Charles "Chickie" Carroll was on the Pawtucket Fire Department for 36 years. Before that, he was a mechanic that loved wrenching on cars. Then he followed his father into the fire service. He spent the majority of his career downtown on Engine 2 and became a revered figure both on the job and in the community. Everyone knew him, and if you were lucky enough to ride around with him on Engine 2, you could hear people calling out, "Hey, Chickie!" as he waved and drove by. His enthusiasm for the job never faded, so he became a mentor and a teacher for all the new guys. One of the last old-schoolers who actually breathed through wet sponges instead of airpacks, all the fire over all the years finally cooked his lungs, so he retired with respiratory issues in 2011. This interview was conducted at Station 4 six years later. It lasted three hours and this is barely half of it. This is what he said ...
CC- This picture right here, John Seback's garage caught on fire. TT- No shit. CC- Um, on Meadow Street. TT- There's been so many fires on Meadow Street you can't keep track of them all. CC- Yeah, yeah. This picture, this was on Utton Avenue. It was Christmas Eve. I looked for a kid, I went back into that room, the house was fully involved and I looked for a Russian kid and I couldn't find him. He was in the closet under a pile of clothes and it killed me that I couldn't find him. Finally Peter O'Neill and I ran back in there and I actually took off my mask and kept looking. They said he was in there and I couldn't find him until finally Pete O'Neill found him. TT- Wow. Is this a picture of the General? (Dave Langevin.) CC- Yeah, that's the General. You should talk to the General. Me and him together, he was on Ladder 1 and I was on Engine 2 and together that's me and him on the roof. The wires let go and we almost got zapped right off the roof. TT- (laughs) CC- Yup. Here's another picture of it. We were pretty close. TT- Jesus. CC- This is the Leroy Theater. (The Leroy was opened in 1923. Because of its lavish interior and multi-purpose stage, the Leroy was one of the premiere theaters in New England. Its silent movies, vaudeville acts, theatrical and musical performances were among the best in the nation. Built at the height of Pawtucket's prosperity, the Leroy stayed open until the 1960s, when the city's economy began to freefall. It was destroyed in 1997.) TT- Oh yeah. What year was that? CC- Oh God. Uh, I can't really remember. Here's me and Willy. TT- Will Maher. CC- Oh yeah, and this is me and Ronnie Doire. TT- Wow, that's from the ... what year did you get on? CC- 1981, August 1981. TT- Two years after Lemay? CC- Uh, yeah, yes. In fact, I took Lemay's spot when he went over to the rescue because we only had one rescue back then. That was downtown. TT- Right on. CC- So my first fire and death was five days after I got sworn in. Back then, when you got sworn in you didn't have a party, they gave you gloves, a helmet, coat and you got on the truck, you know, so ... TT- No fire academy, you just got right on. CC- Just went right on. So you learned from the old guys. I learned from Ray Gilbert and the guys like him. Back then, Ray Gilbert gave me a piece of sponge and he said, "You wet this and keep it in your mouth, kid. Keep it in your coat," he said. "That's how you breathe." So I said, "Ok." That's how I learned how not to eat smoke. So my first fire was a fatal on West Avenue. I was on the job about five days and the house was fully involved and we got into the first floor. I was with Tommy Heaney, and we got in the first floor and found a body on the floor, melted into the floor. And his bones, you could see his intestines and everything. A bottle of Jack Daniels was next to him. So we had to cut the rug and put him into a body bag, and break his arms so we could get him through the door to the kitchen and get him out. TT- Jesus. CC- That fire, we were there all day, that was my first fatal fire and I was on the job a whole five days. TT- What truck were you on? CC- Engine 2. I was in training. Back then they would put you on Engine 2 for two weeks and then you would go to the ladder. I went to Lt. Ryan on Ladder 1. Back then it was a tiller truck. You had to learn how to drive the tiller truck. I was fortunate enough to learn from him and was able to drive it pretty well. It was hard at first because everything's opposing. TT- Now that you mention Gilbert, this was a crew, like they were at the end of their careers and you were just getting on. CC- Yeah, pretty much, yeah, yeah. TT- '81. So you got on, you're on Engine 2, Ladder 1, and you stayed downtown the whole time other than the rescue. CC- Yeah. I used to--what happened was that I ended up getting my EMT. I was one of the first ones, and everybody had to have their EMT to get on the rescue, you know, to run the rescue. And Dick Lemay, we both had our EMTs and we were downtown. I would get transferred for three cycles to the Rescue, so I was with Dick quite a bit. I would go three cycles to the rescue and then come back, one cycle on Engine 2, and then go back to the rescue for three. I was with all them old schoolers--Ray Mathews, Timmy Williams, Meerbott, so that was my first fatal fire. TT- So you were a four man company back then? CC- Back then, yeah. TT- Wow. Alright, so you were with Lemay, Lemay in the early 80's, was it like the same Lemay that he was in 2010? CC- Yeah, pretty much. They started the cardiac program and Dick was into it. Dick was right