GETTIN' SALTY EXPERIENCE PODCAST Ep. 194 | BALTIMORE CITY FD | FF RAY LOCKETT

Disclaimer. We'd like to know before the start of this interview that the opinions about to be expressed by the guest of tonight's Getting Salty Experience Podcast are that of the guest and do not directly or necessarily reflect the views of the host of the Getting Salty Experience Podcast. You're listening to the Getting Salty Experience Podcast. Hello, Hello, Sammy Peters Peter. I think Steve Steve Locket is

in the chat too. I saw before, so let me see. Let me go back a little bit and see if I catch you, man, then we get willing Oh yes, right here, hey all, oh he has a beer, sir, just see even just the whole story. I already apologize to your mother when Coop starts throwing the F bombs already, so ut, I'll reserve the F bombs, missus Lockett. We'll throw the red flag. I got the the instant replay flag. So if we needed to replace something, yeah, that commercial, the instant replay. Should we get

the flag? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah, what you want? Well, you know, may come in handy. Interesting week, man, tough tough week, interesting week. The ship Christian into the Francis Key, Scott Bridge there. That was insane, wasn't it. Yeah, I told her, I have the here's a map because you guys want to see a map where it was in the pre show, like the ship dwarfs the bridge. That's how it's like. And Ray was saying, yeah, looks like

an erector set on there. It looks like a little It's just incredible that they let that thing go through there without uh, well lost control. No, no, I understand that, but I mean you got to realize that that how many times have we had ships do something stupid from you know, guys drinking or whatever. They shouldn't be able to just come in out of there. And the look at that. They found the other guys the other worker is right, two of them last I heard, they only found two.

Yeah, those guys were in the car where he was saying, yeah, the good in the truck or something? Right, Oh, were they in the truck? Holy crap, those guys. Those are the cars that were only ones left on the bridge. If you saw it full, there was a couple of things. And I guess said, well they let that. They radioed ahead saying that they had no control of the ship and they shut down the bridge. Can you imagine it was like doing rush out of something. Holy shit. He was saying, seven. You know, he's

been going over that bridge for a lot of years. He was saying that they get like a ridiculous amount of cause going at now the traffic that that's like one of the main arteries there too, Like we go all the way around now. I don't know. That's why I pull up the map to show you help. But you're one hundred percent right. It's literally the work for that, bro. Right, everything you have to take take a different way to work. I got pains already, who medicine? Take it?

Take it easy over here, tough, you got a debilitated ticket it. I don't want anything that happened. He's good, though, everything's rotal rooted, bro, He's good. I come better than I was. There some good news, right, guds. It's finally in the air. It's finally on its way. Oh yeah, ready ready for it? Here we go, there it is, It is finally on its way. He got up. Good God help me. Yeah, looks we're gonna sell out no time.

Ruby's gonna say. You know what, I should have listened to that a whole weeks ago, months ago, what would be great if you could pull the rip cord for real. I didn't even think of that. Gone, take it easy, and you know they could put like little sound effects in there too, like when you're rolling it, how you pushing it and you put take it. How funny is is Mikey Cologne with the with the whole getting on the yeah mess over there problem when he's sleeping stories steps see

let him get this the empt run the bus for a while. Yeah, there was we had. This was the job lou that we had and uh, you know it was around on the Charlie side. I'm like, all right, take it easy, take it east. What's not throwing out exposures

just yet? You're just talking about it toad shopped. Does he say anything in the check because you know he's listening, just hello, he said, little but it easy with the tones you're dropping and Charlie side and all this, I said, imagine what he gets if he starts riding the bus is an emt or did I tell where I was? When I tell him what the lou? I didn't know. I didn't know what to do with you gotta pay and everything was fine, pal Pa is cool. I'm riding the

backstep, and uh, we're going on a cardiac. You know, I'm giving. I'm giving the compressions. I'm compressing, I'm compressing. And Ruff he always says, bagging him. I'm bagging him. Ba boom boom boom boom. Love always says love. What does Ruff? You always say? Stay with him? The little body, little buddy. That's what he told until you gotta remember, bro, that's it. He's a good tell. He was like my son, young enough to be myself. I tell you

what he's talking. You could see how like exactly is like he's really very focused, I guess would be the word. He's focused on what he wants to say, and he'll wait. We'll we busted his balls and we'll wait to be all serious, tie the whole thing. Yeah, well, listen tomorrow we got a quick little video coming out. I'm stepping my toe into the editing realm and I edited a little piece so tomorrow will be shown up.

It's only four minutes. Ship it's one that you can share, so share it around, send it around, will you send it this way? Yeah, we got to get the commercials because the only one to show this week. So uh, let's get the commercials out of the way so we can get my man mister here. No, you lock it up, No, you lock it up, you you lock it up. Back there,

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bring them in. All right, So we've had a couple of guys from Baltimore City, some legends and those guys about this guy. Is that how that worked? Oh? Yeah, yuh the goat Yeah to my goat work, it didn't work. Oh I'm sorry. No, I'm loving that all up for you. For God's sake, I got my ship. It's not Thursday cleaning people. I tell us put my laptops down easy, take it easy, All right? Coming to this page to Baltimore City, f D Ray locking it up? Ray? Were you lock it up? We've got

to have a scary plot behind him. I'm already scared. I'm trying to do it. Man. You know what, before we get up, we forgot the pledge last time, so let's get in there. Let's not forget it. We cannot be definitely the way things are going. Uh as well? Yep, alright, here we go. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic, for which it stands, One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Shalom.

That's alone from Tom war Welcome to the show, mister Lockett. Thank you good to be here, to be good. He looks good, that guy. Huh twenty three years retired? Coops? How many years? Two? Three? O? Man? I hope I make twenty three years retired? Well, I got on, but not too far after we were born. I don't want to give his age way, but I'm just I think Lockett invented the pop and lock a dance break dancing thing back in today.

You know when the Coops started with that. He's like a rolling witholeum around with him. I used to carry a car with a box. But yeah, sorry squirrel, a moment, I already have this answer on my very Look at this detail, I tell you one of the best timelines I got. Let's let's dive into the early days of mister Lockett. Where'd you grow up? Give us a little early history of the days when you were young? We were you're into before you got into the fire service? And how

did you get into the fire service? Well, I grew up in Baltimore City, lived there for forty seven years. I grew up in a blue collar, poor neighborhood. Never had any intentions of going in the fire department. I was in. Seemed to get in too much trouble and drinking too much and fighting too much and just having having a good time. Never had any intentions of going in the fire department. And my mother in law, whose husband was killed in the line of duty. He was a Borderman City

firefighter. He got killed in nineteen sixty one when my wife to be was thirteen years old. Oh wow. And I met him when she was fifteen, and we never discussed her father and I went to the army for three years, came home, started dating again, and got married to her. And for four years I went going from job to job. I was a brakeman on a railroad. I hung sheet rock. I was a security guard.

I was a truck driver. And I'm sure Moller was getting tired of seeing her only daughter being married to a guy with no directions listening Ray Ray, Ye, hell yeah. So after we'd been married four years, my mother in law got me an application for the fire department. I looked at my wife and I said, I think your mother's trying to get rid of me or tell me something. But it was the best thing that ever happened

to me. I took the test. There's thousands of people took the test down the Civic Center in Baltimore. And so this is nineteen What year did you take the two at the test? I took the test, and I did better than I thought I would. I came out fifty two, and they took fifty three in the first class. Oh, in first class? Good for Yeah, I was in the first class. I took the test with my brother in law, who was a lot smarter than I was, and but he came out number two. He never went in the fire apartment,

Is that right? He passed up. He went up working in the government job down in d C. And uh, yeah, I got in the fire department in nineteen seventy two. What was the payback then, raight do you remember about Yeah? He eight or nine thousand a year. I guess. Wow. You know it's funny Rays. We talk about it all the time, like how your life changes by one simple act, right, something that is so special to you. Right. All the guys that come

on the show, they say the same thing. Everybody has this one little you know where the road goes like this, right, if you were going down this path and then you know, somebody intervenes, whether it's a neighbor, your you know, family or you know, in your case, your mother in law, and it puts you on a path to the best you know, the thing that ever happened to you. You know, one of

the best things that ever happened to you bespelled your family. Right. Oh yeah, but I wouldn't have had the family if I hadn't had the fart aboutm I mean, I always want a bad path, you know, and i'nno it. And so you had no kids yet when you got on. Oh yeah, I had I had one son. I had my older son. Yeah, he was born in nineteen seventy and I got in fire school. I think I was in fire school about a week. And I thought, man, don't screw this up. You'd like this job. This is

a good, best job. And you had no idea about the fire fire department at all. Yeah, I had really no idea. Yeah, crazy. I was lucky to get in. I'll tell you the truth, because I passed the test fine. Then they had to interview and I had a police record for fighting and I had to have a separate interview and I had I had fairly long hair. Then I got into the interview and the guy says to me, it's the seventies. Come on, you got a record here for fighting. I said yeah. He said, uh, you think

you're a badass. And I said no, no, no, no, no no. He said yeah you do. You think you're a badass. And I thought this guy's trying to piss me off. So we talked for a couple of minutes and he says he looked at my hair and he says, well, i'll tell you this. If you get in the fire department, this has got to go. And he reached over and grabbed my hair, pull my hair, and I was like and I calmed myself down and I said, if I get in the fire department, I'll cut my hair.

