Paul Keenan--
March 1, 2017 Paul Keenan worked in the mills before taking a significant pay-cut to join the fire department. He had four kids, worked three jobs, one of which was manning Engine 2 during the fire years of the 60's, 70, and 80's. Back then, it was more important to be surrounded by people you trusted then by people you liked. But he got lucky on both counts. While the Beatles were barnstorming America, he was pulling people out of triple-deckers. Trained by the old school, this is what he said ... TT- What are the basics, Paul? When did you get on the job? PK- I got on in April, 1967. It was a class of ten. Three or four politicians, they went on first. A few names I would hate to mention because one of them is an asshole (laughs). But that's the way it was then. TT- In 1967, how big was the job? Our full staff number is-- PK- Same amount of trucks now as then. Because we had Ladder 3 and one rescue. When Ladder 3 went out of service, that created Rescue 2. So I'm guessing the manpower's about the same. Fire Prevention had one guy. And there was a guy doing all the books, like Barbara's job now, and his name was Murray. TT- So in '67, who was the Chief? PK- Romeo D. Monast. Not too smart, but a nice guy. I'll tell you, the chief had power in those days. And when they put a guy on--I was downtown twenty-five years and never left. Because I got together with a good crew of guys. And I'd rather work with ten or twelve guys than two at the 6's, you know what I mean? In them days, actually there was a private in charge of Ladder 1. He was an acting lieutenant, because there was none on our shift. Now back then, if there was a guy who couldn't do the job, guys would go upstairs and say, "Hey, Chief, get him outta here." And he did. He went to the guy nicely and said, "You know, I think you'd be better at the 6's. Or the 4's (laughs). The 4's was on Broadway with the old Ladder 2 back then. TT- So when you got on, where did you go? PK- We had a school first, ten or twelve weeks at night and one on Saturday. TT- Some things never change. How old were you got on in '67? PK- Twenty-three. He (points to his son Kevin) wasn't even around yet (laughs) TT- What did you do before you got on? PK- I used to work at Corning Glass. TT- Oh yeah? In the mills? PK- Yup. I used to drive a forklift loading the freight cars. So I had to take a pay-cut to join the fire department. And everyone said, "What're you doing? Are you crazy?" I probably took a ten or twelve dollar an hour cut in pay. Back then, that was big money. I said, "It's security." You know? And fifteen years later I had a lot of security and they went out of business. TT- So you went downtown straight away? PK- Yup. I was on the engine. But years ago we used to switch. Because if there was a vacation or sickness, they got switched back and forth. Like an in-house transfer. Instead of having some clown come down who didn't know what he was doing, right? (laughs) TT- These are the tiller truck days, too, so driving that thing was probably a challenge to guys who didn't drive one everyday. But you did. PK- I didn't drive the tiller a lot, every once in a while. (the tiller truck has two drivers--one in the front, one in the rear) When I went to the ladder I usually drove the truck part, the front. And that was the old Ladder 1, which was a bitch. To get it in second gear you had to use your foot, kicking it (laughing), it was an old Maxim. It was a good truck, just hard to drive. TT- How long was it? PK- A hundred-foot stick. The old Ladder 3 was 85 feet. That was another old Maxim, a '58 I believe. And when you were driving that truck, the front bumper was probably where the TV is from here (far away). TT- When did you guys get airpacks? PK- The engine company didn't have airpacks. Just the ladder. TT- Are we talking sponges? PK- Yeah, basically. I never used the sponge. I just coughed (laughs). But some guys did. Some guys were heavy smokers. They'd be gulping smoke in the fire and then come outside and celebrate with a cigarette (laughs). Different days back then. When I retired I had a full physical done by my own doctor, and he said, "You know, for twenty-five years of fighting fires you're not in that bad of shape. Because you don't maintain than kind of smoke. There's no tar or nicotine." Nowadays, with everything being plastic, who knows? But we didn't have Scotts. They were on the truck, but we only used them for rescues, you know? We started off with a little one on the truck, like a fifteen minute bottle. Then they put one or two of the bigger ones on the Engines. Because we were doing three quarters of the runs. Even then. We didn't go with rescues either. TT- I was looking at some of the numbers as