into it and I wanted to do my three years with my EMT and get off the rescue, because they couldn't get rescue privates at night. So I would work sometimes my cycle plus a cycle. You know what I mean? If you couldn't get someone to go on rescue--you needed two EMTs. I got stuck there for a little while. I was on the rescue quite a bit. TT- What do you remember about your early rescue days? This is the early 80's, so this is the time of the cocaine cowboys ... CC- Yeah, we had cocaine, heroin, um, one year I remember, the first time I saw it (an OD), it was at 21 Dexter Court. The guy looked like he had pissed himself. TT- What? CC- Back then, they stuffed ice in your crotch if you OD'd. They took a bag of ice and stuffed it in his crotch and that's how we knew it was heroin. Back then, the heroin was 99% pure, so they called it "China White." And me and Dick, you know, you would know automatically when you got there and looked at the guy and know it was a heroin overdose. Narcan was very scarce back then. TT- Did you guys carry it? CC- You know, I think the hospital carried it. We didn't push drugs back then. As the Cardiacs became more seasoned, they started putting drugs on the trucks. TT- Okay. CC- But one night me and Dick, we, uh, he probably told you this, but we had a stabbing on Mineral Spring Avenue and the girl, the knife was right in her heart. We taped it up, got her into the truck, got her vitals and got her over to Memorial. Once we got her there the doctors came in and split her chest open and massaged her heart. But the knife had gone right into her heart. She was dead, but we tried, the doctors tried, but I never seen nothing like that, and you know, that was the coolest thing I'd ever seen, you know? TT- Now, before you got to the Fire Department, what were you doing? CC- Doing cars. TT- So you were fixing cars. CC- I worked for my family in the gas station. TT- Right on. How old were you when you got on? CC- Twenty-three years old. TT- Did you come on with a group? CC- There was four guys. Me, Artie Mintsmenn, Dave Marito, and Felix Ramos. We all came on together. Yeah. We came on the same day. TT- So you're twenty-three, you're on the rescue as a transfer guy, you're on Engine 2. Now other than Lemay, who were some of the other names you worked with on the rescue? CC- Uh, Rocky. Paul Laroque, Rocky. I can tell you a story about him. One day we were sent to Providence for a stabbing at Chad Brown. And we get there and the guy's stabbed in the chest. Now Rocky had diabetes really bad. He always carried a can of soda and candy in his pocket, you know? So I'm in Chad Brown, I'm a kid, I didn't even know where Chad Brown was. TT- That's the housing project, right? CC- Yeah, the housing project and I'm like, you know, okay we're going to Roger Williams (Hospital.) I knew where Roger Williams was, so we take off. He says, "Rescue 1's on the way to Roger Williams with a stabbing victim." All of a sudden the guy that got stabbed yells out, "Hey buddy, you better pull over, man, your man is on the floor." Well, Rocky was having a diabetic seizure. TT- So Rocky's in the back and the guy who got stabbed told you Rocky was seizing? CC- Yup. Told me to pull over. "Your guy is on the floor." TT- (Laughs) CC- So I cracked a can of Coke and tried to give it to him, but he was flapping around pretty good. So I called Fire Alarm and said, "Listen, the guy in charge, Paul Larocque, is having a seizure. Can you let them know that there are now two patients?" (Laughs) TT- Jesus. CC- So I was on the job maybe two, three months, and Rocky was a very high strung guy. So we got to Roger Williams and they took him out, took out the guy that got stabbed, and I didn't know what to do. Like I'm brand new and I don't know what to do here. So I called Chief Lundegren, back then it was Ralph Lundgren, and I says, "Chief, Charlie Carroll." I says, "Rocky's in the hospital having a diabetic seizure what do I do?" He says, "Get back here with the truck and we'll get someone to ride with you." Because I didn't have enough time to be in charge yet. Another time, I was on rescue, one night we get a call, me and Dick Lemay, we get a call for a car accident. A car into a pole on Mineral Spring Avenue. In front of Slater School. Anyway, my friends Roger and Ronnie Alex, they used to run Alex Welding on Pleasant Street. TT- A welding shop? CC- Yeah. And we get there and the car is wrapped around a pole, and Ronnie is up against a fence and he says, "Chickie, Roger is in the car, Roger is in the car." And he was cocked, you know? I go to get Roger and I can't open the door but the windshield is kind of pulled away. I was able to pull the windshield away. Now Roger's a pretty big dude, he was a heavy, big kid. Dick went to Ronnie and I went to Roger. So I climbed in through the windshield and started doing CPR. When Engine 2 got there they were able to get the door open with the Jaws. I kept doing CPR and he was hurting. TT- And this is your buddy. CC- This is my friend, my close friend, and I found out later he survived. Back then, if you were out on the rescue on a Friday night--this was a sailor town. Pawtucket was a sailor town because Quonset Point was still open. So there were bars everywhere and fights everywhere, but I found out later that night that Roger was alive, nice, they saved Roger. TT- That's incredible. CC- They saved him. And you know, his father couldn't believe it. He said, "Chickie, you saved my son, you saved my