Lt. Steve Smith
May 1, 2018 When Steve Smith got hired, he was the youngest man on the job. In a twenty-seven year career, he served on the line, as a lieutenant of Engine 2, the department Training Officer, and finally as the city’s Fire Marshal. He raced motorcycles, kick-boxed, and was one of the founders of the department weightlifting team. We all meet people in life who say what they mean, and mean what they say. Steve Smith is one of those guys. If he said he was going to punch you in the mouth, chances are you were getting punched in the mouth. Sitting across from him now, it's almost like he's still on the job. This interview was conducted at his wife’s insurance office seventeen years after he retired in 2001. This is part of what he said ... SS- What're you looking for? Like history? Stories? TT- Exactly. Like what year you got on and how old you were. SS- November, 1974. I had just turned twenty-one-years-old. I got sworn in with three other guys. Two of them are dead. One was John Hargreaves, who died in a fire, and the other was Wayne Vicnally. He was in Vietnam. He had a problem with Agent Orange, so his esophagus was burnt out and he died. So John Buchanon is the other guy I got sworn in with. He's still retired, he's doing pretty well. And here I am. I did twenty-seven years. I came in on Engine 2 downtown on B-Platoon, and I spent fifteen years as a firefighter because we were refusing the promotional examinations. Which was probably the beginning of the end of the fire department as far as I was concerned, because they gave a 70% buyout for guys to take early retirement. Well, the senior guys retired, so nobody was in charge of trucks, nobody was in charge of fire stations, nobody was in charge of anything. Everybody was freelancing. TT- It was chaos. SS- Chaos. So eventually, we went five years without taking a lieutenant's test. When we finally did, by that time it was just nuts. I got promoted. Out of 75 guys that took the test I came out like fifth or six. So I got my choice, which was Engine 2 B-Platoon. I was on that truck fifteen years, stayed there as a lieutenant another seven years, and then I decided to do something different. The chief asked if I would go to training. So I was a Training Officer for a while, did that for a year, then he asked if I was interested in being Fire Marshal, so I said, "Yeah, you know..." I had broken my ankle. I had two knee operations in the meantime, I broke my ankle, had like four surgeries on that, so kind of like, climbing ladders and stuff, it was coming to the end, you know? So I said, "Yeah, I'll try it out." So I went to school to become the Fire Marshal. I think I was the Fire Marshal for a couple of years. Then it came to a point where I was running my own business doing excavation and stuff, so I left, did that full time, then I bought this (the insurance company) about the same time. So I've had this for like fourteen, fifteen years now. It's been a whirlwind career kind of thing. I enjoyed it. Especially being downtown. I loved being downtown. TT- Now you got on in '74. You did like fifteen years before you made lieutenant, so you made L-T in like '88, '89? SS- Yup. TT- So you were basically downtown the whole shot. SS- My whole career. Because even when I became Fire Marshal I was still downtown. That's it, you know? I loved being downtown. TT- When you got on in '74, what were you doing before you got here? SS- I was unloading tractor-trailer trucks in Woonsocket and doing house foundations. A couple of friends of mine had their own business doing that, and I was working my butt off and racing motorcycles, acting like a lunatic, you know? My grandfather was on the job, so I always wanted to be a firefighter. My father always wanted to be a firefighter, but my mother wouldn't let him do it because he wasn't making any money. They were making like $45 a week. Even when I came on in 1974 I was making like $127 a week. Gross. I was taking home like eighty-seven bucks. Honest to God. So you're looking at that, it's like $5600 a year or something like that. TT- Like Ralph Domenici said, with six kids he qualified for food stamps one year. SS- Yeah. Imagine that? So I went back to work humping forms, you know, putting foundations in because I couldn't make it. I had my apartment, my truck payment, I couldn't make it. So I went up to the office after I got my first paycheck and I said, "This is eighty-seven bucks here. Is something wrong?" She says, "No, that's probationary pay, pal." Guys on the job were making $147, $157, that was gross pay for a firefighter. That's for forty-eight hours. While I was applying and going to the fire school, they were working three days, three nights, two days off with a Kelly Day. We were in the school for three months when they changed it to two-two and four. I thought the three-three-three was great. I could do whatever I wanted. Ride my motorcycle, work. When they switched I said, "What am I gonna do with four days off?" I know what I was gonna do, I was gonna get another job. That wasn't much fun. Putting in house foundations is not fun. TT- Lot of work. Construction's