Joe Gildea- March 5, 2018
Joe Gildea was putting out fires thirty years before the young guys on our job were even born. Like most of the probies who came on during the 1960's, Gildea was taught by the World War II guys. Attention to detail wasn't a catch phrase, it was a way of life. He, like most of the old school, out of modesty, was reticent to discuss the details. This interview was conducted in the Engine officer's room at Station 4 thirty-one years after he retired. This is part of what he said ... TT- Why don't we start at the beginning as far as what year did you get on? JG- I came on in 1966. On Thanksgiving Day. November. And the chief put me--the chief at that time was Monast--and he said "I'm gonna put you on Ladder 1 because you're the tallest person in your class." We had just gotten a new 100-foot aerial and I was three inches taller than everyone else. TT- Is this the tiller truck? JG- The tiller truck, yeah. And I had been driving trailer-trucks for five or six years, so I was very good at driving. It amazed the acting lieutenant when I went on that I could drive the truck so well. It was a new experience to climb into the tiller and drive that. TT- How old were you when you got on? JG- Twenty-six. TT- What did you do before you got on? JG- I worked for New England Papertube as a tractor-trailer driver. All over the east coast. TT- So you were a driver? JG- Yes. I drove well (laughs). I did it all my life. TT- Were you ever in the military? JG- No. I couldn't get in because it was between--Korea had just ended, Vietnam hadn't started, so they were getting rid of people. I was six-foot three-inches, one hundred and thirty pounds, so they said, "You're well under weight. We're not accepting people now, we're trying to get rid of people." I didn't get the chance. I wanted to. I signed up for the Army but they weren't taking people. It was ironic that a month later I got a letter from Uncle Sam saying, "We Want You." so I got on a bus down at the post office on Broad Street, and everybody was in there with bandages on their knees and everything else, and I'm sitting there reading the newspaper and they're saying, "How can you be so calm?" I said, "I just went through this a month ago. It's old hat. They don't want me." They said, "No way. I got this bandage for this, and this is wrong with me ..." So I got in there, and the doctor that was giving the physical down at Field's Point, down on Allens Avenue? He looked at me and says, "Geez, didn't I see you not too long ago?" I go, "Yeah." He says, "Well what the hell are you doing back here? We refused you.” And I said, "Uncle Sam said he wanted to see me." So they said, "Here's a ticket. Get back on the bus and go home." (Laughs.) So that was my experience with the military. I wanted to go in the worst way after high school but it just didn't work out. TT- Right on. JG- Then I had to go to work. I went to work. TT- So by now you're twenty-six, driving trucks, got on the job and did they have academies back then or did they just throw you in. JG- There was exactly eleven of us in the academy. The training officer trained us for ten weeks. You had to go through eighty hours (Up until 2017, for 142 years, Pawtucket's Fire Academy was unpaid, held at night twice a week after work, and on Saturday. Regrettably, probies are now put through a state academy instead.) We went through it. Joe Clifford was the Training Officer and he gave the class and everything else. This, once again politics entered into it, everybody in the class got on eventually, so it took about six months before we all got on. And they started another class right after us. TT- Now in those days, when you got on, did you get assigned places or was there a bid? JG- You got assigned. They put you where they wanted you, where there was a space for you. That was it. TT- When you got on, the rescue was pretty much a station wagon, right? JG- The rescue was a red van-truck. A delivery truck. Before I went on it was the big police truck, the big square box truck, used as an ambulance. TT- And they didn't transport, right? Costigan's did that. JG- Costigan Ambulance transported everything. TT- Now the gear back then, we're talking about tin helmets, rubber gloves ... JG- Yes. You painted the helmets red when you were on the ladder truck. But they were terrible and they hurt. They got tighter and tighter around your head as you went along. And they didn't protect a whole lot. TT- Meerbott was saying they used to call the gloves "Melt-aways" because that's what they did when they got heated up. JG- They would too. Yeah, yeah (laughs). TT- I heard they had airpacks in the 60's but no one really used them. JG- Well, the airpack's another thing. When I came on in '66, well, in '67 they got their first two airpacks. There was one put on Ladder 1. No, I 'm sorry, in '66 they got the airpacks because Ladder 1 had one when I got there. The other they put in the chief's trunk. The chief of the department, who's not going in anyway. That was the extent of the airpacks. Well, my first fire was a couple of weeks after I first got on. And my acting lieutenant said, "Don't go near that," he says, "because if the chief sees you near that he'll want you to put in on and he thinks you can walk on