son." And it was just what I was trained to do. Another time with Gene Casavant, two guys were on one motorcycle flying down Pawtucket Avenue, because they were getting chased by the cops. Well, in the old days, they used to have these "guide wires" on a pole right in front of the Job Lot. They crashed the bike. The guy driving flew through the air and hit the guide wire, cutting off both his legs from the knees down. The guy on the back hit the guard rail and got cut in half and when I got to him, he still had a full face. I will never forget his face. His eyes were wide open like wide open with fear, you know? And his legs were probably, you could see his intestines stretched to his legs which were over by the wall. His torso was on the ground and his head was up and I was like, I opened up his visor, I knew there was no saving him, but to check for a pulse. Nothing. So we-- TT- Jesus. CC- A guy hopped in the rescue. Turns out a Chaplain was driving by. He jumped in and gave the guy last rites. All three guys that showed up on Engine 1 that night--Jack Doyle was one of them--all three retired the next day after this accident. TT- No kidding. CC- I put the guy's two legs into pillow cases, put sterile water on them, and we got him over to Memorial while he's screaming, "My legs! My legs!" TT- That's a crazy story. Now when you were dealing with all of this stuff, 'cause there is a lot of stuff going on, you weren't married yet, right? CC- No, no, drank a lot. TT- Right on. CC- Yeah, I did. I did. On my days off I drank a lot, that's why I have been sober for twenty years. TT- It's a lot to absorb just sweeping up people all day all night. CC- All day and all night. You could do ten runs during the day and never see the station. Or you leave the barn at 5:30 at night and come back at 7:00 the next morning to get relieved. It would be that way, you know. TT- Now, Central Falls is always a key part of the Pawtucket Fire Department. CC- Big time. TT- Because we go on just about everything they have. Battalion Chief McLaughlin used to say they had some of the best firemen in the state. "Providence and Boston have a hundred guys showing up and C.F. has six." Anyway, they're so understaffed, we go on anything big. CC- Yes. TT- What else did you see over there? CC- Central Falls was, back then in the 80's, Central Falls had six guys on a shift. TT- That's absolutely crazy. CC- And they have four-decker houses, and we became very friendly with the guys from Central Falls. I am still friendly with a lot of them, but I can tell you a good story. We went to Summer Street and it was three-decker with a flat roof. Going good. We went up to the third floor and I hear a guy yell to me, "Hey, S and S (the name of Chickie's garage), you got a Harley?" And I said, "Yeah, I do." And he says, "Me too. Jimmy Gallagher here." And I says, "Hey, Jimmy, I'm Chickie Carroll. I heard about you." And he says, "I heard about you, too." You know, like in the middle of a fire we're doing this, right? So Central Falls, we worked very close with Central Falls back then. Very, very close with those guys. TT- Right? CC- 'Cause they didn't have no help, they had no help. TT- Yeah, they're crazy over there. CC- Crazy. Jimmy and Ricky McDermott and them guys they were good, they were damn good firefighters, damn good, damn good. TT- Now when you look back at some of the other CF fires, because Lemay has a stack of freaking newspapers, so as I was going through them back then there was real reporting. So there are names of guys at fires, descriptions of the firemen and what they were doing. It's almost like a diary entry, but yeah, you were mentioned in a lot of Central Falls stories. CC- Yeah, yeah. I fought a lot of fires with them guys. There was one that myself and Tommy Heaney and Chief Couto, who had just made Chief back then, he was chief and his father had been chief of C.F. for years. I was on Engine 2 and they sent us to Central Falls. I don't recall the street, if it was Illinois or which one, I don't remember, but back then Bobby Tanny was a Central Falls firefighter and he was a little crazy from Vietnam, you know, he was a little, he was nutty. So Chief Couto says, "Would you guys mind going up to the third floor and making sure everybody's out, just check and see what we got?" Back then, we didn't all have radios. Tommy had a radio but we had no Scotts, of course no Scotts, so we go up there with our boots, our three-quarter boots, you know, helmet and gloves and coat only. The second-floor is lit up pretty good, and we got passed the second-floor landing, and we used to call Tommy "Skull" because he was bald, you know what I mean, he was a helluva firefighter. This guy had balls as big as his fucking head, you know, like he was good, and if you learned from him you learned good. So we felt the door and everything and kicked the door and it was fully involved. We didn't have a line with us because there wasn't lines available, but Chief Couto wanted us to make sure that everyone was out and to see what we had, so we could report back to him, and the next thing you know the ceiling comes right down with the bricks, it comes right down. Bobby Tanny, not knowing that we were in the building, hit the chimney with a 2 1/2 inch line and he parlayed the chimney. It fell through the ceiling and it was falling onto us, so I just grabbed Skull by the coat and threw him down the stairs, I threw him down the stairs, and I said, "Skull, we gotta