He said, get out of my office. I thought, there's a know a job shot there, and I went over and when I put my hand on the door to leave, he said hey, and I turned around. He said you're in. Wow. I changed my entire life that right there. I wasn't like the whole thing was a test. What he pulled you had you knocked him out, you would have been done. I went in, Harvey liked you. Nineteen seventy two. How long was the academy

back then? It was eight weeks and five days a week. And on saturdays we rude a company that they sent us to what either an engine or a truck? How were you allowed to operate there? You just rode with them? Oh? No, we went. We went right in the fires

with him. Really well, yeah, I think I was in fire school two weeks and they sent me the four truck on the west side, which was an extremely busy place, and kind of my hold aground, and they told me they pointed to this guy he probably had twenty five years and looked like they could holler the fire that would go out. He said you stick with him if we did anything. And we got to fire down the high rises with nasty, nastiest high rises, and we had fire smoke coming out

the fourth floor. I get off the truck and I'm trying to remember how to put a mask when the mask were in big green boxes in a compartment on the truck. I'm like, God, I remember how to put this one. And that old firefighter John Frank and he said, we don't need a mask. Come on, and we went inside and went up to the fourth floor and he said grab my belt, and I grabbed the back of my buck. We started down the hallway. It was just a narrow hallway,

apartments on both sides. Smoke's getting lower lower, he's bending down. I'm not I got his bolt. I'm standing up. I'm dying. Sweat snot running. I can't see that, can't breathe. He's bent down real low. He's not out of any We get to the apartment that smooth was. We go in. He took me right through one room, right to the balcony outside balcony, shoved me out, said stay there, closed the door, slowed me down when he got the fire out and came back and

got me. He said, I wasn't much of mattson box brings. It wasn't bad. He said, come on, you can help us overhaul. I was. We We're overhaul and throwing stuff out, and I'm thinking to myself, Man, I wonder if other be able to do this job like these guys do. I mean, they knew everything was like clockwork. They were a busy company. It a knew what they were doing, and everything went like clockwork. Everything they did, it was it was a learning experience

right there. And with just two to three weeks in the fire school. You know, we have the guys riding on the rate back then, right four four four on the engine four in the truck. We say all the time rate on the show, like you don't know how far you can go until somebody shows you where you can go, right right like that? Like that, Like that's a perfect example of you're there a week and you know,

a couple of weeks and this guy's dragging you through. You know, you're like, I can't even believe where the hell we're going, right, you have no idea about the fire department. Next thing you know, you're like ten rooms deep. You know, and uh, you know, you're like, I can't even believe I'm here with no mask. Forget about that.

I mean, yeah, we didn't wear a mask back then if you were on if you were on the engine company especially, Uh, you didn't wear a mask if you were on the pipe and you were first, and you were expected to get in there and do your job until the guy had let off. Put a mask when it came in and relieved you. And we heard that before too real full did guys say that the guy who let off, they would take the mask and leave you after you knock most of

it down? Right? Yeah, you learn real quick, Lieutenant taught me real quick. You opened up my who's on a half for half a fog? And you get that little pocket of error right by the nozzle. You put your chin down there, and you got more or less got something to breathe, you know, enough to let you keep going. Right. It was a much different, man. It was so different when I came in and than when I left, no doubt. Right, how was the firehouse

culture back then? At the kitchen table? What was it like the same as it was when I loved everybody everybody's balls? I mean it was always fun. It was universally roof anywhere you go, different hits. The table was these spots in every firehouse. Yep, that's the world problems, right, Oh my god, yes, all the world. That's why this is the only show that brings the kitchen table to you. Right. So we so seventy two, eight weeks of fire school, you assigned to Engine twenty

five. Now there was slow house, there were middle of the road. What were they? Extremely busy? Oh there you go, extremely busy. Oh the why that woman was chasing around the house. Who is that young guy looking good there? Right? Yeah, because we were taxis. We wore khakis back then, which was real nice when you crawled in a burning building. They were filthy dirty after one fire khakis. Yeah, it was

an extremely busy ass. I asked. When I was getting out of fire school, I was playing fast pitched softball and the picture on our team was high up in our local seven thirty four, our union, and I went to him and I said, and I want to go somewhere busy. I don't want to sit around. He said, I'll take care of it. And I got to sign Engine twenty five on the west side of Baltimore, a single house or they were single house built in the early nineteen hundreds.

Still had the spots where the troughs were for the horses to drink outte cobblestone floor. I mean, it was, it was old, it was big. It was you know, you had the hose tower. You had you had to change the hose with saturdays. We had a second line engine in the back. It was not two hundred feet deep. Had a big back door where you could get the second line engine out the back door. We ran out the front door. Is that fire house still standing today? It

is, but it was closed. The closed it it's nothing. It's just sitting there now. I just closed years and years and years ago. So you evidently you pot guys were riding the backstep, right, no doubt. Oh yeah, yeah yeah. Now when I got to twenty five, they had just got a new wagon and we rode inside. But whenever it broke, when you got a second line, you rode the backstep, and if you were detailed to a truck under you rode the side of the truck.

If it was that back of the day, riding the back step, like like Louis and I were on after that that had to be amazing, right right. In fact, the twenty five engine I took the place of a guy who got thrown off and killed. Is this it? Yeah? That looks like kid man. I mean it's where'd you get that picture? He's quit that gun? So he is on his game lately, right, ruf he is? I think to give him pretty cal that's hard to time.

When I googled Multimore City Fire Department engine twenty five, this is what came up I found. I saw a couple of PEPs. Yeah, it's a real you can tell it's a real deep Yeah, that which I'll pull it back up. Yeah, that on top of the door that says that's when the whostsales were maybe Mayfair Hostle and we were saying with this it was a vacant fire house now whatever the hell it was. But I guess they're selling something out of there. I was at the corner of the Collaring Gold.

Yeah, it was how much money were you doing back then? Ring? How much? What running? How many runs you guys go on? You know, probably over three thousand, which was busy back then. Now since they closed, I think since since I was in they've closed twenty two companies and the busy houses now where my my boat. Both boys were in. They're doing over six thousand yeah, wow, six thousand runs a year at the medicine five thousand six, you know to six down. It's after a

while. It's uh, what'd you say? Ninety was doing that rough? They're doing over seven thousand runs. God, you had a medical units. Medical units are doing between eight and ten the busy medic units, Oh my god, eight ten. And now you know when I was in, we worked four fourteen hour nights and four ten hour days. Now they work twenty four hours. If you're doing six thousand runs, working twenty four hours, My youngest son's had thirty two runs. I was gonna say, it's over

thirty runs. Yeah, thirty runs was not twenty four hours. The b boop was going off. I was afraid to hit the ten eight button. Yeah, I didn't want to go. I didn't want to go ten eight because I knew there was a picked you up right Yeah, they picked you right up. Man. And then my youngest son, he would be coming home and call me up on his way home to talk to keep him awake. He had like an eight or ten mile drive to get home from the

firehouse. Yeah, he would want to talk just to keep him awake driving home. Yeah. How did you bring the boys like? Did they have like upe you have Christmas parties in the firehouse? You have picnics? Did the boys go with you to all those things in the firehouse? Not so much. At the we didn't have any anything going on at the firehouse. I would take them there and show them and to meet everybody. Would they ride fire engine? There was no room for anything. Would they ride with

you ever? Bring them in the rite with you? Not? When they were kids? No, No, we were. They fire your ass if you did that. I mean they was. They were pretty strict. They were pretty strict. Did they did? Did you did they? Did you know right away that the boys were interested? Or did that come up? They were? They weren't interested. They saw me come home busted up and burned, and said, and you were going down. You might want to

be a doctor. Once they got into the real world and started working other jobs. And I said, uh, I got your oldest son. He was he was too much, way too much like me, way too much like me. And I said, I gotta get him an application. And I said, you go down and take the test. Him and his best friend. They went down and took the test, and it was the same way with him as it was with me. I think that that really put him on he got in there. It was like, I don't want to

lose this job. Yeah. Put him on the path. Yeah. And my youngest son was the same way. He was the same way he was. He wasn't like me. He was more like my wife. He was more laid back. He had a lot more sense than me and my oldest son. And it took him a while. He went to college for a year to play football and blew his knee out. He came home and worked some different jobs and finally, so I want to try a fire depart And he took the test. He did well, and he got in five years

after his brother did. Wow, awesome. Who who are some of the bosses? Who are some of the guys there when you first got the twenty five that stick out to you that really took you under that wing type of thing. I had a guy, an lieutenant named Lieutenant Baber, and he was a tough old bird. He came from another busy firehouse when he made lieutenant, but he was only there about a year. When I while I was there in the UH, he was burned out. He said, I

got to go somewhere slow and he transferred out. And the first acting man, I don't know, you guys have a first acting somebody takes the lieutenant's place a firefighter. When the lieutenant's off or if he goes sick during the tour, you have acting lieutenant would be the senior guy. Yeah, this was This was the senior guy in the house. If the lieutenant was one vacation, he took the lieutenant's place. And it was a black guy named

Willie Gibson, and he was a great guy man. He taught me a lot what to do, what not to do, and he was one of the first, one of the first blacks to come into the fire departments a matter of fact, and he would tell me what it was like when he came in, what he had to go through with the separate beds and separate eating utensils and separate sangu's all that stuff. Yeah, but he did it wasn't he didn't tell it like he was bitter. It was just a matter

of fact. And we would stay up late at night talking about all different subjects. And then we had another guy who was a gratchy guy. I didn't like him, he didn't like me. Let that go. And there was another guy earning, Bobby Simone, and he had two and a half years in but all the twenty five engines, so we had a lot, a lot of service. And he was another one that was helpful to me. Yeah, when you're a bookie, you need the fire school. Don't

teach you nothing to compare to the Do you agree with that? I mean, oh absolutely, on the job learning nothing like it, especially if you get guys who never had a job before in their life. You know, they cause, you know, staring at the dishwasher sometimes, like you don't know how to turn on the dishwasher. Bro, you you can't have to make coffee? Yeah that's right, you had to make coffee. Yeah, we do that. It's funny you say that, come on, make coffee

for you guys that don't know how to make coffee. And I send him the chief teaching that is that what you do? I passed that down to me. I just like this. Yeah, I have good I have a good team. Man. He's guys a sellid all right, So you're there to how can we leave after two and a half years. I wasn't there enough. They detailed you other companies all the time, and every time I got DJIL, I rode to medic and I hated riding to medic and I

just wasn't there enough. And the captain of the thirteen engine, which was about six or seven blocks south of twenty five he was, He asked me if I wanted to come down there and just getting outen me, And I thought yeah, because there was a double house. So if you got detailed, just stayed now perfect you learn the truck work, right, I sort of learned truck work. Yeah, if you don't ride it enough, you know you're just doing what the guys are telling you to do. Well.