far as actual structure fires, you guys were doing something like four times the amount of structure fires back then. PK- Oh yeah. I went to as many fires in Central Falls as I did in Pawtucket. If there was a fire in C.F., we were on the first card going in. TT- So some guys used the air-packs, some didn't. PK- There were some guys who didn't even know how to put them on. TT- It's just fascinating. Guys from your generation didn't have any protection and had four times as many fires and smoked cigarettes, and it's the guys who got on in the 90's who are now dying of cancer. They don't even smoke. Shows you how toxic this job really has become. PK- Some guys got on the job years and years ago and didn't even go to a fire school. They went right to the line. One guy showed up one day, Polish guy, in fact he just passed away a few months ago, and he reported for duty and the Chief didn't even know he was coming. TT- (Laughs) PK- He walked into the Chief's office and said, "Stanley sent me." Chief says, "Stanley?" He says, "Yeah, Stanley So-and-So." He used to own the credit union on Broadway. And the Chief was so scared of that guy he just put him right to work. (Laughs) But that's how it operated back then. TT- When we talk about the late 60's, the ambulance and the medical stuff, that was all nonexistent, right? PK- Scoop and run. That's what it was. TT- Was it just a station wagon? PK- No. It was a small little ambulance, like a GMC truck? But before that, we had the old CD. After the war, the old CD trucks- those were the original rescues. TT- So there were two guys-- PK- Two guys. TT- And after they showed up, the private ambulance companies transported to the hospital. PK- Yes. Unless it was real bad. Then they would scoop and run. We're talking like the late 1950's. The Battalion Chief was actually Rescue 2 if needed. He had a driver back then. TT- Seriously? PK- Yep. TT- So in the back in the 60's and 70's we're talking about everybody smoking, no detectors. That's all changed now. The reasons for those fires have disappeared. They quit smoking, detectors every twenty feet. I mean back in the day, you guys had some really bad fires. Fatal fires were not uncommon. PK- You know what it is? They were knocking down parts of the city. I-95 came through and cut the city right in half. Killed it, really. TT- Was that in the early 60's? PK- Yes, something like that. Late 50's? And every night we'd have a two-bagger. TT- Oh man. PK- On Mineral Spring Avenue, Pleasant Street, and we'd go to a couple of mills--I've been to two two-alarm fires in the same mill three times. TT- Jesus. PK- They'd start to fix it and then someone would try to burn it down again. Especially where the Apex is? That was all mills. The highway killed all of that. TT- Did you do side jobs? PK- I did everything. I had three jobs at one time. TT- Guys were saying in the 70's they couldn't even afford to feed their families. PK- It was tough. TT- What did you do on the side? Were you driving with the CDL? PK- I drove for Brinks, the armored car company? I used to drive the big truck. I also worked part-time for a hardware company, driving a panel truck (with tools to sell.) There were three firefighters. There was always someone there. We were all on different shifts so we could man it. In fact, the guy I worked for was Chief Doire's brother. Nothing like Chief Doire, believe me. Direct opposite. A real jerk. In fact the other guy, he's still alive. Roger Doire. He's gotta be ninety. But that's how we started. So I stayed there for a while and then, my uncle was a boss on the school department. Head of all the maintenance? So, at the time they had these three-quarter ton trucks delivering food to the schools. Because all the food came out of one kitchen. TT- So everyday you'd be driving food to all the schools? PK- We had guys on different shifts to do it. There had to be two guys there all the time. We did that for a few years. I worked twenty years at Brinks, ten of it part-time because I was still on the fire department. In fact, I saw the ad in the paper, you know? So I went in. The manager says, "We don't hire part-timers." I said, "Oh, I saw it in the paper." He says, "Fill out an application anyways." And about three months later he calls me up. "Come on. Work the hours you want to. If you can't, or you catch overtime, don't worry about it." So I put ten years part-time into it. And when I retired in '91, they offered me fulltime, and they counted the other ten years, so I ended up with twenty years and got a pension. I mean they didn't have to do that but I held different positions there. TT- So how many kids did you have? PK- Just four (laughs). Kevin Keenan-(His son is a current Pawtucket