get the fuck out of here," you know? (laughter). So I threw him down the stairs and when we got outside he was so mad, the man was so mad he says to Randy Couto, "Chief, no disrespect, but who the fuck hit us with a 2 1/2?" He says, "We were on the third-floor and someone put the bricks right through the fucking ceiling. I'm gonna kill him. I'm gonna kill this guy. Who the hell did it?" Turned out it was Bobby Tanny, his buddy. (Laughs) So we had to hold Tommy back for a while to keep him away from Bobby Tanny, you know? But that was a real good fire. That thing was roaring. TT- Right? CC- How we didn't die a few times over ... TT- What was the closest you came to like really, like you've described two fires so far where the fire is coming down on your head with the ceiling but-- CC- You know, I've never ever thought of it, I never thought of it never. My mentality, you know because you've worked with me, was grab the line and go in and do what you gotta do. I was the first one in the door, not to blow my own horn, but I was, I know I was. I got to work with my father, I got to work a couple of cycles with my father before he retired and we had a fire. He was worried about me and I was worried about him, you know, and I said, "Dad, dad, I got it. I got it. I'm ok." And once he knew that I was all set, he left in '82 and he retired. TT- Now the highway too, right? On Engine 2 for thirty years there had to be a lot of chaos. CC- Yes. A lot of chaos. I'll start off with a funny story. This is a classic. Back when Chief Meerbott was first made (He went from lieutenant of Engine 2 to Battalion Chief of C-Group), I was in charge of Engine 2. I had RJ Massee and I can't think of the third guy who was with us. But anyway, we get a call for a car on its roof and its up in the grass just before the Smithfield Avenue exit. The back window is blown out, so when we get there I tell RJ and whoever the third guy was, "Grab a line, just grab a line in case it catches fire. I'm gonna check inside the car." So I climbed in the car and there's this woman, you know a nice looking black woman well dressed and put together. She says to me, "Honey, I don't know what happened, but a car--now I'm on my roof!" She was hanging upside down. She had her seatbelt on but the seatbelt was crushing her boobs, like crushing her boobs, you know, so she says, "Can you cut me out of this seatbelt?" I said, "I can't, ma'am, we're trying to get some pillows and stuff to hold you up so that you won't fall hard, you know." So she says, "Please, please push on my boobs, please, please, please." TT- (laughs) CC- Now I'm laying on my back, my hands on this woman's tits holding her upright. All of a sudden, Meerbott sticks his head in the back window and says (in Meerboot's classic southern drawl), "Chickie, what're you doing?" TT- (Laughs) CC- And I says, "Chief, I'm waiting for pillows so we can cut the belt and let her down." And she says, "It's alright, Chief, he's doing a damn good job." (Both laughing) CC- That was one of the best--she wasn't hurt, she was okay, her car was wrecked but she was okay. And when she got out, we got her out, she thanked me. I said, "Ma'am, I'm terribly sorry." And she says, "No, don't you be sorry, you really took the pain away." TT- the funny stories are funny, but the bad ones never leave, right? CC- Well, I'm sure Bobby might have told you about this one, but this was a hard one. (pauses) We had a kid on Coleman Street, a baby like a year old. Old enough to crawl out of his crib. Well, the baby stood up and fell out of his crib, and he landed on the radiator. The mother and father were in the kitchen all doped up. I'll never forget his face. I grabbed the kid and I'm saying to myself, "He's warm, he's warm." You could see blue around his lips but I'm saying, "He's warm." So I started CPR on him and we got the kid into the rescue and I wouldn't let the kid go, I kept doing CPR, and I put a mask on him and kept working him and when we got to the hospital the doc says to me, "Give me the child. Chickie, give me the child." I said, "Doc, he was warm when I got to him, I was doing CPR all the way here, you know, maybe there's--" He says, "No, just look at him. Rigor mortis has already started to set in." His mother never checked him, never checked him. That was one of my worst for a child, you know? TT- Now let's backtrack a little bit, because the fourth of July stuff--people who don't live here don't know the history of July 4th, and it went on for seventy years. CC- Yup. TT- Just absolute mayhem. BC Kraweic was telling stories of guys getting the old wallpaper rolls, cutting them up, soaking them in kerosene, tossing them over power lines, and lighting them up. CC- Yup. I can tell you an even better one. The Alex's, my buddy that I pulled out of the car and saved his life, his father, the one who kept thanking me for saving his son's life, he was a little crazy. He used to cut up sticks of dynamite. TT- Oh God. CC- He would cut them up, and they would get an old car and push it down the street and light it up. TT- (Laughing) CC - And M-80s. The whole bit. People would pour gasoline on telephone poles and light them up. TT- (laughing) CC- So the power would go out, you know, and they (the Alexes) had the big yellow house right on the corner, they had a swimming pool and everything. Pleasant Street was crazy. Pleasant Street, Magill Street, Essex Street, Slater Street, all around there. That's where the bonfires were back