When I was a twenty five engine, tell this story. Uh, they were rookie, don't know nothing. Go to a car accident up and drew a big park, threw a hill park, cars upside down. People were out there. They're screaming the guy lost his leg. Guy lost his leg. So of course I'm the rookie. The captain the tennant says to me, crawl in that car and get the leg. The car's on its roof, I'm crawling on the inside of the roof and I see the I see the leg, and I'm like, oh Jesus, And I get closer and

I reach out and I realize it's an artificial leg. It's not a real leg. It's a prost theses. So I crawl out of the car and I hold the leg up in the air. I said, I got it. I got it. And the people were screaming. They're hiding their eyes there, turning away. We get back to the firehouse. Man, we were laughing for an hour over and the people were freaking out. Everybody thought it was a real leg. It was a good time. It's a good

time in that house. I just wasn't there enough. So there's a story that says, uh, your first fire night working at the end of twenty five, you on the watch in four am. Oh yeah, the Uh my lieutenant, we've been running all night my first night there. And my lieutenant said, look, I'm not staying out. They put me on a four to six watch. He said, I'm not staying up all night with you. He said, see all these numbers on his desk. It was

like fifty fifty sixty numbers on the desk. He said, if they call one of those numbers, you throw that gun. And he went to bed. I'm sitting there, nerve on Christ. Now what that half hour later they call box three seven three three month, Pennsylvania. I know it's here. I know it's on his desk. This is a building fire box three seventh three. I'm looking down nerves like I'm looking at mewhile I can hear the guys. They hear it. They're getting up. They slide the pole.

The lieutenant slides the pole, looks at me. I said, I can't find a number. Get on the wagon. We get, We go a couple of blocks, like five six blocks. We got a body and fender shop burned, locked up tight as a drum. Dad. Chief gets there. Nobody can get in their truck. Companies working. They call a second alarm. Finally they get the whole big rolling doors up about three feet and my lieutenant says, come on, let's go. No mask. Crawl

underneath three quarter boots. I forget to pull them up. They're filling up with water. Crawl all the way in. I can't breathe, I can't see. Lieutenants. Got my head shoved down by the pipe, open it up. We got cars burning, we got offices burning. I can hear them working on the roof. I can hear other companies hitting up with water. We finally darken it down. The tennis says file. The who's out take a break? So I crawled out few on the hoose, I crawl

under the door. I throw up. I'll look up. There's a battalion chief stick almost threw up. He said, all right, son, I said, grace spitting up black flim for two days. Beautiful. So what about the fire we knocked out the austiness? Oh, we had a fire up. Were caught up the hill, the great, big three story, big joints of all rowhouses. We pull up. We're first in. The truck company gets there. We're taking our line off. The truck company throws

the twenty four foot ladder. The guy that set the fire runs over and knocks the ladder down. While they're getting the thirty five off, they throw the thirty five. They're going to put the twenty four. He throw. He knocks the thirty five down. We're going inside, Me and my lieutenant. We're going down the hallway. We find a guy laying in the hallway. My lieutenant says, I'm gonna drag him out. You stay here, I'll be right back. So he's dragging him out the hallway. Meanwhile,

Bobby Simon had let off. He comes in with a mask. When I got it, I got it, So I follow him a lieutenant out and by now he's outside. He's got the guy on his shoulder. He's walking down the sidewalk. The guy that set the firewalks up. Boom, hits the lieutenant in the chest, knocks him down. He drops the guy on the ground. I grabbed a guy to hit him, beat his head into the concrete, knock him out. Where the old days, a fighting came in off a fight. The crowd is going now they want a piece of

me. The crowd's going nuts. And one guy was the instigator of the crowd. There's a cop there, let's get ready. Sorry, he raised He was like this. Sorry. He looks like Bama Smith from the Boma Coach. Great big guy and he had this big longmu in a flashlight and he poked it in this guy's chest that was starting out of trouble. So I'm gonna tell you one time, shut up. And the guy kept yelling, and he went back handed him in the mouth with this allo and a

flashlight. They got at the medics coming to medic comes to take him away. To come and take away the guy I knocked out. They come and take away the guy. All the tonant dragged out. We get the fire out, We get back to twenty five engine. I want to talk about it. They don't take anything off this ship. You get the day, not a day Holy Christmas, not the day to the ghetto. Bro.

Yeah, let me see I missed these stories from there. Nope, nope, yep, and I seventy four year transfer the thirteen most were never act twenty five right down the street, six six seven blocks down the street. Oh so that was a big house. You had an engine, thirteen, truck four, ambulance AMBO four and the battalion for for you. Wow, that was a big house, man. How many guys you cook it for? There? We didn't do a lot of cooking, to be honest with

your God. Maybe once once a trick somebody would cook. We didn't do a lot of cooking, not not like you see now. We didn't do a lot in that house. But it was a tight house. In the firehouse right, huh, that's because you weren't in the firehouse. You were, we didn't have microwaves yet, right, I have a microwaves. You know, I forgot about that roof. What was it like back then?

Because microwave only came out in the eighties, right, food got food, got cold, cold, warming up, go out warming up every a while. I think that that was one of the greatest inventions for the fire service ever. In the fact, the first time I saw a microwave, I was detailed to another firehouse I saw. I say, you got a microwave on here? I said, how do I use this thing? I want to cook a hot though? Yeah, you know I was an easy mark. Say how long a cook a hot dog? He said, five minutes?

Come out bet that pig. It was about this pick. I'll shrivel up. You got me on your But thirteen engine four truck was a really good house, really tight house. We had a great captain. He was real strict, but he was real fair. I mean, somebody didn't clean the oven. He took the heating element out of it for a week, couldn't use the other nice but eventually he was in on the card games. And you know, we bowed. There was a Fire Department shift bowling league.

We all bowed in that. We played ball together. I played on the Fire Department baseball team. I played different junior colleges and played the played the Bald in the City Cops at Memorial Stadium before the Warrior game. That's cool. That was neat. It was all. It was a tight shift, it really was. It was a lot off duty. We were off duty. We hung together all the time. Everything we did was together.

Uh So let's talk about some of the guys you got there. You got the Doug Fall, Stan Williams, you had the nicknames for all of them. Let's uh, let's talk about some of these guys. Well, I told you Captain Geleski he was. He was the captain, and he was the captain. I mean, you knew he was the captain. You knew he was in charge. But uh, like I said, he was fair with everybody. If you screwed up and he got you got in your ass, you knew you deserved it. You knew you deserve it. Stan Williams

was a big guy, like six three sixty four. He had a scholarship for UH as a tight end to Clemson and uh, it didn't work out. He got homesick or something. He quit, came home and joined the fire department. And he was. He was a lot of fun. He was a boisterous kind of guy and dunk falls. I went through fire school with. He wasn't there when I first transferred there, but he came in not after a lot long afterwards, and he was hysterical. He was a

tunnel right in Vietnam man. He was. He never never shut up, even when you played golf. He talked when you were hitting. He talked when he was hitting. He never stopped. He was He could say stuff to Captain Gileskie did nobody else could get away with. He called him by his first name one time. We're playing cards. Come on, Ronnie, come on right. Yeah, they were good guys. There were a lot of a lot of really good guys. That's so funny. And the truck

was the same way. The truck was tight. Guys. You know, we chuck cushto with big blond haired guy that he knew his work. You could always depend on him. But he was he was an easy mark.

He was getting he was getting married, and we met his wife, his wife to be his fiance, and we told him he couldn't get married, and to his chief and to his wife, had an interview with the chief of the fire department, and he's so he fell for it a special to his wife to meet the chief of the fire And he wrote the special and and uh, our battalion chief was in quarters, and we told him that you got to hand deliver it to the battalion chief and he'll he'll sign it

and then he'll send it downtown. And of course we're all waiting, and he goes in. We can hear he goes into the chiefs of the time and the chief, he was a no nonsense kind of guy. Man Chuck goes in there and says, here's my special. The chief said, what's this for? You said, this request and permission from my wife to my fiance to meet the chief of the fire of him and said we can get married. And the chief said, what are you stupid? Don't you know

they're pulling your leg? Get out of hold laugh. Oh my god, that's horrible. But he was a good guy. He was a really good guy. A lot of a lot of good guys in that house. Man say, what about huh, pooty Poody. Poody was a short little black eye could out work anybody on a fire ground. And we played pitch every night when we were night work at a card table. And uh, I don't know if you ever played pitch, but if you bid four and make it in our rules, you went all the money for that hand, and

uh, you had you had to say you were all in. But he wouldn't say. He would stand up and act like you pull guns out and he was an alma far the hell of a farm. That's great? Did you guys, ray, You guys ran in with twenty five like clothes? Was there? Like? Uh? Did you try and beat them in? And stuff like that? The competition back then was more than it is now, I believe anyway. And uh oh yeah, yes, everybody turned out quick and even. And we had street boxes then and most of them were

false. It didn't make any difference. If there was a twenty five box and they were supposed to be first in it, we got there first. I didn't hear the end of it. Man didn't hear the end of eight engine ten truck were our wound up. They were west of us. It was the same way with them. The competition was fierce. It really was. It was good nature, but it was fiercest. I love it. That's good. Makes everybody better, right, coots, thanks, everybody better?

You're right? Makes the upstick game. You know. When we went there, when we turned the engine into a squad, they all hated us. They hated us because we would steal the boxes we made them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, not gonna get out. We're gonna take your box. That's right exactly there for the ticket. Yeah. We if we beat him in, we'd ask them what happened? Your door's stuck down. You couldn't get out? Why what happened? Uh? So July seventy five,

July seventeenth, at a dwelling five five thirty sixth Lauren Street. Yeah, that was three blocks from thirteen Engine, middle of the night, at four o'clock in the morning, I guess, And it was a worker and Stan Williams had the pipe. I don't know where my officer, the captain, wasn't working on it. I wound up behind stand after I got off,

and this place was rolling and they were screaming that people were trapped. There's a three story dwelling row house and when Stands alarm went off for his bottle. I took the pipe and I wound up trying to go up the steps, and it was hottest fire had ever been in And I got to the third floor and my bell went off, and I kept going out of stupidity. And then when of course, in your air runs out and the mask

goes that camp. He took the mask off, went to go down the steps, fell down of steps and fell about ten feet and I didn't know if they told me later. I crawled right over a two year old baby on a slavery way and we lost six people dead, eight injured. And the guy that set the fire, a girl owed him twenty dollars, I'll burn you out, and he fire bombed the place twenty bucks. Twenty bucks. Yeah, that's crazy. Had some high rise fires and the Murphy Homes.