great because you're outside all day, which I loved, but you're earning that money, boy. SS- I heard that. Heard you've had a career doing all kinds of things. TT- When you got on, these are the World War II guys that are still around, right? Training you? SS- Yes. TT- We're talking old school. SS- Old school is right. When I came on I was the youngest guy on the fire department. I had just turned twenty-one. I got sworn in the second week of November. There was a little court case going on back then. They didn't put three guys on that they were supposed to, so everything else got held up while everything went to court. Nobody got sworn in while this was going on. TT- What did they do with you when you got here? You came on with three other guys, right? Was there a transfer pool? SS- No. The day I got sworn in, Chief walked over and says, "Congratulations, you're on Engine 2. Go home, change your clothes, and you're coming back to work." (Laughs) The other guy, John Hargreaves, they put him on A-Platoon on Engine 2. Another new guy went to C-Platoon Engine 2. TT- Now as a new guy back then, you were on your toes, right? Cleaning, studying your mapbook... SS- Oh yeah. Oh man. We had a guy in charge of the station. When you walked in the station in the morning you had to have your uniform cap on. If you walked across the street and didn't have your uniform cap on he would meet you at the door. When you went to get gas in the truck, you had to put your uniform cap on. TT- We talking the Class A dress hat? SS- Yup. My grandfather, when he came to work, everyday he had to put his dress blues on. TT- Wow. SS- They would stand at attention and then go upstairs to switch into their khakis. Then, if you were the young guy, they would send you out to do Crossing Guard duty. You had to put your dress blues back on, go out and cross the kids, come back and switch into your khakis, and then go back out in the afternoon in your dress blues to cross the kids again. Then, when you left at night, you had to put your dress blues back on and stand at attention. TT- That's amazing. Now, your grandfather, what years are we talking about with him? SS- Probably, the 1930s. He and my father were both in World War II together. My father quit school at seventeen, lied about his age, went to World War II. He was in the Navy. My grandfather was a SeaBee. He was a captain on the Pawtucket Fire Department at that time, so that would've been 1944, '45. TT- That's crazy. SS- I think my grandfather passed away in 1954, '55. Bad heart. Young man, fifty-one-years-old. TT- Did you know your grandfather? SS- No. Saw pictures of him and heard the stories. TT- Wonder what kind of stories he had about the job? SS- One can only imagine. There's some crazy stories from back then. There used to be a trolley through the city. This guy I worked for when I came on the job, Stretch Tuite, his name was Farrel Tuite but they called him Stretch because he was like 6'4". He was a big guy. Like three hundred pounds. He used to be the chief's driver for like twenty years. So he could tell you stories. We would sit around the kitchen table, and I'm a young guy barely twenty-one, this guy was probably like forty-eight-years-old, and he told us so many stories. This is one of my favorite stories of all time. This guy, I won't give his name out, the chief would send you home for lunch because you were there like all the time, right? So the guy goes home for lunch, takes the trolley home, and he's late coming back from lunch. So Chief meets him at the door, he's like an hour and a half late. "Where you been?" He says, "Well, Chief, this is what happened. I hadn't seen my wife in a while. I took the trolley home, and my wife and I started fooling around. I was coming, my wife was coming, and the trolley was coming, so we both decided to let the trolley go." (both laughing). These were the kind of stories that got passed down for generations. One after the other. You spend a lot of time in fire stations. TT- As far as the old school, when you were in that station and stuff, Chickie was saying nobody read the paper before the lieutenant, new guys were always out cleaning... SS- Nope. We were always cleaning. But you know what? It was enjoyable. It was their lifestyle. I think nowadays it's a job for most guys, but back then it was your life. Back then you were a firefighter for life. Everybody lived it on the job, off the job, guys would meet on a Friday night, you'd get thirty or forty guys in one barroom, all firefighters hanging out and drinking, fighting, mental stuff. It's always craziness when firefighters get together, right? We used to leave work on a Friday night, go to the Celtic Pub or somewhere, and the entire shift would be there. Our entire shift. Every person. TT- Sadly, that would never happen now. Last year, there were eight guys at my shift Christmas party. SS- We would all come in and throw ten bucks on the counter, the beers came out of that pile, and when the money was gone we all went home. TT- C-Shift comes close to that, they have a pretty close group, but nobody else. SS- We used to have Christmas parties