when I was a kid. The neighborhood would come down to the West Avenue Fire Station (Station 1), the neighborhood would come and bring chowder and clam cakes and food, you know, and one year they had a band-- TT- What? (laughing) CC- God's honest truth, for the guys, you know for the guys. The neighborhood did that for the firemen, you know? It was pretty cool. We would go to a bonfire at like say, two or three in the morning, and I remember I was with John McConaghy and Dave Reed one night and I don't know, we went to the same bonfire probably four or five times. It was like beer time, you know what I mean? And John says to the kids, to all of the people that were out front watching it and shit and he says, "Hey, we're kind of beat up, do you think you could call it a night?" And the people, well, we never went back, we never went back. You know, like they said, "Thanks, guys, we had a great time, can we offer you something to eat? Take some of this back to the station." They wanted to give us food and shit, you know, everything. TT- They also put extra guys on the trucks, right? And extra trucks? CC- Yes, extra trucks and five guys on a truck. Plus during the day they would have an extra guy on every truck. So it worked out that the guys that worked the night before (July 3) would get a little bit of down time, you know? With that extra guy they might say, "Hey, go get a couple hours sleep, take a shower, we'll run without you, we've got enough guys, you know?" Nothing would happen during the day anyway, it wasn't bad, but I can remember doing a good 200 runs on a fourth of July--third and fourth of July, both nights, hundreds of runs. TT- Jesus Christ CC- Yeah, yeah. TT- That's a l-o-n-g night. CC- Yup, yup. TT- What about the big fires? Like when you came on, Star Gas was probably a year after you got on? CC- I was on the job and we were all at the Country Club playing golf, having a golf tournament for the firefighters and everybody was hammered. Everybody. TT- (laughing) CC- So a call came over the loudspeaker for all off-duty firemen to respond. And some of the guys started to show up on-scene and Chief Doire just said, "Go back to where you were." (Both share long laughter). You know, like, I never even got off the golf course, you know what I mean? I knew I wasn't going to work. Even worse, it was a General Alarm fire. Al Scanlon was the one--there's a picture of him somewhere making sure the gas tanks were shut off. That's when Engine 4 burned, Star Gas. The America LaFrance burned up. Yeah, That was a good one. TT- Were you on the job when Rabbit got burned in that flashover? CC- No, I came on right after that. TT- Okay, so that was like '79 or '80? CC- Yeah. That part, what happened was he was going up the back stairs trying to get to a guy trapped. Our guys were in the front with a ladder, a ground ladder, and they smashed the windows just as Kevin opened the door and it backdrafted and just melted him. TT- Unbelievable. CC- Melted him. Completely melted him. TT- I saw his gear. They showed it to us in our fire academy. It's incredible he lived. Now when you look back at your career, I mean the suicides are always tough. But the ones that stick out to me are the hangings, just because the people are intact, it's not like a gunshot, right? CC- I got a good one for you. Again, I was on overtime on Engine 3 and I was with Lieutenant Lourenco. It was shift change, so there were only two of us. Engine 3 used to go to the Heights (housing project) for dumpster fires and lockouts and whatnot. So we got a call for a hanging. Me and Al pull up and Al gives me the keys and he says, "Kid, I'm not going in there. You go in there." So Dave Overt, he was a cop and a good friend of mine, we used to ride dirt bikes together. He says, "You coming in with me, Chick?" And I said, "Yeah, I'll go up with you." I unlock the door and we walk into the guy's apartment and he's got a note. He didn't have much, but the apartment was clean and he left his license, a suicide note, what money he had, his jewelry, he didn't have a lot but he had good clothes on. So I said, "Where the hell is he? Let's go upstairs." When we go upstairs there he is hanging by the pipe over the bathtub in the ceiling and his eyes were popped out and he had broke his neck. So Dave Overt has his license in his hands, the guy's license, and he spins the guy around and says, "Hey, Chick, you think that looks like him?" I was still kind of brand new. He holds the license up next to this poor bastard with the bulging eyes and broken neck and who could tell? After I realized he was kidding, I said, "You're a sick bastard, you know?" TT- (Laughing) CC- And I knew what I was in for after that. TT- But that was part of the humor. CC- It was part of it, yeah, it made it easier. TT- Now talk about some of the giant mill fires. Greenhalgh Mill comes to mind. CC- I was actually packing up to go to New Hampshire when that fire came in. TT- And you were also, for people who don't know, you also rode motorcycles a lot, you were a biker. CC- I was a biker, yeah. I rode with the Hell's Angels sometimes. TT- So you were hanging with the Angels and some other groups but you weren't ever really affiliated. CC- Because I was a firefighter it wasn't, not that I couldn't have joined, but it wasn't proper, it wasn't proper, but I could ride with them guys any time I wanted, you know, if they were going on a trip or a run I would go for a run with them, you know? And that part