Of those like the Murphy Homes, it was four buildings fourteen stories high, like a fourteenth story ur. I mean it was. It was terrible. That's a good one. I like that one story. I've been in a couple of others. It was terrible. Yeah, you had a guy. He wasn't in our wasn't in our house. It was in another house. Well, we go down there and they would throw stuff out of the high rise, out of some stuff. We went down and uh, he got this guy got hit. We had the cops with us and this fireman

and name Ernie Florentine. The old tary guy had twenty some years and he got hit with a bottle and a helmet that burke cut his face. Cops are staring. He grabs the cop. He's trying to get the gun out of the cops because we grabbed. He's rustling around with the cop. Finally we pulled him away and later I said, Ernie, what are you gonna do if you got that gun out? He said, I was just gonna start basting away a good thing crazy so he can shot in front of us

while we were down there. I mean it was It was a bad, a bad, bad place, man. Wow. He blew him up. A couple of years before I got out of the fire department. They blew them all up, the low rises in there. What was that neighborhood life back then? Was it like the South Bronx? Would you say like it was it? It was never in the South Bronx, But I can I can tell you from what I've read it probably was like the South Pars. I mean it was. It was a bad it got worse. It got

worse. When the crack epidemic came, they got it worse. Willie Gibson, the old guy for twenty five Engines, told me that at one time Pennsylvania Avenue was the main third fair through Westimo at the time. And he said there were night clubs in there. All the top black acts, the where the singers, the top singers, the top proops. They all went to Pennsylvania Avenue. It was really big. And when that when everything got bad and everything got vacant, and the rats took over and the crack heads

took over. Man, I'm telling you, I've never said I hadn't been. Never in my life. I've been to West Baltimore before I got assigned to twenty five Engine or fourth drawn. I was amazed. A lot of vacants, a lot of vacant stare right, oh yeah then and probably less then. When I got the fire department, it was nine seventy thousand people in Baltimore. Now there was five hundred and fifty thousand. Wow, everybody moved out that could move out. I felt sorry. For the people that

couldn't move. They were stuck. They they couldn't come out at night. When I was an eight entril tumble, they couldn't come out at night around there. I remember, I think I told Cobo this. I remember. I think it was ninety three, ninety four. Uh. We went to the fire Expo down there at Baltimore, right in the Harbor, and a

friend of mine, he had like the scanner and everything. He I had just got on the job, but he was like a big buff buss And I remember driving around like in some of the blocks just outside of the Harbor. I don't know what part of Baltimore it was, but you could have told me I was in Lebanon, Like yeah, it was absolutely yeah. I mean it was burned out. It was. I mean it was just people just sitting in the streets like walking around. It looked like I bombed

out, you know what. I what I would think Lebanon or one of those places what you said, eleven On, because I was compared to the Bay Route. Yeah, same thing, same type of thing. I would tell people if they went to your harbor, I said, don't wander away. Yes, there you go. We used to weft more than five or six blocks. No, it's I couldn't even believe I was looking. I was just talking. I don't know how I was talking to. It amazed

me when I first got on the job. In the project areas, like three o'clock in the morning, you get a run maybe kids playing like hopscotch and people out talking, and I'm like, it's three o'clock in the morning. Yeah, the next ten, eleven, twelve, one o'clock, it's like a coach. Nobody's sleep, nobody's awe. I used to going to sleep the world. Yeah, I used to. I used to drive a little truck part time, and if I hadn't deliver in the ghetto, I

made my deliveries. It's between six and seven in the morning because all the crackheads were asleep. Yeah, six and seven in the morning. If you got there at eleven o'clock, they were getting up. They were looking for who they were going to rob. Yeah, they rob you right. Yeah. I did the same thing. I had to trump a canna wrap. In nineteen seventy six, you get a new captain named Charlie Immel. Oh.

Yeah, Captain Goloski made chief. He left Charlie Emo was on four truck and he wanted to do engine work and he came over with us. That was a blessing man. This guy was fun. He was a lot of fun. He was. It was a good captain and one hell of a firefighter. He uh one year with us. I don't know if it was seventy six. It might have been seventy six or seventy seven. He was firefighter the year for Balma City. He had three rescues. The last one we were with him, he crawled up the steps and uh, tipped

the crib over. He couldn't stand up. It was too hot. You didn't have a mask. When he tipped the crib over and a baby rolled out. Wow. He picked the baby up and crawled back down and just as he got the steps to the entire hallway in the in the room flashed over and uh, that was his third rescue of that year. Wow, he got Firefighter of the year. He used to turn he used to turn take the corder on when he turned out because he wanted to hear him.

He wanted to practice if he was first in to say, working fire. He's walking around the firehouse working fire. One day one day, I'm driving box and uh, we don't see anything. And he's getting ready to call on a false alarm. And I look over and a half a block over on McCalla Street, flames are going out the third floor of his row house. I said, Christ, look over there. He picks up the microphone. He says, we got one. I said, been practicing for two

months here, what's going on? I don't know. I think you'll fold them the questioning Henry. Yeah, he was a good guy. He was a good guy. I liked working with him. That's funny. Uh, what about Uh? And I'm up to seventy seven. A lot of these guys still haven't been born yet. Dwelly fire at seventeen hundred Madison Avenue.

Oh yeah, gloves. I was with mal then and we had we had been We had a multiple alarm earlier that day, about five six alarms in the lumber yard and it was it was cold and raining, and I'll come back and I'm on watch from I think I had four to six or two to four. I forget which, but uh, I look out the window and across the street block away when the Loon Avenue flames splow out of the third floor. I turned everybody out. We we go over there to ask

for the box and uh. We get to the top of the steps and I go to get my gloves. I left them back in the quarters of dry already, and I'm we're first. Then I'm laying at the top of the steps and I looked at him, who was snuggling up behind me. I said, gryst, I forgot my gloves. He said, I got a pair. I said good, and he pulled them out and he said, but you're the only pair I got, and he put them on. I like this guy. I'm putting the pipe on my arm and putting my

hands like that, crawling down the hall. Yeah, and we found a guy in there. I should even told us. We found a guy in there dead. And when the smoke cleared, it was blood all over the bathroom. The guy was laying in the bathroom. We said, man, we better leave him there and call the cops. And there were two cops. One of my I grew up with, hung in my hung in our firehouse. And you know their their sense of humor was just as bad as ours. And this guy had been cut his throat, shot him and set

him on fire. And I wanted to make sure he was dead. The cops said, there's the worst case of suicide I've ever seen. So say that ain't cut himself shaven. Yeah, it was a shop reason. Uh So nineteen seventies, Doug get burned. Who's Doug gets burned? Falls the talker, the guy who won't shut up the talking gets burned. Yeah, we getta We gonna that shut him up when he got burned and he was still talking. Oh I got burned, but he was still talking the whole

time. We were in there, frawing on behind him. We crawled down the hallway and just as we started into the room, it's burned, big big room burning somebody, some idiot stuck a hose in the in the window and blew it right on back on us, and Dougie threw him. We wound up out in the hallway again. So I said, come on, we'll get it. We'll get it this time. We'll go back in. And he's like, I got it, I got it. I got He's talking and talking. We started in. Part of the ceiling comes down.

We got three quarter boots on and he's he's crawling and it goes right the embers got right down his boot and there burns lad. He's like a right and he's taking the hoose and he's trying to shoot it down his boot and every time he takes it off the fire the fire gets worse. So we back back out again. So I said, I'll take the plate about I stuck the hose in his boot again. I said, I got it, I'll take it. So I go in and I work it. We get

I get the fire out, and my bell's going off. So I go over the window and I take my helmet off, and I take my mask off, and I lean out the window to get some air. Just as twenty truck four throwing the twenty four foot ladder into the window. They can't see me because of the smooth hit me right between the eyes for a couple of seconds, only a couple of seconds. Take me outside. Don't like this, not the funk out. I'm going to Wow, he says,

are you sure see my leg? That's a great story with that was great man, He was great. Oh my god. Cool. Can you imagine you finally catch your break? You stick your head out the window and get a blow and hit you like I had hurt like a bitch through the ply without the window, and it came down like a piece of paper and hit the captain right in the head. Oh man, So we got a fire

on Freemont Avenue too, Yeah, seventy eight. Yeah. Like I said, the competition was fierce to beat beat the companies in also eight engine get to this fire dwelling, fire sucker floor. We get there at the same time. Into the quarter line inch the three quarter line. We're going inside. I'm the pipe man, eight inch pipe man. We get there, We're gonna mask off. The mask is tagging again. Gotta take your gloves off, take your helmet off, put the mask on. Pot distrats,

put the helmet on. All I'm out of the corner of mine. I can see him. He's keep it. We're both doing the same thing. He stops to put his gloves on. I said, I ain't put my clothes. I go up the steps. No clothes I get. I get up to the top, landing the fires over to my left, and as I sco to turn, somebody hollered, look out, look out, it's

over your head. And I turn and look and it blows out and a ceiling over my head and I just curled up into a ball and put the pipe straight up over my head and open it and everything all the fire is falling and I can feel it landing on my hand and nothing I could do about it. So I hear guys, I'm like you, are you all right? And I said I'm okay. So I get the fire out and I asked Chuck cushto from the truck. I said, shine your hand on my leg. I think I burned my hand and he's I mean you're light

on my hand. He shines his leg and all the skin like this said cheese. I go outside. I'm in the medicare and this is this is fire department. This is just like fireman. I'm into medicure that it's getting ready to bend my head up, get ready to pull away on the back door to medic chief Chuck pushed there. The guy that was in there that shined his light was the door. He says, you all right? I said, yeah, I burn my hands. So I got to go down

to the hospital. He said, you're not coming back to work today, are you? I said hell no? He said, can I have your lunch? I was off. I was off part of while I was first and some second degree, and I was off for over a month. I guess, holy thought, I thought you were going to say, he was going to say, here's your gloves. I doubt even more. Uh, I was lucky I didn't get in trouble for that. That's when I went