fireman) yells- He should've quit after just one. PK- (laughs) TT- So four kids, and the stresses from all of the jobs, some of the guys, it's different now. But a lot of the guys who did rescue for a long time, I was talking with Bob Thurber and them--so a lot of these guys, at a certain point, they saw enough horror that they had to stop and get off the rescues. PK- You get cruel. After a while. We had a guy on the rescue, Timmy Holloran his name was, you'd think he was a priest, that's how nice he was. He was terrific. And he'd sit there and talk to them and you know, like their father would? But that's the way he was. But most of the guys on the rescue, after a while, they had had enough. "You been sick all day and decide to call at two in the morning?" TT- How did you deal with the things you saw? Did you bring it home? PK- Not unless smoke was coming out your mouth (laughs). I'm not kidding. Sometimes you'd come home, be eating breakfast, and smoke would be coming out of your mouth. TT- No radio, no ropes, long-ass hallways fully charged with smoke-- PK- We had no radios. We were lucky if there was one on the truck. And then a lot of times it would get soaked in a fire and wouldn't work. We used to put it in the oven to dry it out. TT- (laughing hysterically) PK- I'm not kidding. To dry it out. And it worked. And they were this big (motions like two-feet). TT- Before the days of search and rescue techniques, you had to claw your way out the door. What else can you think of? I heard the 1's was always ripping. PK- We relied on a couple of companies. A couple you didn't rely on, you know? "Are you sure you guys can lay a line on the way in?" (laughs) But the 1's and the 5's on our shift we never had a problem with. TT- What shift were you on? PK- B. TT- The whole time? PK- Yup. And we worked 56 hours a week back then. TT- When did that stop? PK- Like '72? When they went on Kelly days. After so many weeks you got an extra day off. Then when we went to 42 it was terrific. It really was. TT- Were you there for Star Gas? This was like '82? PK- This is a story. Maybe you shouldn't record this. I called out sick that day, which I never did. My wife was always like, "Call out sick, we got too many--" Of course, she was a pain in the ass. Right, Kevin? (laughs) I'm out doing something, I didn't feel good, the guy from across the street comes over. Rings the doorbell. Says there's a fire and explosion near his niece's school. TT- Oh yeah, I forgot about the school. It was packed with kids that day. I heard everybody would've died. PK- He says there's cylinders flying all over the place. He says, "Oh, you gotta go help them." So I got in my car and went. I looked around, there were flames chasing everyone around. I went up to Chief Murray, the B.C., I says to him, "I'm here, but I'm really not here. What do you want me to do?" (people out sick are not allowed to show up anywhere.) He says, "Great, great, great. Take my car, go do this and that." So a week later, the guy doing the payroll upstairs, Dave Lancaster, he used to be downtown and then he went upstairs when they expanded Fire Prevention. He got a job upstairs. And he says, "How could you get overtime and be out sick at the same time." (laughs). I says, "Shushhhh!" TT- (laughs) You cared about the city. Showing up sick and all. PK- And it could've been worse. TT- I heard there were tanks and canisters landing on Broadway. (three quarters of a mile away). PK- Many houses got hit over there. I don't think Broadway, but it could be. TT- You know, Lemay showed up with bags of newspapers, and it took me about a month to go through them all and organize them chronologically, as I read through the events, this Star Gas thing in this densely populated neighborhood, it was like a propane distribution place, right? PK- Yes. TT- So there were triple-deckers literally across the street from this place. PK- And the school. TT- And people had been complaining for years about the smells coming from that place. PK- Plus they had tanker cars, railcars, coming in to unload them. Kevin Keenan- I remember watching those tanks from our house. Over near Riley Street. TT- That's so crazy. That's the story I heard, that shit was just raining down. PK- There was a lot of confusion. And there was a couple of guys, they were on the roof of the 4's, never came in. Everybody was called in, but some guys were watching it from far away. TT- (laughs) That's pretty terrible. Kraweic was saying he was on the ladder just watching Engine 4 burn up. PK- That was a no-no, you know. There was an order out that that truck never should've gone in there. TT- I heard the truck actually melted. I saw some of the pictures... PK- We had a fire on Dexter