was cool. But I never really wanted to be wearing a patch, you know what I mean, it wasn't my thing, that wasn't my thing. I was a firefighter and my buddy--he got out of the Angels because he got Parkinson's Disease--he said, "Chickie, these are your colors right here."And that's, you know, our firefighters, our blue shirts, those are our colors, you know? TT- That's your patch. CC- Yup, yup. TT- So get back to Greenhalgh Mills CC- So, It's a General Alarm. It's all over the TV. "All firefighters are to report downtown to Roosevelt Avenue" (Station 2.) The fire was at three o'clock. I got here at four. I laid on a two-and-a-half inch line on Mendon, right over here, for probably four hours. Just laid on it. TT- Jesus. CC- And the heat was coming up through the bricks, so it was keeping me warm, but it wasn't doing anything. The water was blowing in the wind. But they said, "Keep pouring it on, you're getting the houses, maybe we can save the houses." Well, the houses started to go. And they wouldn't let us go into the houses to put them out. My wife's cousin lost her house. There were four houses over here that burnt. I can remember, this was also the night Lieutenant Joe Bierly had his heart attack. He told me he wasn't feeling good. I was going to grab some equipment and more line. So I says to him, "Go sit in Engine 6. The heat's on. Warm up. Dry up and I'll come get you." They had this whole station (Station 4) full of food, cots, everything we needed. So they would send us to the 4's every couple of hours to get some food and water. This room was completely full of guys. The chairs, everything was a mess, soot filled. Well, I forgot about Dave Bierly. He had a heart attack that night. I mean I had all these houses burning and I forgot about him but he did have a heart attack that night. I can remember at like four o'clock in the morning, me, Steve Small, Dave Reed, Bobby Thurber--Meerbott finally let us go into the last house that was burning. And it had already burned through the roof. So we went in and hit the hotspots. Me and Smally went up this little little stairway. It was like this big (2 feet wide.) We had a line with us. I can remember to this day, the toilet was in the corner of the room. And the pipes had popped and the water's coming out of the pipes-- TT- Like a fountain. CC- Yeah. So I'm looking around. The roof was gone and it was a bright, clear night, clear as hell, and the smoke's everywhere. I'm saying, "Wow." Helicopters were here from the ATF, news channels from Boston, Providence. We're looking around and I take a seat on the fucking toilet, light up a cigarette, and I'm just sitting there. I'm beat up. We were tired, man. So I'm having a cigarette, looking around going, wow. Bobby Howe (EMA director and former firefighter) got 90 trucks here that day. There was 90 crews willing to help us, you know? When it started, I got here, I drove my truck downtown, I had my trailer on the back with my bike, because we were supposed to go to New Hampshire that day. I said to my wife, "I gotta go." She said, "Be careful. Call me when you can." That's how it went. She was good. Laurie was very ... TT- She understood. CC- She knew, yeah, she knew. TT- Now talk about, as far as the fire tips, the tips that got passed on to you, reading the smoke, what this color means, it's kind of scientific, right? CC- Well, the first thing was when they came out with the hoods. The old guys wouldn't wear them. And I was one of them. I didn't like it either because I was always taught that if your earlobes felt hot, get out. Cause it's hot. TT- And through the hood you couldn't feel that. CC- No. The Nomex Hoods make you feel over confident. If you felt your earlobes were melting, you knew you were in a hot situation. It was time to go. It was time to go. And smoke, the gray smoke, if you looked in a window and saw it, that was a potential for a backdraft. You could tell. Yellow smoke was a chemical. White smoke was like if you were getting water on it, extinguishing it, it was making steam. You were knocking it down. Like they'd yell up to you, "You're getting it, you're getting it, keep going. The smoke is changing colors." We had Manoline's warehouse and it was an old train depot, where they used to keep all the stuff for the trains. And it was a huge place. Made from big, big timber. It was built to last forever. And I'll tell ya, I've never seen black smoke like that ever. They had tires, they had all kinds of chemicals--anything automotive they had in there. TT- And the hole place is burning. CC- Just roaring. I mean, when we pulled up with Engine 6, the guy had been welding in the back, and he caught the back of the building on fire. Within, and Ronnie Doire will tell ya, within minutes there was flame fucking everywhere. We got in the side door and you couldn't see a foot in front of you. It was just roaring. TT- That is awesome (laughs) CC- It was, we got off on it, you know? I got off on it. Loved it. You really did. At least I did. I loved it. TT- There was no place you'd rather be. CC- Guys used to say to me, "Chickie, with all of your seniority, why are you still on Engine 2?" Because I loved it. I never came down that pole pissed off. I never did. You know? I got on that truck and--especially, I knew Bobby Thurber, and towards the end he wasn't feeling too good because of his feet and all the diabetes, but he had that same damn smile on his face, you know? (laughs). "Let's go, kid!" "Alright, Bob, let's