and other shifts used to go, that's how many guys were out. Everybody just hung out together. TT- Now, the airpacks were around but no one put one on until what, the 80's? SS- No one put those things on. We had rubber boots and a canvas jacket, you know? And a freaking tin helmet. That was it. We were wearing freaking tin helmets in fires. The ladder guys painted theirs red, they were the red-tops, and the engine companies were the black-tops and they were tin, they had just a little bit of cloth inside to protect your head, but when those things got hot they got hot. We probably didn't go in as far as you do today, you know what I mean? Back then, you went far enough in to get hurt. Today, you can go far enough in to get killed. Because you don't feel the heat until it's too late. You know. You've been on nine years. You keep pushing in and further in and then get to that point where you say, "Whoa." And what's that bunker gear good for? Eighteen seconds of direct fire contact. TT- That's it? SS- That's it. Then it catches on fire. TT- Talk about that for a second. These guys that're are going in further--Lemay, Chickie--they talked about not wearing the Nomex hoods. SS- We never had them. Even when we did I never wore them. Too much of a pain in the ass to put them on. TT- The reason they gave was the same one you just said-- SS- Feel the heat. TT- Right. Your ears. Chickie used to say when he could feel his ears start to melt it was time to go. SS- We came out with a little sunburn (laughs). I never wore gloves either. And I should've. After every fire my fingers and hands were torn up and bleeding. Guys who wear gloves today are smart. You know how tough it is, once you take a wet glove off, try and put it back on, it's ridiculous. TT- You can't. The gloves they give us now are like oven mitts. You can't even feel your fingers. Can't grab anything either. So in the 1970s-80's, everything was still burning, right? Cigarettes everywhere, it sounds like you guys were laying feeders every other day. SS- They were burning down Pleasant Street one house at a time. Mineral Spring Avenue was called Plywood Alley because of all the burnt out and abandoned houses. We'd go to the same house fire three times in one night. Every night of the week. I'm not kidding you. We had a family, the second we left they went back in with a can of gasoline and lit it back up. We wouldn't even be in the station two minutes re-packing hose when the tones would hit and you'd be going right back again. You gotta put it out, you can't just let it burn. TT- So they were burning down Mineral Spring Avenue-- SS- Especially Pleasant Street and Taft Street. Oh my God, every night of the freaking week. TT- The way it sounded was that you guys were awful busy with Code Reds. SS- When I came on, the truck I was on was the busiest in the city and we were doing like 900 runs a year. But they were fire runs. Fires. Ladder 1 was doing 1250 runs cause they filled in on Box Alarms. Most of the time they sent two and three ladders on a Box Alarm when I first came on. Three engines, two ladders I think? Anyway, Ladder 1 was doing 1250 and Engine 2 did 900. When I left, I think we were doing 3000 runs a year. Mostly rescue runs. That drove me off the job, basically, doing rescue runs. TT- Sounds like the job started shifting in the early 90's toward the EMS. SS- All EMS. I hear they want to go for a fourth rescue now. TT- That's the word. They're probably gonna have to. Memorial Hospital closing killed us. Everything goes to Providence now. We average seven out of town rescues a day in the city even now with three rescues. I was in charge of Rescue 2 last week and on a ten hour day shift saw the station for forty minutes. I wanted to ask you about Kevin Rabbit. We saw his gear in the fire academy after the flashover that nearly killed him. SS- Kevin's a good friend of mine. We grew up playing baseball together. They were a bunch of brothers. Steven grew up with me, John grew up with my brother B.J., and then there was Kevin. John was the cop. He's retired now. Steven was my age. He was a musician. Kevin Rabbit was on Engine 3. Good guy. Funny guy, a great guy to be in the station with. A genuinely funny guy. TT- Can you tell us the story? SS- I'm not sure who else was on his truck that night. They were in that old 1950's FWD piece of crap. I got transferred to Engine 1 that night. Cold cold night. So Engine 2 went, Engine 3 went, Engine 4, Ladder 1 and 2. Kevin--I went to see Kevin in the hospital and he told me what happened. He was pretty much burnt up. TT- How long had he been on before this happened? Did he come on before you? SS- After me. Probably five years? He was a good worker. A good firefighter. So, supposedly there was a guy in the house. Second-floor. So he goes upstairs alone. Finds the guy. Grabs the guy. Starts carrying him out. At the same time Ladder 2 is getting ready to pop some windows. They do and the place goes up. This guy, Ray Wallach, who was on Engine 4, he's coming up the stairs. He kept going up and gets upstairs. Kevin ran out of air. So with all the heat and stuff he was delusional, he