Street, right where they built the ice rink. There was a couple of houses up there, three-deckers, we had a fire there one night, I pulled a lady and two of her kids out of the third-floor. TT- Off a ladder or fire escape? PK- Off the stairs in the back. A week before I had a rescue run there. So you used to open the door and instead of taking a right you had to shut the door and go up that way. So that's how I knew how to get there. TT- Wow. PK- And then the following day they had a big write-up in the paper. A big write-up and a picture and everything, but it wasn't me. (laughs) I was on the (union) executive board back then and they had our pictures on file over there. So they screwed up the names. So instead of me they had Billy Magill. Who was a lieutenant then. But two days later they did the story over again, and had me standing in front of Engine 2. TT- What other grabs did you have? Kevin Keenan- He's glossing over all the awards and commendations. PK- Yeah, I got something from the state, something from the Blackstone Valley, Fireman of the Year or something like that. TT- Jesus, that place must have been ripping. PK- The toughest one I really had, we had a fire on West Avenue. The corner of West and Warren. Used to be a school there. It was the Warren Avenue school years ago. They knocked it down, built a big cement wall and had apartments in there now. But right on the corner there before that was a big three-decker house. And across the street was a drugstore, which is where I used to hang out as a kid. That was our corner, right? I was from that area. And it was like noontime. And we get the call. Of course the 1's get there in a hurry, they're right around the corner, Code Red and smoke is pouring out of everywhere. Flames are shooting out. There's a kid missing. Four-year-old kid. He lit the fire. He got under the bed with a lighter and caught it. We get there, of course we're laying lines and everything, the chief, in fact it was that asshole Doire (laughs) but he says, "There's a kid missing." So then you change it up. You attack, right? We charged inside, Scott up and everything. Can't find him. Can't find him. You know it was daytime, and losing a kid? Unacceptable. That don't happen, really. So about fifteen twenty minutes later I says, "I'm going up to the third-floor." And I did. And in the kitchen on the third-floor--I kicked the door in--the phone melted, that's how hot it was. So I'm feeling around and all of a sudden I'm standing on the kid. TT- Oh no. PK- Then I realized who it was. I grabbed him. I didn't do any mouth to mouth because I went flying down the stairs and I handed him off to someone on the first floor. But he died like an hour later. But his lungs were so scorched. I saw that kid for a couple of months every night-- TT- In your head. TT- What about the highway? PK- Spent a lot of time on 95. We had one night, a Friday night, right after the S-curves where it straightens out? There's a guardrail there. But we had a guy and his girlfriend coming from Providence. Had to be like nine o'clock at night. He had a sports car. Of course they didn't have seatbelts on. And what had happened was he was racing with a panel truck. And when they were going around the corner, he caught the bumper on the panel truck, and what it did was shoot the car through, they hit the guardrail, and both flew out. And he ended up against the barrier. Well, when we went over there to see what happened to him, all he had was a face. The back of his head was gone. The brains were on the ground. She went the other way. She went towards the breakdown lane. She was really banged up too. I don't think she lived more than a couple of days. And she was young. And he wasn't that young. They were partying. It was a Triumph or an Alpha Romeo. TT- When you guys responded to the highway, it's not like nowadays where we have all these wonderful toys. You were just banging the car apart with whatever you had. PK- Right. We didn't have any of the hydraulic stuff til later on. TT- You just smashed everything apart. PK- Years ago, when things were burning in the car, there wasn't that much plastic in the car. Now, you don't know what the hell is in there or what's going to explode. TT- What's the closest you ever came to dying? PK- When I got married (laughs). I fell down a few times. TT- You ever have a ceiling come down on your head? PK- Oh yeah. But not where it knocked me out. TT- Obviously, these days our gear is heavier and stronger, more advanced, can take more heat, but you guys would just go in and take a beating. PK- Well ,yeah, we didn't have the equipment. TT- Seems like it was pure balls back then. PK- Yeah. You had to rely on certain people. Like I said. Some