air with those things and you can't." So that was our experience with the airpacks. Eventually, every truck got an airpack ... TT- But years later. JG- Years later, years later. It just went that every year they bought a few more and this and that. TT- Even then I heard some of the old school guys wouldn't wear them. JG- They didn't. They didn't. The old-timers said, "What the hell are you doing here with airpacks on," and everything else. (laughs) Because I can remember going up--To supply the airpacks, there was a bay of tanks. Airtanks. That was down in the cellar of Station 2. They had a fire up on Newport Avenue, the old Dalton Theater. So I got the tanks filled, and brought them over so they could have spare tanks, and the lieutenant of the 8's, which is now the 6's, he says, "What the hell are you doing with them things? We don't need them, we're firefighters!" And I had my things (balls) busted to no end because I brought the spare tanks. TT- Now Chickie used to talk about the sponge. Did you ever use the sponge? JG- No. No. I just went in. TT- Now you got taught by the World War II guys, right? Those were the guys that came back from a bloodbath--I heard they were very by the book. Cleaning the undercarriage of the truck after every run in the winter ... JG- The older guys, yeah, it was--that era was really before me, but some of the old-timers that worked that era, they carried it on. At certain stations it was, after you came in from a run you had to wash all of the wheels, underneath and this and that. We didn't have to do it downtown, we were fortunate (laughs). TT- Now when you got on, who did you look up to? You don't learn this in a book. Who was teaching you. JG- My acting lieutenant was Frank McVeigh. TT- Al McVay's dad? JG- No. But Frank McVeigh, he was a private. His boss was Zagrowski, and he was an acting Battalion Chief. So everybody--that's what happened back then. If someone was out, the next guy moved up in rank and this and that. So they put you in charge. So he (McVeigh) was acting up until he made lieutenant a couple of years after I was on. He was great. He was a fantastic man and he used to go out in his car, on his three days off, and he would drive through the city, and he knew every street and every box, every hydrant, and he used to--that's what he used to do in his spare time. There was no part-time jobs for him. He just drove around. He was fantastic. Absolutely. He taught me everything I knew. TT- So how long were with him? These are the Ladder 1 days from 1966 to when? JG- Til we started the Fourth Battalion. TT- And then you went to Engine 2 what year? JG- No. I stayed on Ladder 1 because my then lieutenant was Edgar St. Germaine, and he had a lung disease, and the city didn't want to retire him because they thought it would start an influx of people retiring on heart disease and lung disease. So they left me in charge. So for ten years, I was in charge as an Acting Lieutenant on Ladder 1. I think I'm getting confused. It was a long time ago. They had to have made the Fourth Battalion five years after I was on, because I think I worked for Frank McVeigh for five years, and then I was in charge for nine years as an acting lieutenant, and then I went over to Engine 2 because I didn't like the lieutenant that was finally coming over to Ladder 1. Then I made lieutenant and stayed on Engine 2 for five or six years. TT- Back in those days, who were some of the guys around you? I hear Ray Gilbert's name a lot. JG- He was up at the 6's when they were on Central Avenue. Him and John Payne. All of these guys had either come from Broadway or somewhere else. They weren't downtown. They didn't like downtown. (laughs) I went on with Ray Masse Sr., Tommy Heaney, Dick Ryan, Frank Sylvester, Jack Doyle, Andy Monahan--these were all the guys that I went on with. TT- Tommy Heaney's name came up when Chickie was describing quality guys. He said they used to call him Skull. That was his nickname because of his head. JG- Yeah, he lost his hair early in life. (laughs). Somebody called him that and it stuck with him. TT- Chickie said he was a tough fireman. JG- He was an excellent firefighter. He and Ray Masse were both on Engine 2 and they stayed there most if not all of their careers. I also had Paul Keenan and Steve Smith downtown and they were excellent firefighters. Kenny Moreau came on and we brought him along and he did an excellent job on Engine 2. That was my crew, the three of them and myself. TT- So when you got on in '66, how did they dispatch you guys? Are we talking street boxes? JG- Everything was street boxes. There was a box on almost every corner. TT- Now these boxes are numbered. And when they would get pulled, there was a tickertape showing up in the station? JG- It would come into the station on two ticket tapes. They had a backup. It would come in and it would punch out holes in the paper that came off two reels. The paper would read 5-2-2-3 or something like that. The first number was the district that the box was in, and 2-2-3 would be the street. And we'd have a card to pull out, 5-2-2-3, so they would pull out the card and it would have the address of the box. TT- So it was a four number system. The first number was the district and the 2-2-3 was the