had no hood on. He drops the guy, staggering around, delusional--remember he had just gotten roasted in a ball of fire. Ray Wallach grabs him, helps him down the stairs. His helmet had fallen off in the apartment. They get downstairs and take his jacket off, his canvas coat, the whole back of it was totally burned. We kept it. I have no idea why they threw out that jacket. I was a Training Officer later on and we looked everywhere for that thing. TT- I think they found it. We saw it in my academy. SS- His helmet had melted to the floor. Those plastic helmets? It was a puddle this big (motions with his hands) TT- Holy shit. That's as big as a large pizza. SS- That's how hot it was up there. We kept his gear for the longest time. TT- So basically what happened was he found the guy and was carrying him out when the whole place flashed over. There are moments, and they don't happen that often on this job, but there are moments where you have to step into situations where you're-- SS- What are you here for? Just the pension? What're you doing here? You don't want to do your job? TT- Do the job. SS- It's all about doing the job, man. I can't even imagine that. It doesn't even compute. TT- So it flashes on him but he doesn't go down. SS- He was walking. Wallach found him-- TT- The other guy was already dead, right? SS- Dead. But that's the way it happens. We had a fire, I was with Al Jack and Stretch Tuite. We had a wicked blizzard going on. Stuff like this happens all the time. The fire comes in over on Barton Street, it was an auto body place tucked in the back, and we get there through two feet of snow. Snowing like a bastard. I wasn't driving so I jumped off the truck and this guy's yelling, "My buddy's still in the house!" I'm like, "Oh, that's not good." So I'm walking around back through two feet of snow and look through a window and the whole place is just ripping. I mean there was fire everywhere. I see the guy on the floor and I'm like, "Oh, son of a bitch." I gotta get in there. I'm by myself. So, somebody walks by--I'm not gonna say the name of who it was--but he walks by and I go, "Hey! I gotta go in. This guy's on the floor here!" So I smashed the window, the lower one, and I jump in. I don't have a Scott on or nothing. Crawling on the floor, I grab this guy. When I grabbed this guy, I'm not kidding, the flames were rolling over me and going out the window. So I yell to him, "Break the top window!" I was hoping the fire would jump up to it so I could bailout of the bottom window with this guy. Gone. There's nobody there. Now I'm dragging this poor bastard, his face is blistered, and now all these aerosol cans start exploding. It was a car shop. I'm like, "This is not good." (laughs). I get to the window, I'm as low as I can get. I got this guy right here and I got him up high enough to get him out the window. Chris Cute comes over. I came on the job with Chris back in the day. Good firefighter. Engine 4. I yell, "Chris!" He reaches through to get under this guy, I'm already lifting him up, and we just dumped him out of the window. See you later. I dumped him and then jumped right out into a snow bank. Me and Chris started doing CPR on this guy right there on the ground. TT- You talked about a lot of names so far, and I've only recently heard the name Tommy Heaney. SS- Tommy Heaney was a great firefighter. TT- Chickie said he had balls as big as his head. SS- Another guy who never got promoted to lieutenant but should've been. Great firefighter. He was on Engine 2 A-group. He was with Ray Masse senior. He was another great firefighter. TT- These are the guys--guys like you--who taught the dudes who taught us, right? SS- They found him (Masse) dead in his bed one morning. Never showed up to work. It was a real shame. TT- And he was only in his forties, right? SS- Oh yeah, young guy. You know what happened? He had a fire at the Log Den. It was a bar over on Central Avenue? And he told me after the fire, "I tried to pick something up and felt a pull in my chest." Obviously, as we know now, that was probably the beginning of the heart attack. So I talked to Tom Heaney about it. I said, "Tommy, he says he felt something pull in his chest?" Tom goes, "Yeah, he was ripping a ceiling down and felt something." He went outside and swore it was a pulled muscle. Now that was three or four days before he went--he always used to go to this place on Columbus Avenue for fish and chips. He lived by himself. And he told people there that night that he didn't feel too good. The girl told us it was strange, because he ordered the fish and chips to go. He usually would stay there and eat the fish and chips and pound a hundred beers. Well, he left. Took the fish and chips home. The next day he didn't show up for work. So as we know now, he probably had the heart attack during that fire and, being the hard ass that he was ... TT- This is in the 80's right? SS- Yeah, something like that. TT- And Ray junior, they're getting ready to pension him off because of the damage to his lungs. SS- It's sad to hear. TT- It's a toxic job, man. SS- It is, at least today you have the opportunity to wash