people you were like, "Screw you. I ain't following you anywhere." I've caught guys--the bad ones, you want nothing to do with them. I was on overtime one night, I found one guy hiding behind a truck. (laughs) He didn't want to get dirty. TT- It's hard to be on the fire department if you're afraid of fire. Who was the best boss you ever had? PK- Best boss? I guess the nicest guy was Stretch, Farrel Tuit. Anybody tell you about him? TT- Stretch? Not yet. PK- He was the driver for the Chief. He passed away about five or six years ago. But he drove Chief Monast, and then he finally made lieutenant, had a lot of years on the job. He didn't know that much, but at the time we had a pretty good crew. So we took care of him. But he was nice guy. And we'd say, "Stretch, I think you should do this instead of that." "Okay," he'd say, "let's do it." TT- Why'd they call him Stretch? PK- He was like 6'3", 6'4". He had the moustache. Nice guy. Wasn't the smartest guy out there but he was the nicest guy out there. TT- Looking back at your whole career, is there anything you would've done different? PK- Probably should've been a cop (laughs). I was fortunate, I was lucky I got a job, you know? I was looking for security, which I did get, I mean I didn't want to load freight cars for the rest of my life. I do miss, we had a softball team. I played softball until I was 70 years old. Kevin! (yells to his son.) You ever hit a ball longer than me? Kevin Keenan- No. (laughs) That was part of my oral interview when I got on the job. Can you hit a softball farther than your dad? But I can shoot a puck a lot farther than him (laughs) TT- So you were on how long? PK- Twenty-four-and-a-half years. Retired in 1991. TT- That's a great run. You guys had a great run. You didn't even have a line of duty death or anything. PK- Hargreaves died right after I retired. TT- So you got on in '67 and there was no one killed until 1993. Kind of incredible considering the sheer amount of fire, big fire, you guys saw. PK- The best Chief I ever had was Chief Gallant. TT- Who? PK- They haven't been talking about Gallant? Oh, man. He was a son of a bitch, and he used to yell at ya, but he was the nicest guy in the world after. He would go and get the beer for us (there is a rumor that back in the day a few cold beers may have been consumed after a fire.) Really. And a few times I carried him home drunk. I had to get him in the door for his wife. But he was a politician, his father was a judge, he always was a politician, he lived right next door to his best friend, Harry Curvin, you never heard of him, but he ran the state. He'd yell and scream at the scene, but you had to ignore him. A lot guys were afraid of him. "Jesus Christ, let's save the bar! The rest of the building, who gives a shit!" He'd yell at certain guys. When you got off the truck, he'd point out a couple of guys and he'd go nuts. I don't know if it was nerves or what. But he was a nice guy. TT- What about July 4th? PK- I used to go to Providence with Engine 6. Me. Have forty or fifty runs. Five or six guys on a truck, all I did was drive. Went to the Captain's house to pick up all the beer (laughs), seriously, and if Providence had problems on the other side of the city, like Broad Street or over that way, we'd really get a lot of runs. But we were exhausted. We'd burn half a tank of fuel in one night just running around. TT- July 3, July 4, you guys ran hot all night. PK- They used to burn Providence down, years ago. They've got nothing like that now. TT- Pawtucket was as shitshow too. PK- But not like Providence. It was busy in Pawtucket, but Providence was just as bad or worse. (Chief) Monast used to send me. He'd say, "You take Engine 6, don't worry about a thing, and when you want to come home come home." TT- So you were Mutual Aid there all night? PK- Just me. TT- What? Just you alone? PK- All they cared about was the truck. I was driving our truck with their guys and I had no idea where the hell I was going. (Laughs) The captain would be sitting next to me, "Jesus Christ, I don't even know where that street is." And it was his city. Big area. I was their ride to the fire. TT- As far as having a couple of cold ones after a fire, when did all that stop? Because that stuff doesn't even exist now. PK- It went into the 90's. We used to send the Battalion Chief (laughs). "Go pick up the beer." TT- Listen, I want to thank you for agreeing to do this. PK- I'm not gonna get locked up, am I? TT- Negative. It's been fun. Sounds like you had a great career. PK- Loved every minute of it.
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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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