street. JG- Right. It would, the box that is, it would usually be on the corner. TT- So the ticker tape went for how long? JG- I don't know. That was after I left. TT- Wow. So it went into the 80's? JG- Yes. TT- I also heard that you guys got dispatched by phone? It would be one ring for the engine and two rings for the rescue? JG- This is true. At night, if it was a box alarm, the big bell would ring. If it was just a rescue run or a call by telephone, one ring would be rescue. Two rings would be engine and the ladder. So you waited to hear what the rings were and everything else. Then they would dispatch it over the air. TT- Now, as a ladder guy, I'm assuming you guys were using axes. Was this before the chainsaws? JG- Right. TT- The chainsaws were like the '70's? 80's? JG- We got into chainsaws, we had a big one on the truck, but it was mostly axes. TT- Like men. JG- (laughs) TT- You didn't have any fear of heights, obviously. JG- No. I didn't. (laughs) TT- It's fun up there, right? It's fun. I used to be a roofer. JG- It is. TT- When you're in charge of the ladder, you're pulling up thinking about placement, the wires, the guy climbing up behind you, you're responsible for him, there's a lot going on in your head, right? JG- Yup. TT- Let's talk about some of the fires. This was before smoke detectors, right? Everybody's smoking cigarettes. You guys were busy. JG- The very first fire I went to, I came on on Thanksgiving Day. And Chief put me on the rescue that day and I almost choked myself to death that day swallowing the candy I had in my mouth (laughs). Back in those days, for Thanksgiving, each person was given two hours off to have a meal with their family. So they had to have a new guy substitute for the two guys on the rescue. So I went to the rescue for the first time. But then a couple of weeks later we had a fire at Gormand's Furniture on Main Street, which was right next to the Main Street fire station. (laughs). And that's where I was telling you about the airpacks and about how they busted my chops for showing up with extra tanks (laughs). So this was my first fire and it was spectacular and everything else. Engine 1 was the old Ahern's Fox (This is a legendary apparatus. Ahern's Fox made fire trucks from 1920 until the 1970's. Pawtucket bought one of the only "Fire sedans" ever built in an alleged kickback scheme that spanned many years. It was an open-ended contract, and the rumor was that the mayor was using these unchecked funds for his re-election campaign. But it was a very capable pumper and used for decades. The Ahern's Fox last known address was in an upstate New York fire museum.) And they put that right up in the middle of Park Place. And it was fed by three different hydrants and it fed water for everybody. Every line there, it just came out of the Ahern's Fox with its big bubble on the front. (It was distinctive because of a big chrome sphere above the pump that smoothed out pressure differentials.) That was my first fire, and my second fire was Christmas Eve. We had a fire on Grace Street which was across the street from St. Mary's cemetery. But it was the house behind a house. It was a converted chicken coop and this and that, and the first call came in as a rescue run. And the rescue went up, knocked on the door at the front house and they said they said they didn't call the rescue and everything else, so they left. And then they got another call for a fire at the address that was behind the house they'd already been to. And when we got there the fire was roaring. We lost three people in that one. TT- Wow. Three civilians in the house? JG- Three civilians in the house. What had happened was that they had one of those old kerosene heaters, where you tip the big bottle over, on the side of the stove? What happened was, it was a cold windy night. A cold cold night. And there was one entrance in and out. The Christmas tree was here (motions to the front door), the heater was over here (motions to the kitchen). The kerosene had leaked onto the floor and drifted across the floor. Well, because it was so cold and windy they were pushing the heat. And what it did was it lit the kerosene and followed this path across the floor and lit up the Christmas tree. Back then it was all natural Christmas trees, so it was dried out. TT- That thing must've been roaring. JG- That was their only exit. There was a baby inside this bedroom (motions), a mother and a child inside this bedroom (motions), and the mother went in to grab this child, the father grabbed the other child from this one, and he went and he couldn't get out. So he jumped out the back window. But when he jumped out, his hand hit the window and the baby fell back in. The mother came in--they could feel the crib was right here. She got to the crib but she couldn't get any further. Now the rescue again, going to the scene, was the first ones on the scene, and Tommy Kiley got into the window right here, he could feel the crib, so he pulled himself in the window and he went down because of the smoke and everything else. So we got him out and took him to the hospital, but the mother and the child both were in there and that was something terrible to me, to start off, because I had never seen death or anything else. TT- So two