your gear. We never washed our gear. Not once. Until it fell apart and then we just got a new pair that we never cleaned. Imagine the crap on that? I have a pair of my old gear that at the very end I hung in my barn. Imagine what's on that. TT- Toxic soup. Talk about the Fourth of July, because people that have never lived here have no idea about the pure mayhem that used to occur. Kraweic said it happened for eighty years until they started arresting people. SS- And they opened up the night court. They started arresting people and taking them right to court and people would be like, "Oh no, they're taking this serious now. It used to be fun." TT- What made them start cracking down? I mean it seems like it was a community event, to stockpile all the crap you could all year long and then drag it out into the middle of the street and throw gasoline on it while eating a hot dog and drinking a beer. SS- All year long. Just to create the biggest bonfires you will ever see. I'm totally serious. Like as tall as utility poles. And they'd light them up like forty times the same night. Just kept pouring gas on them. We'd put it out and they'd laugh and say, "See you in about fifteen minutes." Engine 1 would do the most runs. They had this old FWD with no power steering, no air brakes, and they would do forty, forty-five runs--fire runs mind you--a night. TT- Wow. SS- That truck was a beast. And downtown, we'd do between twenty-five to thirty-five runs depending on the night. TT- All fire runs. SS- Oh yeah. Pulling hose, wetting it down, then you'd go back to the station, fill up, and as soon as you did you knew you were going back out. Probably to the same fire. And we went all night long, til like four or five in the morning. It was unbelievable. But it was fun in a way. You know what I mean? We had so much food, families used to come down to the fire stations and we'd cook on the grill, it was a family event. It really was. It was unbelievable. TT- Chickie was telling a story and goes, "Oh yeah, and one year the neighborhood paid for a band to come down to the station, so as we were going out eighty fucking times at least we had some music playing." SS- It was bananas. Back then it was more of a family event. Guys downtown used to have Thanksgiving dinner on the apparatus floor. Pull all the trucks out, all the guys would cook, and all the families and kids came down. Big giant tables. On duty. We did it all the time. It was pretty cool. TT- That is. Too bad it's a different job now. SS- Yeah. Nowadays, guys will grab a turkey sandwich by themselves and sit in the corner on their phone. (both hysterically laughing) TT- As far as Central Falls goes, you're on Engine 2. Back in those days-- SS- If they had a fire, we had a fire. They had some tough ones. TT- Those guys take a beating. SS- They dispatched us with them on the first card. They were great firefighters. I don't know what they're like today, but back then, they worked their asses off, boy. TT- We have guys coming over to our job from C.F., it's like a feeder tube right now, and everyone one of these guys is put together. There isn't a single problem with any of them. They know their shit, they work hard. SS- They used to train so much over there, Dick Tanny was the Training Officer, and they trained all the time. He was in Vietnam, one of those rat guys running around all those tunnels. He was nuts. TT- I've heard stories about that guy. Chickie said he was crazy. I'd love to talk to him. So you guys were basically with them all the time. Chickie also said you all knew each other-- SS- Oh yeah. If we had a party in Pawtucket, Central Falls was there. If Central Falls had a party we were there. We'd go back and forth. It's a tough town. TT- Work ethic-- SS- I used to say to guys, "You came on the fire department. Do you know what the fire department's about? This is not a cushy job. You went to school to become a cardiac and get all this training and now you want to sit around and do nothing?" I don't get it. There are guys who bid to the 6s and stayed there their whole career and you don't even know who they were. They were on the job, they left, and no one even knew. TT- You mentioned Timmy Hayes, and that guy was revered. I haven't met anyone who said anything otherwise. SS- He was at the 1's. He was a great guy. A little Irishman that nobody messed with. TT- I heard whatever he said guys did. SS- He took no crap at all. He was a helluva firefighter. When his truck showed up on scene, you never saw him. He was inside. And a lot of times he had no helmet on. No gloves on. He'd be soaking wet like a rat and taking a beating. He was unbelievable. Great guy. His was the only truck I ever wanted to bid to, other than Engine 2, because I was having problems with the administration back then (laughs). It was uncomfortable. And I was gonna bid to the 1's. But I just couldn't leave downtown. TT- His reputation is ridiculous. SS- He had a few kooks with him too. John McConaghy, a great guy, and Richie McDowell and Bobby McGeehan. TT- That is some list of names. What shift was Ogle on over there? SS- Ogle was on C-shift. He was