to ten truck, ten truck, not eight. I started. You mentioned eight as well, so I thought you might have had some correspondence with these guys for eight engine. Now you know what happened When I was at twenty five and thirteen. Nobody was taking pictures. There were no phone cameras. You know. When I got to eight and ten, we had a guy that room with named Jim Keith. Great guy. He was a pharmaceutical salesman

for Lily and he was also a professional photographer. He did weddings and he was a firebuff and he had permission to ride with thirteen truck Rick Lego his company, and he rode with ten truck where I was, where I had gone, and that's where all these pictures are from. Let me see that picture again, guns, who is who are some of those guys in there? Uh? The guy on the far left, that's Rodney Carter. Hell of a farmer and the guy in the middle he was a lieutenant. I

mean the guy next to Rodney that was We called him Duke. He got all busted up on a fire and when a collapse broke, broke eight ribs. The guy bending down went through fire school with my son Ray. It's Moose Moose. He was a moose. He was a big, powerful boy. And the guy standing up with the mustache next to him was the pump operator Alex, and then Bob McMillan next to him, the tall boy. We rode to work together for years and years. Carpoo went into ten truck

and then Charlie next to him. He was with us for a little while. He came over his first actor man, and then me and then Mike Proser. He was the other ev D with me. He recalled him the energizer bunny. You couldn't wear him out. I mean he would work I think until he until he dropped dead, and they were all. I was so lucky in all the years that I was in that I've worked with so many really good, good fireing man. I felt like I was extremely lucky

to have that happen. It's like Disney World ra Yeah, and here they were. They were a bunch of good guys. I don't keep in touch with many of him anymore. Rodney died of cancer, Duke died, Moose just retired. I talked to Alex, I talked to Bobby, and Mike moved to West Virginia when he retired. Mike Prosier, he moved to West Virginia when he go far away from West Baltimore as he could get. Yeah.

Hell yeah. All the rigs in Baltimore still white. Uh uh yeah now they're yeah, I think except we had the Gray Ghost was there? It is. That's the one I drove until the Great Ghost. That's the Great Ghost. It was supposed to be painted, and they never did it. They left the primer for years. Nothing no, nothing, nothing generic fight. That's no frills right there. I gotta tell Potter, Potter Wills, that was a that truck. When you would it rode like the wind,

I mean it would five speed and it could really roll. And the neighbors they knew it as the Great Ghost. Cops knew it as the Gray Ghost. I freaking love it. Man. That's a great pick. Look at that thing. Huh that's over the roof of ten truck, and that photographer friend of mine, Jim Keith, he took that. You see all three storage dwellings clock a block after block. Not a car on the road. I'm sorry, does a pickup truck on the other way before you a

to ten? You were at fifteen right? Yeah? Before Well, I got promoted to ev D and I went to twenty five truck. It was the second slowest truck company in Balmer City and I almost went out of my mind there. It was just way, way, way too slow for me. I was called a floating EVD. If they needed anywhere in that battalion, if they needed somebody driver, tiller, but all three trucks were slow in that battalion. I didn't like it. And then Captain Gileskie called me

up, so I hear you're not too happy yet. He was the chief and a busy battalion. I said, no, I'm not and he said, edulate the flat with me. I said, I'd appreciate it. I think I floated for less than a year. And then when he called me up two weeks later, I was in his battalion and I wound up at fifteen truck, which was in the east side in the ghetto, single house, real busy and a bunch of good guys, guys that knew what they were doing. Had a big, big barrel Chester lieutenant that I watched him

pick a civilian up that staggered into the firehouse screaming at us. He picked him up by the seat of his passing his collar, threw him out of the firehouse body. I was like, we need that was there. I was there for a couple of years. I had some good fires there. Where is that picture Gouds with the three guys walking away? Where was that? Oh? That was that's Bob McMillan and me and and Mike Brazier on the right. That was it? That was it. That's all old ten

truck. That's the gray goose. That's the back of the gray goose. That's a great picture. Man. Yeah, I like that. Jim Keith took that one too. We had maybe it was a second alarm on Pennsylvania Avenue. We were walking back to the truck in the rain. Oh, there's the little t tent under there, yeah, truck ten. Yeah, Yeah, that's the sport Tilla cabs I've seen after a while until the cab broke and instead of fixing it, they just put it off. So you're

driving like Kramer sat like at fifteen Truck. When I went to fifteen Truck, their first line truck was was uh, just a windshield in a seer room, no cab. And I used to tell there were younger, younger guys there. I used to tell them, said, man, make you put your seatbelt on. I said, if you hit a curb, you'll go flying out of there. And there was a guy there named Tony Rose,

good guy man, nice guy, young guy. He was still didn't put a seatbelt on, got hit my car at Fayette and Patterson Park and somehow by the time they got it stopped, he was up inside the wheel well of the tiller and his leg was almost cut off. And we were I was at a union meeting and uh they announced it. Fifteen truck just racked up in its bed. Sounds bad. The rescue is going. So we left him and rode up there. Time we got there, they had to take the timber wheel off to get him out. Oh my god,

he was screaming for him to kill him. He was in so much pain. And they saved his leg, but he was never able to come back to work. Oh my, he would have had a seatbelt on. Nothing would happen. I've had a few guys in the wheel well that they don't usually do well in there. No will wind up at the wheel well. It's not a good place. No no. And I was there for a couple of years. Ten were talking about right, I was fifteen, oh fifteen, But then you go to ten. You get any good fire stories

from ten? Oh? Yeah, ten ten. I spent seventeen years at ten. One or two coobs one or two, three or four. Yeah. I worked with Lieutenant Don't who was probably eight eight. I'd saone who left with the white hair. I love it. Uh hard as nails, this guy man five eight five eight. If I'm stretching it, then Coop stretches it all the time. And if you did something and another officer hollered at you, man, he would come over and get in that officer's face

and scream out him. If he needs to be hollered at, I'll holler at him. Hell. Yeah. He was in the old school. No mask or very You saw him with a mask, he was like, hey, look look he's got a mask on. Yeah, very very solid. He used to be five ten, right, But you know when you get the gray hair, you start shrinking, you know, shrinking, that's shrinking. We we're down the high ride. We're down to Murphy Holmes. And like I said, Murphy homes were filthy, filthy, filthy. And we

get a fire on the eighth floor. And the elevators were always out of service. They were broken. And so me and and uh Rick through Theberg and Martin office. We put masks. Thanks one got the mask kind of down. We got to run to the eighth floor. Well Doult she was a lot older than us, but with no man as going and it was great shape. He takes off. He pieces up there. We get up there, he said. He's kneeling down. He says, Christ of smoke's

down here. And the door is closed to the hallway at each end, so we may ask up. He opens the door. We go in. We're calling I go. We dropped this door open. I go all the way down, drop the other door open, try and get some ventilation. I'm coming back. I'm I'm duck walking coming back. There's Lieutenant Dots. His mouth is on the floor and his fallway and his lips dragging on the floor. I said, is it fluid taste? Lieutenant? You knocked it. He was a good guy man, he was. He was a hard

guy and uh Rick Sludeberg worked there. He drove and I tiller and uh and he could drive to he could make that thing fly and it was and he was a really really good fuck That's what I said. I had so much luck working with these guys that were such good firefighters. Yeah, have to worry about your back. These guys at your back at all. I'm sure they said the same about you, right, Huh, I'm sure they said the same thing about you. Oh yeah, I would hope they did.

Yeah. Uh So November twenty eighty five, Lieutenant Nelson Taylor, Yeah, he wasn't on our shift. We came in on day work and his shift was still standing. They were standing a stairing at the door and I walked in. It's going on and somebody said, Lieutenant Taylor got killed in the dwelling last night. Turns out that they had had a fire in a basement and he was one eight engine. Lieutenant Taylor was and the pipe man they stopped to mask up and gloves and he got done before the pipe man.

He said, I'll take the pipe, and he went in and he got to the basement steps and he started down and it blew back, and he threw himself backwards, and there was a refrigerator behind him, and he bounced off of it and rolled down the steps, and the captain of the truck tended to Captain Shugate. He tried to get him, and he wound up getting it, almost almost died himself. The tenant, Taylor died down

there in the basement and they left. It pissed me off. They left the whole shift one due to the rest of the night running if they got another fire. Oh my god, really you do that? Oh man, Oh, who the fuck made that cold? I guess the chief. I don't know, chief of fire department. I guess. Yeah, that was cold. That was cold. That pissed everybody off. Taylor I didn't know that well. He was one of the other shifts. He worked from the

East Side for most of his career. But everybody that talked about him had nothing but good things to say. In twenty six years, it says, huh, yeah, a shame, shame. What about the high rise firing the homes? And that was one of my dults we're crawling on the floor. Okay, falling on the floor. Look back on that one. Mm hmmm. And I had a fire on Laurence Street and got Laurence Street was

a business street. And we pull up and there's a girl. The smoke coming out the second floor too story joint and uh, I said, teenage girl sitting on the steps and me and Donald Horton got off. So there's nobody in there? Is that? She said, Oh yeah, my mother and father upstairs in the Oh my god. We rush upstairs. They were

in the back bedroom and it was the middle room burner. We crawled past the middle room and we forced the door open, hit about halfway and we find the guy and we dragged him out to the steps and we go back in and we're pushing on the door, pushing the door, and we finally get in and we find a woman. She the reason we couldn't get the door, but she was behind it and we drag her out. And the whole time I'm thinking, I know, move is coming with this pipe so

we don't get trapped in here. And that's what I said, you could depend on these guys. Man, And the eight engine came up and we crawled by and they were coming into hitting the fire. We crawled the steps, dragged the people outside, and they both made a full recovery. And there's a picture, one of the pictures in there, me and Donald Horton sitting on the running board of the truck after we pulled those people out. That's it right there. And the guy Jim Keifer took that picture. He

said it's one of his favorite pictures. And what was telling when that picture that we didn't know until later. You can see I'm relaxed, I'm okay. Donald's leaning on his knees, leaning on the truck like he's having trouble breathing. I was saying, that's a tripod position there. Yeah, damn it, that ems coming out and you listen, we've been talking about it all night. That's all I got in my head is d fibbs and uhs. A couple of years after that picture was taken, he was home and

had a massive heart attack and died. A yeah, he was in his I think he was like forty some years old, like middle forties. Look at you there is that okay, looks like a movie star. Rough for crying out loud. Look I like looking at it because I'm thinner there eighty five there, now I'm two twenty. Did you get a metal or citation for that and anything for that? Yeah, we we probably would have. Well, we didn't push it, and we had a We had a really

tough battalion chief. He was hard to please. To please, you say, two people who lived, I mean, come on, I mean that was the way it was. It's just the way it was back then. That's crazy, right, just doing the job, right, bro. Yeah, yeah, John Johnson said Charles Bronson. He does look a little bit like Charles Bronson. Yeah, all my life, my life, Yeah, John Johnson's right, which was piggy on the same one we just had. Yeah, yeah, I would rather look like Brad Pitt. I didn't work

down. And then in eighty six I burned one whole side in my face a gas meter in a basement fire. We had it knocked. It was just smoldering in places, and we didn't know that the gas meter was leaking, and all of a sudden I had a helmet on with the shield down, no mask, and all of a sudden it lit off and the gas was inside my mask and it burned the whole right side of my face.