kids and the mom died? JG- Two kids and the mom died, yes. One was a baby. Just months old. We went by it. We knew there was another one in there somewhere, but we must've walked right by it because it looked just like a doll lying near the sink. Finally we picked it up and saw that it was a child. So I went home and at the time I was divorced, I had a three-year-old son and when I walked in I was supposed to pick my son up for Christmas and everything else, I just told my mother, I was living at my mother's house at the time, I told my mother I will call up and tell him I won't be there to pick him up. She said, "What's the matter with you? You look green?" And I said, "I had a bad fire." And that was it. I went to my room. Spent the day in my room. It was terrible. And it got nothing but worse from there. (laughs). As we went on, you know, the sights that we saw, back in the day, we counted up I think it was, when I left A-Platoon for D-Platoon, counted eighteen fire deaths. TT- Eighteen? Jesus Christ. JG- That's a lot of deaths. TT- I heard the 60's and 70's were just raging. Like we just talked about--cigarettes, no detectors, no safety. JG- And this was when they had just put the highway through, so we had a lot of vacant houses, they were re-doing Mineral Spring Avenue and everything else, and that area had a lot of vacant houses. So they had a lot of places to play in and everything else, light them on fire, so we got good experience because we had a lot of fires. TT- It seems like the fireload for you guys was unbelievable. So, you had the Christmas fire, the three deaths, and as these things started to roll through, there were big events. I remember hearing about Star Gas... JG- Star Gas. That's another one. I was in that one too. TT- Your name came up at Star Gas. JG- It came in, again this was the time I was in charge of Engine 2, and we were substituting people to equalize the overtime, so we had one gentlemen came in for the morning shift, and then at noontime I remember Mike Levesque came in, and he says, "It's a nice hot day out there, boys." It was in the high 90's. Humid day and this and that. And everybody was filling their gas tanks to have cook outs and everything else, and Mike says, "Good day to have Star Gas!" TT- What? JG- Yup. Well, don't you know, half an hour after he was sitting down at the kitchen table, bingo, Star Gas came in. We went in there and we went in the same way as everybody else. And they said, "We need somebody on the other side, on the Industrial Highway side." To wet down these tanks. The railroad cars. So we went around and laid a line from Cottage Street right up to the where the tanks were. And I can remember there was a tanker truck coming right at us, and we were trying to lay a line, and I was saying, "Get out of the way, get out of the way!" And he's giving me one of these (the finger) and everything else, and so all of a sudden one of the tanks exploded and flew across and hit the side of his trailer, and he saw that in his mirror and the next thing you know he was almost on the sidewalk across the street to get out of our way. (both laughing) But yeah, that was fantastic. Star Gas. TT- Talk about balls, I had heard that you were on a 2½ inch line directly facing the tank. It was a tanker car loaded with propane? JG- Yes. We were cooling the tank. That's all we were trying to do. TT- Brulé said you would've been the first ones killed if that thing exploded. JG- The way they looked at it afterwards is that everybody would've been dead. Everybody in a mile area would've been dead, and it would've leveled everything, because the tanks were empty. They had just filled up the big tank from the railroad car. The next thing you know Central Falls was coming in and asks the Battalion Chief, "Where should we set up?" And he said go around to the Industrial Highway and lay another line." They laid the second line, so we got more water. The next day, Chief Couto from Central Falls came over and we went back and were looking at the tanks. The railroad car tanks. And they were bent and everything else and had started to melt. He said that if they had blown it would've taken out everything and everyone. TT- I heard tanks were landing as far away as Broadway. JG- Freddie Fisher was standing on a roof taking pictures. He could see them 500 feet in the air. And the bottoms of them, when they exploded, were coming at us like frisbees. TT- What was the closest you ever came to getting really--were you ever in a fire where you were like, "Maybe we should get out of here." JG- Not really. We got into fires and we had one down on Webb Street. This was late in the afternoon. We fought the fire. It started in the cellar and it came up, went across three floors, so we fought it all the way up. We got up to the third floor and then they put the aerial up and hooked up the master stream and it drove us all the way back down to the first floor. That was one of the toughest fires I ever fought. But I never really got into so much danger where I couldn't find a way out. We did have some really smoky fires but we just did it. TT- What kind of guy was Tommy Heaney? JG- Personally, he had two children and a wife. (I made the mistake of conducting this interview at the 4's. We