another one. Vietnam guy hard as nails. He got shafted (Ogle was forced off the job in a dispute with the administration.) TT- I heard that. Kraweic couldn't say enough about him as far as tactics and reading the fire. SS- Bobby was a hard worker. Wasn't scared of nothing. Nothing or nobody. He was a weight lifter and a strong kid. They screwed him good. TT- I wanted to talk about self-policing. There was a lot of self-policing back in the day. On the job. If you stepped out of line guys weren't afraid to call you out. SS- We always went downstairs. I heard a story recently. I'm glad you brought that up. And there was self-policing. If you had a problem with a guy, two guys had a problem, you went downstairs, punched the shit out of each other, and if someone got hurt they went to the hospital because "they fell down the stairs." They would never rat you out. I heard of a recent situation where someone ratted to the chief. That's not good. I've had some situations where I flipped over a table, might've thrown a guy across the kitchen, picked him up by the neck, bounced him off the kitchen walls a few times (laughs), yeah, believe me. (laughs) I was the Training Officer. We were doing drafting down at Parent's Marina. I had my white officer shirt on. So I was showing the guys how to draft (drafting is when you pump water directly from a river or lake), and how to pump the aerial with it. I just brought an engine and ladder down because I didn't want the whole shift down there. We had three or four guys that had never done it before so I made sure they all did it. The whole thing. Shut the truck down, blah, blah, blah. So I made everybody do it. Well, this guy goes up on the tip of the aerial ladder, he thought it would be hysterical--we're pumping like a bastard, the guys are with me and I'm shouting over the pump, all of a sudden, guys are getting knocked down, thrown around, I jumped in the cab, I thought we had blown a line, like the LDH blew up. Water everywhere. The water slows down and there he is up there on the ladder laughing his ass off. Well, everybody else was laying on the ground, soaking wet, my shirt is covered in that black crap at the bottom of the Blackstone River, and I stood there. He walked over to me. He still had his boots on. The only reason I didn't punch him in the mouth is because he still had his boots on and he probably would've drowned in the river and they would've got me for murder. Well, he and I got into a thing and everyone scattered because they figured I was gonna beat his ass. I said, "The only reason I don't pick you up right now and throw you in the goddamn water is because I'm afraid you might drown." And that was a situation where I could've gone to the chief and gotten him suspended for doing something that stupid. But I told him what I told him. "If you ever do anything like that again, you and I are going at it. Be ready to go." And that happened to me many many times over my career. If you do something stupid, I'm ready to go. Win lose or draw. I'm not backing down to anyone in this entire world, man. Never did. Which is probably not the smartest thing in the world to do, but it was just the way it was. A lot of guys were like that back then. If you had a problem you went into the basement to straighten it out. You don't go running to the chief like a little girl. "You hurt my feelings." TT- Feelings ... SS- If somebody grabs you by the throat, you punch him in the mouth. Whatever happens at the end of the fight, happens. If you lost, you got up, shook hands, because at the end of the day you were still working together. It was just a disagreement or something. And that's the way it was. TT- It stayed in the basement. It never left. SS- It never left. TT- That's the policing, right? The offending behavior starts, and guys will start chirping on it, chirping on it, and after a week or two, if that person doesn't correct the offending behavior, then it's just a free-for-all. Dudes will be all over your shit, riding you-- SS-."You can't be doing this, man." That's how you police this thing yourself. You don't go to the chief. You threaten him. You say, "Listen, man, Steve's not happy with this. Something's gonna happen, man, and he's gonna end up punching your lights out." (laughs). See you later, man, let's go. TT- But that's the way it was. SS- Don't ever backstab me. TT- But you had a reputation as far as what you expected, and then when things would happen against what you expected-- SS- There wasn't much gray area (laughs and laughs). I'm not a politician. TT- I've heard the name Spike Levesque... SS- He was on rescue most of his career. He loved it too. He lived it. He used to have a picture of a bulldog on his wall, and that was him. He was a bulldog. He was 5'8", about 250 pounds, grumpiest guy. He was a lieutenant, and if you went on a rescue run with him in the middle of the night, and you asked him a question, he'd answer but he always mumbled. And if you asked him again he'd bite your head off. You had to know where you were going, too. He was tough. He owned this place called the Monitor Club. Well, it was a little bar