Ouch. I drove out the basement window. It was about twenty degrees outside, and I'm laying there thinking, man, I hope I didn't burn my eye or what I hope it didn't lose my eye. And the paramatics came running over and poured cold water on it. Took my breath away, and then they thought I was having a heart attack. Took me to the hospital and they kept putting cold compresses on it and wound up smearing silver dean all over. It was all blistered up, and so I was in there a

couple of hours. They released me. I go back to ten truck, take my gear back and get get I'm gonna get my car and go home. I walked in and the guys were like, god damn. Donald's looked at me and said, you were now Robert Redford to begin with, that was no. I was off duty for quite a while with that one. I was that was pretty painful. I was gonna pull that up for you, kid. Somebody they're asking about the towel out with no boom that was

running coals. They want you to talk a little bit about what the towel out of that had no boom. I'm assuming the tower was no boom running coals. That's that's not mine. Well all right, well there you go, Toman. What are you doing? Because I had Tom was hitting it up too. You'll get that twenty bucks back Tomomy. Sorry, yeah, different guy. It was maybe laut of forty nine. Maybe I don't know. Maybe all right. So I met Joaquin Phoenix. Oh digit he was

riding ten truck. I was, I just retired, just retired, and they had him riding ten truck to learn how to act like a fireman and somebody else for Baltimore, saying that they were really cool, both of those guys. To Volta, Oh yeah, my son, John Travolta wrote five truck with my son. I got a picture of my son and him standing next to each other. But the guys that take you said, uh, Joaquin Phoenix, we're going down to the bar down in Canton. He's buying.

We want you to come down and meet him. And I went down there. He was a little guy, man like five't seven or something. Oh whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Hey, you're not standing up. I can't telling you I am standing a rank five seven might be a stretch too. I was just remember I tell you about when you get the gray, hey, you start shrinking. Here what I wanted to tell you. When I was at fifteen truck, we got a little garage vacant

full of garbage. We go inside and no mass four of us and the engines there and we're pulling, pulling things apart and everything, and so whatever was burning effected this bed and we all were having shortness of breath and throwing up. So they called him, and we know we're gonna be all right, but they called him. Medic units. So they take me. They're taking me to Johns Hopkins Hospital, and the guy driving a medic was a

good friend of mine. We played softball in the fire department softball team together and everything. Name is Jerry Morgan. So we get to the hospital and I'm on a stretcher and they take me out and they're wheeling me in the hospital and just being a smart ass, I grabbed Jerry by the arm. I said, Jerry, I said, if I don't make it, promise me you'll have sex with my wife twice a week. He looked me right aye, and he said, I'm not cutting back for newbody. That's it

right there, Mike dropping. Wow, that's awesome. And we were talking about fifteen truck. I forgot put that other question up. Somebody there was, Mike Ray. I'm sorry, Mike murrit murrits I did. He was a captain of ten truck. Not on my shift. He wasn't on my shift. But yeah, microphone Mike, that's what we called him. Good, good, God good. His father I worked with. His father's father was a captain of fourteen engine. Oh no, well, I got detailed

down there. He was really a strict captain. Mike wasn't as strict as his fathers, but he was. They called him microphone micas he would call in the size up and it would go on and on. You know, the windows are day on his flowers and the windows yellow curtains. He was a real good guy. I think he wound up going up to New York when he retired, I believe, and I'm not sure, not in the fire department, stup there for relatives or something. I'm not sure. I

never laughed about that guy. Oh that's freaking funny man. All right. So December eighty seven, paramedic Pam, Yeah, she was we called her aunt be off of Andy Griffith's show. She was a chunky, chunky girl, come from that's her. We came from up the up far out in the county, somewhere paramedic signed our house and we thought, we thought she'll never last. There's too much blood, too much core, too much everything for a look a little country girl like her, And and we bugged her

and she she fit in. She gave it back and she was. Everybody wound up really looking after her and really liking her. And she was work. They worked all fourteen hour nights and she was exhausted when she got done. And I was sitting at the because she was leaving, and I said, Pam, you take it easy going home. You had a rough night. She had about a twenty five thirty mile drive. Oh, I will.

And she left and I went back in the kitchen and Captain Fugate came back about fifteen minutes later and he said, everybody, listen up, said I hate to tell you this. He said, Pam's dead. She got the Lafayette Druid Hill and blew through the light without thinking about it, and I hit by a bus, killed her instantly ejected her right through the passion to window killed her. Wow, that was tough man. I come home and told my wife, Man, I had tears of my eyes. That

was that was That was tough man. Her father was Captain Nabaul Mac County Fire Department. To this day he swears it's because they worked the paramedics after death. Yeah maybe she just lost, just lost. Yeah yeah, cruising through the lights with the lights and sider. Yeah you know what that's true man either Yeah. I said the dog story and thenngined thirty six telling the story. Yeah, now you have to six engine was a forty six engine

was a single company that we ran with. They were a mile away from us or so single house. Good guys and uh fire prevention week. They would bring in school classes, show them the fire engine. So they bring in a kindergarten class or first grade whatever it was. They bring them into thirty six engines. Well, they fed a ghetto dog there all the time. So the kids are is that the fire dog? Is that the fire dog? They were like, yeah, that's the fire dog. Make them

happy. So they told the teachers, they said, look at the gongas off. We gotta get out of here. You got to get the kids off the side. Make sure you know everybody's away before we pull out. They did a run, the gongers off, the kids are all on the side. They get up in the truck, pull out, ran right over the dog killed it. Jesus. Within twenty minutes, everybody in the fire department that was working knew what happened. Oh my god, that's so funny. No, it is. It is to us. My wife said,

you shouldn't tell that story. What is that? That's their thirty six engine where it was thirty six? All right, that's a good looking job. Yeah. I just wanted to ship. It was something I had. Oh

that's good. Then in eighty nine I had a fire. We had a fire at four in the morning on Presbury Street and I was leaving for can Couon on vacation the next day, and so a little silent prayer to the fire gods, maybe leave us alone the rest of the night, and we went out, I don't know, three or four o'clock in the morning.

I was I was was that driving, Yeah, I was tillering. The rick was frying, and we pull up two story joint and there was this big woman in the window on the second floor and she's got two kids, one on each side of her, once passed out across the window sill. The other one's just staring and she's screaming a stare. She's a big woman, man, she's screaming hysterically. So there's a guy on step ladder, civilian on a step ladder trying to get to her. So we pulled the

twenty four off. We kicked the step ladder out of the way, and I'm going up the ladder. I'm thinking, I got to get this kid who's unconscious before he falls back in. And the smoke is just roaring out of this place. And I get about halfway up the ladder and she dives out the window, comes straight down my ladder, and I grabbed the rails and turned my head and she crashed into me, and I'm like, God's

still here. I thought for sure she'd take me with her, and I took her down one rung at a time, and I got her on the ground and I got her over and I said, no, is there anybody else in there? She said, there's five more people in there. And Rick and Donald had thrown another ladder next to the twenty four and they got the boy out. There was in shock, staring, and then Rick went

up did a great job. The window came down on the kid, and Rick went up and pushed the window up and strouded the windowsill, got the kid out, pulled his leg out, climbed down the ladder, brought him out. I went inside, Me and Donald went inside. And it is roaring rooms and I can't get to the back. The back's not the front's not burning. But if I move, there's nobody with a line yet it's going to get us. And here comes somebody with a line eight engine with

a lineup the steps and they're hitting it. And another thirteen or somebody else came up and they're hitting it. And I said, don't let that get down this hallway. And me and Donald crawled down the hallway, and we found a teenage boy in a side room and dragged him out, and we crawled back down. We found a woman in the front room, dragged him out her out, and somebody found a grandmother in a chair but not too far from the window, and somebody else got somebody else had It was five

of them all together, and uh, but none of that. We lost all five of them. The only ones who lived with the three that we got out the window. So she jumped out the window and left the two kids there. She come down head first, left her kids in there, left their kids in there. Yeah, that blew my mind when I was thinking about it afterwards. Yeah, I mean I've seen that a few times too. With that, people like really panic and they they just forget what

their responsibility is. I guess I don't know, Yeah what what? Yeah, I couldn't believe. I was still not louder when she hit me, because she put it. She was probably two hundred and fifty pail bumbles, bounce, rookie, he's on it. It's a new roofie. Man getting up to the head of something. I don't know what it is. What's good, let's better now, blood flow's getting up to his head. Now, that's sit so Bright Street. That's nineteen ninety. You don't know what

it was, nineteen ninety, nineteen ninety. Yeah, somewhere in there. Yeah, we are thirteen truck was one that fire with us rick Legger's old company, and we had to report of kids inside. And we get in there and we're searching, searching, and we don't find anybody. And I went to the window. I hollered at the chief. I said, we can't there's nobody in here. He said, the people swear to God, there's four kids in there. So we back inside, was searching, searching,

and one guy saw Paul Evard from thirteen truck. Yeah, I got him. They were in the bathroom, behind the toilet. They were small, and they crawled under the sink and behind the toilet, and we lost three. One lived, we got but Paul. He had come in the back window and in that and searched that. Biff never thought to look behind it. They couldn't say the smoke, but you never thought to look behind the bit of the toilet. And he was beside himself. He took that

one hard. He took that real hard. The guys from his company here, you could see they were. They surrounded him, just talking to him, telling him, man, nobody would have found these kids. You know, you can't think you look everywhere, you don't look behind the Yeah, you don't look behind the toilet. And then to have four of them there is yeah, the same. It's all small too, little young kids. Oh. So April eighteenth, nineteen ninety, Donnie Horton dies. Yeah,

that was my buddy at ten truck. He said, when I said that a massive heart attack at home. Oh okay, lieutenant, don't call me up. I was home. He said, you better sit down for this one. Why. What's the matter? He said, Donald died today and I could have not been with me and Donald work. We were, you know, the whole shift was tight, and losing him was so unexpected. So he was the practical joker on the shift. You know, you might get a water balloon in your face coming out of quarters, and that was