got dispatched several times and this break was the longest. We lost the whole train of thought.) TT- So we were talking about Japonica Street and other moments of danger. JG- You were saying danger, I wasn't afraid at most of the fires, I felt confident and everything else. But the day after Star Gas, when we went back and saw and reviewed- (dispatched again.) TT- How did you handle all that you saw? Did you internalize it? Booze it away? Bring it home at all? Guys handle it differently. JG- We did a lot of drinking afterwards, you know, reviewing fires that we had, but we never brought it home. Very very seldom brought it home. There were enough problems at home. They didn't need to know what you were going through. We kind of kept it in. But we did have a lot of conversations at the Celtic and other local establishments (laughs). There were several bars that we went to. TT- By being together you were able to process it. JG- Absolutely. To relieve the pressure and everything else because they knew exactly what you were talking about. Whereas if you brought it home, they had no idea, and they put their own emphasis on things you didn't even think about. It wasn't appropriate. TT- You retired in 1988? JG- 1987. I did twenty-one years. TT- How old were you when you retired? JG- Forty-seven. TT- After you finished, did you do another job or were just retired? JG- Well, when I was at Roosevelt Avenue, across the street was Collette Travel. On Exchange Street. And I used to see the buses pull up. I was very close to John McConaghy, and he and I had a little painting business on the side. And I said to John, "You know, if I get off of this job, I'm gonna down and drive one of those buses." Somewhere. Anywhere and this and that, and get to see a lot of things because I love to drive. Well, we were down in West Warwick one day and I said, "Hey, Pawtuxet Valley's right down the street. Let's go in." I went in to see the manager and I said, "I'm a firefighter in Pawtucket but I was thinking about driving one of your buses." He said," We'd love to have you. We have several firefighters working for us and everything else. Next week we'll set up a road test for you and go from there." I said, "Fine." And I left. I didn't think anything of it. Well, needless to say on Friday morning I got a call from Pawtuxet Valley, which was two days after I had just been there, and they said, "What're you doing over the weekend?" I said, "Well, I'm working tomorrow night in the fire station but then I'm off for four days." "Well, can you get the night off?" I said, "Why?" He said, "I want you to go to Washington." (laughs). I said, "Washington? I haven't even gone for my road test." He said, "Yeah, but everybody's in Washington, so this will be your road test to see if you can get down there." I said, "I know how to get there but I don't anything about the town." He said, "Well, you'll be going with two other buses so just follow them closely." So that was my road test. And I started there and eventually said I think I'm gonna retire from the fire department and go there. I went there full time once a spot opened up. I ended up all over the east coast and Canada driving a bus. TT- Do you have any regrets? JG- No regrets whatsoever. I miss the job 100%. I miss the camaraderie and everything else, but no. I think that it filled my life completely. It allowed me to do all these different things. I was a truck driver for five or six years, then I was a fireman for twenty-one years, and then I worked eighteen years in the bus company. It was different but basically the same. I was a driver and this and that. The funniest thing was when I was working driving a truck before the fire department, I was driving all kind of hours to all kinds of places, and I was making about $400-420 a week. Where the average pay for a fireman was $60-80 a week. So everybody looked at me and said, "What're you, cuckoo? You're gonna leave this job where you're making over $400 a week, and go to a job that pays you $80?" And I said, "Yeah, but I'm gonna get security." And this was a thing that I lived by. The security. Because come December, if they have a layoff, I'm gone from this company. If I go on the fire department, I'm secured a job for life. That was my thinking back then. And it worked out perfectly. TT- Any other events stick out in your mind? Narragansett Racetrack. Were you there for that inferno? JG- That was a farce. I don't know how much I can tell about Narragansett Racetrack. We parked Engine 2 up behind the grandstand and pumped from the hydrant right there. And we had a lot of friends that came by and they knew it was a hot day and they would bring us a case of beer. So the guys that were there, we told them, "go up to the engine. On the back is a couple of beers." Well, the next time I went up to the truck there was eight cases of beer lined up and everybody was in and out and in and out (laughs) so that's why I said it was a farce. It was an easy job, just a big one. It was huge. No danger there except for us. TT- (laughs) That's a back in the old days story. JG- Everybody showed up with a case of beer for the firemen. TT- God, I'm jealous. JG- (laughs) TT- The community was looking out for you guys! Can you think of anything