over on Meadow Street. And his father owned it before him. And if that place could tell you stories, man, we used to go in there--we'd have fires at night, like that one I told you about in the blizzard? We went back to that place first thing in the morning. If you had a night fire, everybody on the shift would go to a bar in the morning. Seven o'clock. And we'd stay there until noontime. And most times it was the Monitor Club. It was a little crappy bar about the size of this kitchen and hallway. It was an old house that they made into a bar. And I had more fun in there than any other place in my life. It was unbelievable. TT- When did the Celtic come into play? SS- It was the Blue Bonnet originally. We used to get food there once in a while. But this guy from Cranston, a cop, bought it and turned into Jack McMahon's Irish Pub. They called it the Celtic pub from there. Like the 80's or so. And Tommy, the guy who owns it now, he helped fix it. Build the bar. He didn't own it. But Jack used to go out with Tommy's sister. They were both from Ireland. Eventually, Jack didn't want to run the bar anymore, so he moved back to Ireland with Tommy's sister and sold the bar to Tommy. That's how he got it. Quite a place, lot of history. TT- What about the motorcycles? What were you racing? SS- I used to race in the woods. Enduros, cross-country, a little motocross. I did that every single day I had a free minute. Loved it. I still ride. I just went over the handlebars a couple of years ago. Broke this wrist, severely injured this one--somebody had dug a hole in the trail. And I'm blasting along until my frontend hit this hole, flipped the bike, and tossed me into the woods. I'm laying there, I knew I broke my wrist and that was my throttle hand, so I couldn't even run the bike. A couple of guys came along with their four-wheelers and gave me a hand. They pulled my bike back up, and I'm riding out of the woods like a madman. TT- When 95 went through the city, that was the late 50's, right? SS- I was ten or eleven then. I remember they were building it. Well, our school team was going down to Cranston to play the Cranston Eagles, and my coach says, "I've got a fast way to get there." He jumps on the new highway, which wasn't even open yet, we weren't supposed to be on it, and this madman drove us all the way to Cranston. It wasn't even open. Pretty cool. TT- Now, when it went through the city, it pretty much destroyed the heart of the city. SS- Yup. Nightmare. They took peoples' homes, moved peoples' homes. It was an awful piece of real estate and an awful decision. I spent twenty-three years out in the S-Curves sweeping up bodies because of that decision. So many accidents. Originally, they were going to run it 95 to 195, through Providence and East Providence and then north to Boston. But they wanted to come through Pawtucket. Pawtucket got thrown to the wolves on that decision. And they made the S-curves into one of the most dangerous stretches of highway in the country after they bent it around the TK Club and some other joint that the city bigwigs could not do without. TT- So it was going to go through East Providence? SS- That was the plan. It was going to bypass Pawtucket completely and shoot up to Boston, but that never happened. TT- That decision killed everything. The property around the new highway was worthless because of it. Which is probably why you guys had so many fires, with people burning down everything they couldn't sell. Now what was the murder story your wife was hinting at? SS- Sunday morning. Kenny Moreau and Steve Tanguay were with me. They were my two privates and great firemen. We go over to Barton Street for an unresponsive woman. We get in the house, walk upstairs, and there's a guy standing there with his hands rolled up in his sweatshirt. So I look at the guy and go, "What's the problem, pal?" He just points to the bedroom. I go in first, walk in, and see woman's clothes all tore up and thrown on the floor. There's a woman laying in the bed. She was beat black and blue. Her face, I'm not kidding, was swollen up twice the size it should've been. Totally naked. You tell she had been raped. I'm saying to myself, "Someone broke into the house, raped this poor woman, and then killed her." I'm looking and then I see this small baby cradled around the mother's head. She was hugging her head. So I'm thinking someone raped this lady and killed the child. How could someone do this? I just couldn't believe it. She was a doll, too, a petite little thing. So I reach over and touch the woman. She was marbled up, cold to the touch. I go to check the baby and then it moved. TT- Oh God. SS- The baby's alive. I look at this guy in the kitchen and shout, "You realize your baby's alive? Why didn't you take her out if here?" He's got his hands rolled up in his sweatshirt. So I pick the baby up, wrap it in a blanket, and hand it to Steve Tanguay. He's holding the baby. So I go to the guy, "Hey, pal, what happened here?" Then I'm looking and realizing, "This guy did it." I said, "Let me see your hands." I didn't know if he had a gun or something. He takes his hands out and they