go! Let's go do it." I can remember one night on Dagget Avenue, we were all here (at Station 4) because we had a union meeting that night. And I knew exactly where the street was and I knew the house. It was a friend of mine, Porky Burns' house. We got a call for a Code Red, house fire. So Bobby says, "Chickie, you got that?" I said, "I know exactly where we're going. Exactly. To the T." We get there and it's blowing out the kitchen windows, blowing good. We kick the door. Bobby's almost on top of me, like pushing me in trying to get in himself. The floor, Burns was rebuilding the house, so there was some type of chemicals on the floor. Somehow they had gotten into my nighthitch as we crawled, and my knees got burnt. My kneecaps were burning and Bobby's pushing me in there and he's on top of me trying to take the line and I'm like, "Bob, get off of me!" (laughing) "Bobby!" Dave Farris come walking through the front door--it was a kitchen fire--Dave Farris comes walking through the front door like nothing ever happened, you know, and I'm going, "Bobby! My knees are burning, fer Christ's sakes, get off of me!" (laughing and laughing). I can tell you another one about Central Falls. It was Railroad Street. Cubby was on Ladder 2 in charge. I said, "Cub, can you get me a line?" He said, "Yeah, I'll get you a line don't worry about it." We got the line. Central Falls guys were up there. And me and Willy (Will Maher) are up there. We grab the line and we start hitting the rooms, we're hitting rooms, and he'll probably kill me for telling you this, but he was--they had a set of bunk beds. This room was pretty well involved. We knocked it (the fire) down and the C.F. guys are yelling, "Hey, Pawtucket, you guys okay over there?" "Yeah, we're good. you guys okay?" "Yeah, we're good." That's how we used to do it, yelling back and forth. So Willy got up on the top bunk bed to pull a ceiling down. Next thing I know I hear this huge crash. He went right through the bed-slats and landed on the first bed. And I went, "Hey, what the hell are you doing? Taking a nap?" You know? and he's looking at me. He goes, "I think I'm a little too heavy for the fucking bunk beds." (laughing). And we laughed and laughed, still fighting the fire. Thank God he didn't get hurt. I said, "Will, you alright?" "Yeah, I'm fine," he says, "But Jesus Christ, Chick..." It scared the shit out of him at first because he wasn't expecting it, you know? TT- Talk about the adjustment to retirement CC-It took me three months to get used to being at home with my wife. Swear to God. And Laurie's a sweet heart, you know her. TT- She is. CC- But it took me three months to get acclimated and out of the mold. TT- Lemay said the same thing. He said, "I didn't know how much I needed to retire until I retired." (Laughs) CC- Yeah. Yeah. You start to sleep, eat normal. I still eat kind of fast. I loved this job. My father said to me when I was about seventeen. I mean I was gonna quit school and fix cars. That was my thing. My uncle had a shop. My cousin quit school and he was driving a brand new TR-6, you know? So my old man says, "Nope. You're going on the fire department." And thank God I did because they sold the place and it's not there no more and I had the best thirty years of my life, you know? On this job. On this job. And I loved every minute of it. TT- Right? They had to pry you out of here. CC- When the doctor told me that I had a lung issue, it broke my heart. Broke my heart. Really. TT- You fought it hard though, you kept trying to get back full-duty ... CC- I tried, I tried. But I just couldn't do it no more. Couldn't do it. My body gave up. TT- You took a helluva beating. CC- I took an ass-pasting. Yeah. I did. (laughs) I loved it. Loved it. That picture of me with that black eye, that was after a whole ceiling fell on my head. And I still stayed in there, you know? Meadow Street, the floor on the third-floor melted. It was gone. And I can remember Will coming up the back stairway yelling. The fire was all in the front. Harry Callahan had to go back and get a Scott. RJ was the training officer at the time and he said, "I could see you hitting it through the windows. You were getting it all alone." I was, until Will came up through the back. And then that picture of me sitting on the windowsill, the ladder was opening up the eaves and I was wetting it all down as they did it ... you know, I just...I loved it. I loved it. Every minute of it. I really did. I met you, too. TT- It's true though. If you can't have fun at a fire, you really shouldn't be here. CC- Exactly. You gotta be careful, you gotta use your head, I tried to tell Matty McMahon, I said to Matty, because he used to ride with us when he was a kid, I said, "Matty, you hook up with a good boss, like John Wallace, if you can hook up with a guy like him you'll be good." Forget about Tiverton, you're in Pawtucket now. You do it Pawtucket's way. You know what I mean? Just because you're a firefighter somewhere else for five or six years, you're in the city now. TT- Right? It doesn't mean nothing. CC- No. No. TT- Joe Cordeiro one time told me, he was like, "I don't care if you were a Battalion Chief on the FDNY, if you're gonna come to Pawtucket, you're gonna do it our way." CC- Exactly. I was told that too. My father, the day I got sworn in, my old man said to me, "Keep these open (motions to his eyes), keep these open (motions to his ears), and keep this closed (motions to his mouth). That's exactly