That was a blow to all of us. It was really upsetting, really upsetting. And then nineteen ninety my son got my son Ray got the fire department. Oh nineteen ninety huh yeah, you're oldest son, right, yeah, getting ready to retire. That's them right there. That was the unusual experience because he was detailed the ten truck and I was crazy. He was still and we had we had a little ten cent fire and Jim Keiths took that picture after the fire. That's awesome. That's a good picture. Good

picture. That's a great story too. How old is he that looks? How old is he there? And he's obviously he wasn't thirty yet, right, he's fifty three now. He was probably his late late twenties. Yeah, probably late twenty Yeah. I think he was twenty when he got in and he made EVD three years later, so he was probably twenty six, twenty seven, twenty eight somewhere. Now. Does it work? I mean it kind of. I don't know. You know, we still have hooks

here and stuff like that. Were you were you able to put them where you wanted to put him or he just was his When he got out of fire school, I had had I had had some difficulties with the chief of the fire department, some arguments, and I asked the cradle busy house, and they didn't do it. He sent him to a good house, a reasonably busy house, but a good house, a lot of really good, good guys. He still keeps in touch with. Yeah. Is he still on the job. Was he retired too? Is Ray retired your son?

No, he's going to retire probably a couple three four months. I think he's got thirty thirty three. You have thirty four years and when he retires sounds good to me? Rough right, help, that's my youngest son that was after a fire. You had in West Ballton. He was. I got him a thirteen engine when he got out of fire school. I got him a thirteen engine that called downtown, and the guy pulled some strings for me, and he went to my old company a thirteen engine. He stayed

there twenty six years. Really yeah. He comp me in Baltimore most of the time. He's he's out now. No, he's not out. He transferred out of after twenty six years. He got beat up really bad. He he had had a broken collar bone and a broken kneecap, a broken ankle. I was a dog headge over there. I know. He got beat up bad. And he had a chance to go from six thousand runs to three thousand runs and another engine company. Oh yeah, he called me up. Of course I was retired. He called me up. He said,

I got a chance to go to twenty one engine. What do you think I should do? I said, man, you're fifty years old, you're all busted up, not going to get any easier. I think you ought to take it. Yeah, And then he called his his brother. My oldest son spent twenty some years at the busiest truck company, Truck five on the East Side, and he got He eventually transferred to a slowhouse after twenty eight years. I think he called his brother up and said, what

do you think I ought to do? Man? I love thirteen engine, but I got a chance to go to twenty one. Couple of runs in there. Ray said, don't be an idiot, don't take it. Help on it. That was a couple of years ago. So they have do they have sons that are maybe looking to get out of My youngest son. Steve has an eighteen year old son. But he's not going to the fire department. He's he's a genius and I mean I don't use that word lately.

I got you. He's been accepted at twelve different colleges. Wow, it looks like he's going to go to Firman down in South Carolina for a computer science computer science and computer what is it? Cybersecurity? Who is that your producer in the back? Yeah, boss, listen, we know about these technically challenged guys. Believe me, if you called me up and and I wasn't married to her, this wouldn't be going. There's no way I

can do this. How long are you guys married? Now? June will be fifty six years woo if Lewis beautiful never had a fight that he won nineteen ninety five. This is the biggest fall you ever went to. Yeah, that's that far behind me. I don't know if you could see it. Oh that's the one that was scaring me before. Yeah, it was. It was vacant. The one burned was vacant. We get a little closer and there you go. It spread. It spread to this one and

this one was occupied, and it burned out to the ground. It burned to the ground. That burned another five story building next to it to the ground. We couldn't put it out. I think Warwick Avenue stopped it. It couldn't jump Warwick Avenue. And I mean we built. We were there all night long, and we came we went home, and came back night work, and went back again, bail and ordering. There was eleven alarms. The heavy, heavy timber, all that stuff, heavy timber. The

inside, yeah, the inside. Yeah, but they were old, old buildings. The original fire building, the one that's burning that you can see, that was set by all vagrants trying to keep it. They've gone for those big streets. Yeah, they knew how to do it back in the eighteen hundred and we're gonna put a big street there, a big street here. Yeah, yeah, it's this fivey fires with my sons. Is that

the story? When Ray was Ray was the e V D. And at one time he was an eighteen truck, which was not far from ten truck. And I had a fire with him. And I'm on the third floor and I'm crawling down the hallway, got a mais going and there's it's a long hallway and there's rooms on both sides. So I'm crawling down the hallway and I see a light at the other end of the hallway on a floor. I know it's got to be another fireman, So I hollered down.

I said, I'll get my right, I'll get the rooms on my right. You get the rooms when you're right, So we cover them all. I hear okay, and there's a pause. Not heard, Dad, Oh, I said, yeah, right, that's me. Oh man, you med up getting hurt on that fire tours Red Tator Cup went off to me for a long time, but it was neat to be crawling down towards and hell, it doesn't get better than that, man kill me. That is

that you? Dad? My youngest son I saw a lot of him because he was a thirteen engine and I was a ten truck, and they were or not that far apart. We weren't different shifts, but if one of us was on overtime or got caught extra at or whatever, we would see each other. But the first time I saw him, I'm up on a roof. It's a multiple alarm not too far from his firehouse. I'm up on a roof cut a hole in the roof, and I'm working my ass off because the roof got ninety years of tor it's a tarrow on it,

and I glance at my area ladder and I can see it moving. I know somebody's coming up, and I go back to working and I hear, hey, old man, you need some help. And I looked over and it's my youngest son. Said we have to work with balth of them at a job, and then, oh, blessed man great. Four hours later, had had a dwelling fire and I'm at the top of the steps and he comes up the steps with a line and flops down right next to me, and he got water and I crawled in behind him. He's hitting the

fire. I'm in behind him and I'm searching it all. This is like movie stuff. I don't think we've we've never had a guy on the show that says they asked like that, not that, man, not like that. And then at that same night, four in the morning, get a fire right around the corner from ten truck on Kerry Street goes to a second alarm. I believe, I'm not positive, but it was a It was a really really good working fire. And when it was over, I'm up

front. There was my son again, and I looked at him. I said, you know, those first two fires, that was pretty cool. That was pretty unique. I said, but this ship's getting old now, man. But I was really proud to say that both my boys were really really good fire. And you got to see him doing it. You were doing it with them. In fact, I had I had an older veteran like me at the time say to me one day, talking about Ray. He said, let me tell you something, my fire ever get trapped somewhere,

that's who I want coming to get me. I thought, Man, that's high phrase right there. Man, Hell yeah, what else is that beside your reputation? Right? Really? Yeah, it was good fire, Steven, he was doing it. You gotta play that one. Oh he's up to do it? Do I have that one? Do I have it? I don't know if I was up there doing all right. So listen, this is like the pinnacle right here. So you finally get the what is it, Rescuer of the Year? You got well, because I didn't.

The companies and were on the fire but it was right around the corner from ten truck and Mike Proser was tiller, and and I was driving, and Mike was that's the guy they called them energizer, Bunny good good fireman man. Well, we pull up a large three story roke home row home, and there's a little girl sitting the windowsill, getting ready to jump. And I stopped the truck and I get up on the turntable and I'm watching

as they grabbed the thirty five. They throw the thirty five and it comes up short, and Mike goes up the thirty five and he can't reach her. And he gets up higher and higher until he's up on the next to the last rung with his chest pushed up against the building and his arms were up like this. And he told me later, he said to her,

hand, I know you're scared. But you gotta let go. She was maybe three feet above him, and she let go, and when he caught her, he went back and I turned my head because I thought they were coming down, and he threw his chest into the wall and stayed like that until he could get a hold of her and start down the ladder. Wow. I through the aira ladder. I was supposed to ventilate the roof, but they were screaming. There were more kids inside, and I knew the

thirty five we wasn't gonna dohim any good. So I threw the air out to the third floor and I went up. I didn't have a mask on, and I went up and I'm crawling around and I didn't find anybody right away, and Mike Brosier came up the air the ladder with a mask on, and we're crawling around the room and I heard him holler I got one, and he said, go to the window. You don't have a mask, I'll hand him to you. And I was hung up. My mask straps were hung up on something. I said, take them, take them

out, take them out. I can't get through the window. And he got over to the window and I finally got unhooked, and we got out the window and we got the got the baby down, and two others got the two guys, my Lieutenant Jones from ten Truck and Scott Mike Fields. They went inside. They got two out and somebody in the back and somebody out and I forget how many we rescued. Six I think brought them all out and they all survived. Got them all out and they all lived.