were completely busted up, swollen. So he starts telling me exactly what happened. They were at Rocky Point drinking. They got into a fight, she left, and came home with the baby. He comes home, they start fighting again, he tears her clothes off, rapes her, beats the shit out of her. I says, "What happened to her face?" He says she was running down the stairs when he kicked her in the back of the head, and he put her head right through the plaster, there was still blood and plaster on the wall. I said, "You did that to your wife? What is wrong with you, man." You gott be kidding me. So finally the cops show up, it is Sunday morning after all. They arrested him. He woke up in the morning and actually called his sister. His sister lived in Taunton. She and her husband drove down there and got there almost at the same time as we got there. TT- Did he remember all of the attack? SS- Well, he showed me where he kicked her in the back of the head, so I guess he did. What a tough guy. So we had to testify in court against him. You should talk to Kenny Moreau, he was scared to death of testifying in open court. TT- This guy's lucky he didn't get beat right there. SS- Oh, I know it. What a coward. Killing this poor little girl like that. He said the baby cried in the middle of the night, so he put her in the bed with the dead mom. Leaves the child there. TT- Let's talk about black humor. B-Shift looked for a guy's hand over at Technor Apex one night after it got ripped off and whisked away on a conveyor belt. The rescue took him to Rhode Island while everyone else kept looking through the plant. You could hear guys yelling, "I could really use a hand over here!" (laughs) You realize real quick how thin the line between life and no life really is, right? We had a lady in the S-curves one day, car rolled, she got tossed, the car came to rest and clipped her head. All she needed was two inches more and she would've been alive. Two inches. SS- We responded to a run one night. I was driving. Joe Gildea was in charge. We get to the run, it's almost in South Attleboro on 95 North. There's like a Maseratti or Ferrari in the middle of the road. The lights were on, the windshield wipers were going but he was facing us. Not a good sign. I looked to the right and there was a woman laying in the middle of the road. I looked to the left, there's a guy on the guardrail, steel guardrail. Joe goes, "I'll go to the woman you go to the guy." So I run over to the guy. As I get near him--this is unbelievable--as I get near him there's a patch of dirt like this with no grass growing on it (motions in a circle). His entire fucking brain--both hemispheres--was perfectly placed in the center of this patch of dirt. Now I hit this scene with a flashlight and go, "Oh!" I looked at it--you know when you don't really know what you're looking at? Cause he hit his head on the guardrail and it just ripped his head this way (motions vertically) until his whole head was just elongated this way. And that's when his brain shot out. What're the chances of his whole entire brain landing intact and perfectly in the center of this dirt? So as I'm looking at it a State cop pulls up. He jumps out of the car and comes running over. I go, "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Look out!" As he's running over, he steps right in the freaking guy's brain. TT- (laughs) Jesus. SS- He goes, "What's that!" I go, "That's his whole brain, buddy." (laughs) And the poor woman. Both of them came flying out of the T-tops. She's laying on the ground. She was beautiful. Broke her freaking neck but she was still alive. We started CPR, got her to the hospital. They took her X-ray and her neck looked like this (motions into a grotesque angle). She died. Just as well. Stories like that, one after another for decades. Crazy the way things happen. We caught a run one time on the highway. This girl rear-ends a car in the S-curves. So we get there. I look at her and she's screaming while holding her face. I'm looking at her going, "What is going on here?" What doesn't belong and why? Well, she hit the steering wheel right across here (motions to his mouth like the Joker) and peeled her whole entire face up to her forehead. Nose, everything. I reach over and grab the thing to pull it down-- TT- You pulled her face back into place? SS- It was so weird. It just dawned on me, you know? I'm going, "It belongs down here." (laughs) So I pulled it back down without even thinking and she could suddenly see again. And she's screaming, trying to look in a mirror. And I'm like, "Don't look in the mirror!" After we got back to the station, I go, "How is that even possible?" When you're doing it, you're like wow. TT- How'd you not bring all this home? You just dealt with it? SS- Never even talked about it. TT- They wouldn't even understand it anyway, right? This has been awesome. It sounds like you had a great career, man. SS- I had a great ride, man, I loved it. Loved every single second.
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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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