else? It sounds like you had a great career. JG- I enjoyed it. And I gotta say I think that some of the people I worked with or for were great firefighters. And they taught me an awful lot back then. They were grassroots firefighters that shot from the seat of their pants. Jerry Gendreau, on Engine 2 with Tommy Heaney and Ray Masse, and they would honor the ground Jerry walked on because he was a great firefighter. He ran into a little trouble later on in his career because he wanted the promotion and crossed the picket line. But he didn't leave the job with the best of thoughts about the job. But he was an excellent firefighter. I can remember going into Beattie Street on a fire. It was a room like this. I was working on the engine. I was inside the room and it was smoky and I saw this red glow on the wall and I'm trying to hit it with a hose and everything else, all I'm doing is creating smoke. Jerry comes in and says, "What the hell are you doing?" I said, "There's fire in that wall somewhere. I can see the red glow." He says, "Shut the hose off." So as it cleared there was a light up above the bed with a red shade on it and that's what I was hitting. But that's the type of guy that he was. As soon as he walked in he kind of realized it wasn't a fire and that I was new. TT- Gendreau? That's his name? JG- Gendreau. We took all of these things with a grain of salt. That's how you got through them. And you had confidence in the people you were with. I went to a fire on Roosevelt Avenue. A car repair place. And it was a cold cold night. I had a new rookie with me named Mike Szczoczarz. TT- Oh yeah? JG- We got there and started putting the fire out. The building was ripping. We were putting it out and Mike says to me, "Jesus, this ain't bad. It ain't cold or anything." I said, "Well, wait until we put the fire out." Next thing you know we put the fire out and our coats and everything else are flaring up like skirts, the hoselines, the big 2½ inch hoses are frozen solid. We had to get the pickup to drag them back to the station to thaw them out. That's how cold it was. Another funny story, you know? TT- Sounds like you had a great career and had a lot of fun. JG- We did. We were serious there, but we never took the seriousness away from the fire. We came back and joked. It relieved the pressure. We did a lot things, softball tournaments, charity events, a carnival on Barton Street. And everybody worked together. Also, we were all Pawtucket back then. Not like today where you guys are from all over. That's why these families grew up together. TT- What kind of guy was Ray Masse Senior? Was he like Ray? JG- Same thing. Yup. And we grew up together. Ray, Barbara, and junior, and Tommy Heaney and Sue and his two children, and we'd be at their houses or they'd be at our houses. It was family. Jimmy McShane lived across the street, he was on the fire department and left to go to the electric company. TT- What did Heaney do before he got on the fire department? JG- He was young. I think he just came on. TT- Was he on before you? JG- No. We went to the fire school together. He was in my academy. Dick Ryan, all of those guys. TT- Now, Ray Masse senior had a heart attack right? Was it at work? JG- No. He was at home. He was home at night. And the toughest part of that was they got a rescue run to his house and they knew there was a problem. So they called Bob Thurber, Chief Thurber, to go in first, because they were related. And Chief Thurber's wife was Ray Masse's sister. So, yeah, when he saw him he had one leg out, like he was just getting out of bed, and it was tough. For all of us. I have to give Chief Thurber credit. TT- It affected a lot of people. JG- It did. He was a great guy. He was well-known and well-liked. TT- Well, if you think of anything else please call. Feel free to let me know, because like I said, I'm just collecting information and typing it up. JG- No, this is great. I enjoyed it. Good luck, too. There's probably a million stories. I enjoyed the job immensely, and I'd say it took me three or four years to get comfortable being away from the job. TT- That's what everybody says. JG- And then because I tried to influence my son to come on the job, and he thought private industry was the way to go, and he didn't listen to dad and everything else. But he found that this job was very adept to what he wanted to do. And be secure too. From what I've heard he's a doing as good a job, if not better, than what I did when I was there. It's great. It makes you feel proud that he'll follow in your footsteps. It's a different story today compared to back in the day when we only had cloth and wood and none of the plastic. That was just starting. Not the chemicals and everything else that you people are dealing with now. TT- Right? It's gross. When I came on we slept with our bunkerpants in the dorm at the 2's. JG- Not anymore. TT- Too true. I really appreciate you coming down, Joe. It was great to meet you. The interview ends. He stands up and takes one last look around the Engine officer's room at Station 4. "Some things never change," he says.
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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
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