what he told me. He said, "You pay attention, you soak up as much as you can." TT- When you knew it was time to go, it seems the guys just walk away. They never come back. It's like they just disappear back into the mist, and those left behind just carry on. CC- It is kind of like that. I haven't been downtown in ...a long time. I didn't know what to do at first. I was like, "Should I go down there and have a coffee with the guys?" But I can remember sitting at the kitchen table and having an old guy come in that you really respected, say Ray Gilbert for instance, he'd come down to see Barbara and poke his head in the kitchen and say, "Hey guys, what's up?" "Hey, Ray, how you doing? You want a coffee or something?" "Naw, I'm gonna go. Thanks. It was good to see you." "Hey, Ray, take care. If you need anything you just give us a holler." And that's the way it was. For me, like I fix a lot of guys cars nowadays, and I'll come to the station to bring the car back, and I'll say, "Hey guys." And off I go. Why it's like that, I don't know. TT- It's weird. It's almost like it just seals over, right? And once you walk out, it's like the nucleus kind of keeps going. I remember Chief Cute, after he retired, he came in for a coffee, and he was like, "I don't even feel like I should be here right now." CC- Yeah. It's like you're bothering the guys. Like if they're cooking or whatever and someone walks in and they have to stop what they're doing and bullshit with you ... You can get a run at any second and be gone for five minutes or half the day. I don't want to interrupt that. I know I'm still part of this job, but in my way. In my head. I'm still part of this job. I'd do anything for anyone of you. I would. But to come and hang and watch a movie or whatever ... naw, that's just not the way it is. TT- It's one of the things that's so surprising but it's true. You're out of the rotation. CC- Exactly. I play golf with Tang (Chief Tanguay) every Monday. I take care of his cars, his father's car, and the guys support me, Tommy, big time. I can't thank the guys enough. And Topper let's me use his shop, and I fix his stuff. But I got a shop. And the guys support me. And I take care of the guys, money wise, because they got families and shit. For me, it keeps me healthy, keeps me busy. Nelson quit, but I called him when he quit and I said, "Nelson, I want to thank you for giving me a life after the fire department." Because he's the one who got me into Topper's garage. He says, "Chickie, you have no idea how much you've helped me." And I said, "Really, Nelson, I mean it." TT- You gotta stay busy, right? CC- I walk my dog every morning, have a coffee, and then I go to the shop. I do two or three cars a day, and if Topper's got something for me to do I fix it, and it works. I can't thank Topper enough. I could tell you about fires all night but I don't want you to have to type all day long. (Laughs). TT- These are the stories people need to hear. CC- Smithfield Avenue, the theater, there are so many. And car accidents and everything. I don't know if Bobby told you this one but it really bothered us for a while. We got a call on Walcott Street. We got a call for car into a pole. There's four victims. So we get there. A Mexican guy in the front seat, two Mexican guys in the backseat, but there was supposed to be a girl too. Well come to find out she got thrown from the car, hit a van in the driveway and died. She was in the driveway. The other three were dead too. The two in the back were just mangled. So, we cut the roof off and me and Bobby climbed into the backseat to check the guys. Now we're sitting there in the backseat. I got this guy's head in my lap. The back of his head was gone. Gone. And Bobby's guy, same thing. His neck was broken. We had to sit there for an hour and a half waiting for the Medical Examiner. We could not move. TT- What? CC- The police froze the scene because of all the deaths. It just so happened that the way they were positioned, we actually had to crawl over the trunk to get into the backseat and check for pulses. Once we got in there, we had to maneuver the mashed bodies to do that, and we became part of the scene. We had them on our laps, we could not move. The M.E. has to come and pronounce them dead, pictures gotta to be taken. So we yelled for someone to get our cigarettes from the truck. So we're smoking cigarettes while we waited. When we got back we took a hose and washed their brains from our night hitches and went to bed. TT- Another day at the office. CC- You know how I met Laurie? TT- No. CC- When the wall collapsed at Stop and Shop, that's how I met Laurie. I dug her boyfriend out of the rubble. Three guys died that day. TT- Lemay told me that story. How awful. CC- It was. One guy was decapitated, the another was cut in half, the third was smushed. TT- Jesus, Chickie, you've had one of the best careers anyone's ever had. CC- I can say yes. I did. I really did. And I loved every second of it. TT- It's been an honor. It really has.
2 Comments
Edna Richmondm
3/14/2018 01:35:22 pm
You should write a book.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorTom Trabulsi was born in the Midwest, attended high school in Rhode Island, and graduated from Boston University with a degree in American History. He was a bike courier in Boston and New York City, worked construction in the mountain west and east coast, and is currently a firefighter in a northeast city. Archives
August 2022
Categories |