled up in their T-shirt sleeve. They were practical, street smart, and a bit cynical, and they judged with their eyes, not their ears. They were not very sophisticated but were highly refined and very effective at doing their jobs. I learned more from being with them than from any other experience in my lifestuff like “Kid, if you don’t know what you’re talking about, keep your mouth shut” and “Bruno, my boy, when you lose your head, the next thing’s your [butt].”
Our daily activities were regulated by rank, seniority, war stories, routine, and ritual. Everyone had their place at the table, and there was an order in which we spoke. The old guys sat closest to the “campfire” and told the tribal stories; the kids sat in the shadows in the back and pretty much spoke when they were spoken to. The old guys spoke the language of our subculture, using our special words, idioms, and secret inside phrases. I quickly identified that I was in a culture with a level of tradition that exceeded the Catholic Church or the British Navy. Virtually everything we did was in some way connected to how “it” had always been done in the past. Organizational change occurred at a glacial speed, because everything was so closely tied to the past. Leaders were historians, not futurists. The same process also applied to gaining membership. The only way you could really join and become an insider was to take your place at the end of the line and then stay in that same line for your entire career. If you tried to go around or shortcut the line, one of the old soldiers would smack you back in the line pretty quickly (and forcibly); if the group (peer process) ever kicked you out of the line, you became a cultural causality and were out forever. I loved (and still love) every minute of the beautiful, dysfunctional process.
The very best part was when the day-to-day routine was interrupted by a fire call. We were alerted by big brass electromechanical “house gongs.” This atomic bomb sound would instantly jar (and I mean jar) us into Pavlovian attention. Then, the grumpy voice of a dispatcher would come out of the woodwork and announce the address and nature of the alarm. We would run like maniacs, jump on the tailboard, and hang on for dear life (literally). Looking back, our equipment was very primitive. The trucks all had open cabs, huge gas engines, manual transmissions, one-channel radios, 2½-inch hose, and smooth bore nozzles. We wore canvas coats, hip boots, regular work gloves, filter masks, and plastic helmets that made us look like air raid wardens.
As I got to go to fires, I quickly learned that neighboring fire companies were very competitive. This competitiveness created very exciting and rapid rides to fires and a continual race to establish initial attack positions. Going to a fire in this way was perfect for a young hormonally imbalanced young male. I felt I had joined an organization that was a combination of a circus, a demolition company, and a multigenerational fraternity.
Retired Chief ALAN BRUNACINIis a fire service author and speaker. He and his sons own the fire service Web site bshifter.com.