Paramedics did a great job on them and the companies they were when the fire were nominated for Fire Rescue of the Year for Baltimore City and we won that and we were all honored at Tawson University Black Tied Dinner, Governor, the mayor, everybody was there. It was, uh, it was our fifteen minutes of fame. It was pretty cool. It was nice to be recognized. Nice. Yeah, man, now he got two hours of fame on here, right, So you are a kid about this guy. I'll take

the dinner. I think I'll pick let us see black Tie Fair dinner, three idiots, black black tire fan. Yeah, it was. It was quite quite a career. It was. I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it. That's pretty Uh, listening to that that grab that that that guy made on the ladder. Oh, I'm telling you that's legit. Man. That was that was a ballsy thing. If anybody's ever been on a ladder, you know, they know that's scary shit. I'm up two stories

cleaning my gut is out. I'm like, what the fuck I'm saying. If you're standing on the last rung, you ain't. You ain't at the window. That ain't. No Joe, you talking about clean arms. Go back cleaning your gut a out. After I'd been retired for ten years, i was sixty four years old, and every year I'd been up on my roof walking along the edge with a leaf blower, blowing the gut leaves out of the gutters. I'm sixty four years old. I got up there and

I went, whoa, I could fall off here. I gotta keep waking up here. Then we moved to a condo. Yeah, hell yeah. Now they mowed my launch collect my pen for a while. Lois is gonna kill me, that's right. Then I retired. I retired in twenty year one. Oh wait, we missed one story. The Lucky Lockets. Oh yeah, we were lucky. The whole family was lucky. They had a really bad fire on the east side and a guy from thirteen engines. The

floors collapsed, they were thrown into the basement burned. A guy with thirteen engines got burned, but my youngest son was off. Guy from five truck got trapped, My oldest son was off, and ten truck Mike Prosier was the first one down in the basement to try and drag him out. And all three of us were off duty at that time. Because that could have been that could have been real bad, could have been real bad for us, but it wasn't. And they always call my oldest son Lucky Lockett.

I mean, I mean, no matter what happens then and he comes out on a good side. Put that. You got that picture of me and my boys when we retired. Yes, I was waiting to bring up that's it. Yeah, I was last night last night in the fire department and they got permission to come over and ride with me. I had to fire my next to last night. I wanted to fire my last night, so bad guy. I should have paid somebody who abbed that one. But you got the Pike Act, that's you know. Yeah, we could have hide

Mike cologne to go out and do something. Set a couple of fives out there something I don't know, you know him, he's itching? What he's itching? What's the tones to drop? We had a bunch of runs where we didn't have any fars. You got to work with him anyway though, both of them, which is unheard. I don't think we've ever had anybody on the show that actually got to work, go to work, work with

like like legit work rights job or something. But to have you know, you've crawled down the hall and then the other guy coming the other way is your kid? Hilarious. I gotta say you were right. This guy is the guy. This guy got. That's what they said. Cobo, all right, stand by we got because we're behind, we got to play commercials. Let's play the h what do we do? Let's do and then you

get your old school tip when he does his thing right? Yes, yes, yes, that's come get your autograph copy of They Saved New York at this year's FDIC twenty twenty four at the Getting Salty Booth. It's the nation's premiere fire conference and photographer Glenn Osden will be there and he'll autograph your book at the aforementioned Getting Salty Booth during exhibit hours on both Thursday and Friday,

April eighteenth and nineteenth, respectively. Each book will come with a limited edition sixteen by twenty color poster that is suitable for framing and This limited edition Qualfee table book features the compelling stories of a ninety FD and Y firefighters and is almost three hundred pages packed with action photos from the nineteen seventies all the way

up to today's FD and Y fire operations. Read the personal stories of the men and women who fought the warriors, fires, the World Trade Center and Black Sunday tragedies, and almost every major incident in the last fifty years of the FD and Y. Come see us at the Getting Salty booth in the hallway outside the main exhibit area Thursday and Friday of FDIC Week, April eighteenth and nineteenth, twenty twenty four. And if you get there early enough,

Louise and I will not be bagged up. We will not be in the cups. Yet. Get there early and we won't be in the cups. I don't know about that, but yeah, I don't know about that. That's a trink of thumb. But all right, you know what time it is, though? What time? What time is it? What time is it? The old old school day day? All right, right, take it away, kid. If I was going to talk to the rookies nowadays, I would tell them that there's a time for play, there's a time

for laughing, but there's a time for work. And don't get the too confused, because work is serious. You can lose your life. Somebody else from some way, you can lose their life. You've got to listen to the old guys. What you learned a fire school is nothing compared to what the old guys in your companies can tell you what to do, when to do it, or when not to do it. It's fun, it's a lot of laughs. The kitchen's always fun. But when that gong goes off,

it'll take it serious because it's no joke. You can get hurt or killed very easily out there. Excellent, excellent, great career brother, great stories. Man. I love guys. I can tell stories. And he

lived it. He was doing it, Stephen. Can I tell you something about my youngest son real quick after he had been in less than a year, maybe a year The Discovery Channel made a documentary called Streets of Fire and it was shown in Europe and then it was shown in the United States and they featured thirteen engine and they featured his shift and they featured him a lot because he was a rookie. He come in in ninety five. This was

either ninety five or ninety six, and it's still on YouTube. You bring up you see it on YouTube. I'm going to watch it and you'll see him. He's the youngest. He looks like he's twelve. What's it called Street to Fire Fire? Oh, we got to talk about the book quick too. Yep, yeah, the book. Yeah, the book book FRC. Yeah. When I had been retired, let's see twenty fifteen, four or five years, I decided to write. I wasn't writing a book.

I wanted to write the memoirs for my grandkids to read when they got older. And my mother had kept scrap books. She kept four scrap books of all newspaper articles and fires that I was on, and then she passed. I was still in the fire department, and I kept the fifth scrap book from my up until I retired. And when I decided to write my memoirs, I just opened that first scrap book and there was a little article in there about my first fire. Wow, And you know you always remember your

first fire, and it brings back a lot of memories. I don't even know how to turn on a computer. My wife's a secretary. She turns on the computers, brings up word. So I just sit there, hunt and pe yes, it just like that. And I did that for about a year off and one's high. I get in a roll hours. Then I wouldn't do anything for days, and I get on a roll again, and I'd do it. And when I got it, when I got it all done, and she printed it all out and I gave it to her.

I said, what do you think she's looking through it? She said, you know what you got here? I said what she said, you got a two hundred and sixty page paragraph. He said, I'll take care of that way. Oh what a good way. Won in the book it was memoirs. And then my son Ray took it to work, and a guy at his firehouse said, tell your son to put it on a disc, or your father to put it on a disc. I got a friend

of mine who's an independent publisher. I wanted to look at it. So I told my wife, put this on a disc and he took it to this guy and he sent it to his partner that was a woman in Denver, Colorado, and they emailed me and said, we want to make it a book. I was like, are you kidding me? There? You go into there it is and I was throwing on here, they're all in there, and I couldn't believe it. I told him, I said, look, I can't put thousands of dollars up to get this thing started.

They said, no, we only we only published first time authors, and you don't have to put any money up front, and uh, we'll edit it and you can give us the pictures you want in it, and uh that's what they did. And I couldn't when when we got the book at home they wanted to but first they edited. They wanted to change everything that I said the way because I said, I just wrote it the way I talked, right, and I said. They kept sending. I'd send him

two chapters. They edited, scratched the scratch that I'd say as I had finals say, I'd say no, no, no, no, send it back. Finally said, well, I want you to change anything I said, because if I let you read it, change it the way it reads, people that know me are going to read this and say he didn't write it like that. Yeah, right, right right. So I left it the way it was. Ninety percent of it was the way it was good. You get that, my god, I'll understand that. And they said

how much you want to sell for? I said ten bucks? They said ten dollars. I said, right, you can sell us for twenty dollars a copy. I said, I'm selling a fireman. I don't have any money. And then she and I sold three thousand copies. Wow. And I took a thousand dollars and donated it to the Window's Norphan's fun for my union. And I had a couple of grand left over I put down towards

a new car. And my publisher went out of business. I couldn't get any more books, and now the only way you can get it now is on kindle on Amazon. I don't have any more books. So I just out there. Hear this, and you want to get that book going again? Yeah, reach out to ride Lockett. Yeah, I mean I had to figure out how to get it back. My wife was pretty good at it. We couldn't get it the way it was originally to cover, the

same cover and everything. But I'm fine with it. I didn't write it as a book, and I didn't sell it to retire to book over Ton, you know I was. I was happy with it. Boca Vista. Yeah, so good for you. Right, you did a great job man. You did a great job with your sons, did a great job on with your career. But staying married for fifty six years, God bless you and and everything you did. Just keep now, you just got to keep. But you know, don't be fluffing the ball up now, you know,

no, don't be fluffing. He plays golf a lot, now, Cooby could be fluffing the battle, fluffing it up. Now he's a big confer. Now, huh, I got a frustra golf. Lock me up and throw it straight, man, hit him straight. Let's play the old school health and safety tip guns real quick. Yes. The First Responder Center for Excellence is a not for profit organization dedicated to protecting their lives and livelihoods

of first responders. Their education and research initiatives aim to bring greater awareness and understanding the challenges to the health, safety and well being of firefighters, EMS personnel and other first responders too. They are an affiliate of the National Fallen Firefighter Foundations, and Tonight's old school health and safety tip is regularly watched.

The inside liner of the helmet. Maintaining the clean hamlet removes harmful contaminants to minimize your risk of skin cancer and pre cancerous cells on your four or five head whatever you have. I don't know. That's it. That's all I got. We'll be remiss if we did not talk about the New York City Police officer that was murdered in the line of duty. Conso pull out all please yep of officer Jonathan E. Diller on a traffic stop though left man

unbelievable dirt big who had twenty one counts prize before that. So I heard that the barstool guys raised they did yees seven hundred and fifty thousand, and then they matched it, so they got one point five million for the family. And then I also heard that the the steven Silla the tunnel to tower is steven Silla Foundation, Uh paid off the mortgage. Yeah, So so again that doesn't doesn't bring the guy back, but maybe just makes it a

little bit easier. I guess, I don't know. Let's stay up prayers. We're gonna bring the five bells line of due to death. Rest in peace, brother, Rest in peace brother, and got in prayers for his family and and his coworkers. Got a baby boy, one year old. It's terrible, all right, So right, thank you so much to stay around so we could talk to you on the after show. Don't forget Big show Monday night, Big reveal, Big. It's big rough. I don't

even gonna be huge. It's gonna be huge. It's gonna be huge, just a huge bitch yep. That's it. So until Monday, ladies and gentlemen, pull up your boots because it looks like work. Oh no, let's see it, the big one, right, alright, saddle up, sounds like work, all right, good night, every one,