#637 - FDNY Firefighter

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Today's guest is a retired firefighter and a veteran of the FDNY here in New York City, which is where we filmed. He spent twenty years serving with the fire department in the communities of Washington Heights and Queens and bravely served alongside many others uh during 9-11. Uh I'm very grateful for his time and his service. Uh, he is what I would call a legend. Today's guest is Mr. Tony Bonfiglio.

Is it too hot in here for you, Tony? No, I feel comfortable. Okay. Yeah, what kind of temperature do you guys operate at? Well, sometimes it's so hot, you know, in the in the summer when we're out there in like 90 degree weather and you're putting a fire out. It's hot. You lose so much body water. Yeah? Yeah. It's like when you take off your turnout coat and your gear, it's like you fell in a pool.

Have you ever started a fire where you had to pee anybody in you didn't? Oh yeah. That's what I'm kidding. Kidding. Yeah. And then sometimes you're so thirsty. I mean, there were times I was so thirsty from pulling ceilings and the plaster dust. that I actually would I look up and and would take water coming off the the drain pipe just straight into my mouth'cause I could breathe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it gets crunny. It gets pretty crummy in there. Oh, I bet. Yeah, it's shitty.

Twenty years you were uh Tony Bonfiglio. Yep. And that's Italian. That's Italian, man. My whole family's from East Harlem. Yeah. Yeah, we're Italian. Yeah, it's fun, huh? Yeah. Grew up in New High Park. My father moved us out of the Bronx and uh when I was about six. Yeah. And we moved to New High Park, that's like a town on the Queens borderline on the suburb side. Bring it up New Hyde Park? New Hyde Park.

Went to Herricks High School. What was it like back then? Oh, it was great. It was like all blue collar workers. You know, all the k blue collar workers, kids, you know, we have bus drivers, cops, firemen, truck drivers. So there's a nice suburb over there, huh? Oh, it was great. Right over the city line. Uh, I mean I had such a great childhood. We were w we had so much fun. Running around, you know, doing all kinds of crazy shit back then. Hot rods, motorcycles,

Mischief, huh? Yeah, mischief. Rock and roll, rock clubs. Oh, and Long Island rock rock clubs. Listening to some deaf leopards, some AC DC? Yeah, well back then it was Twisted Sister and uh you know, we used to go to the clubs and see Twisted Sister, OBI There was a bunch of good bands back then, house bands, but they would play Yeah, all the cover songs. You had like Doors, you had Zeppelin. Oh yeah. Yeah, it was awesome.

Yeah, that's a beautiful time, dude. I think that's a kind of a time that a lot of people romanticize as well, you know? I think so. I always say that when I die, I hope the heavens like the seventies, man, because that was so awesome. Kicked ass.

And you and you were on the uh F D NY for twenty years? Yeah, twenty one. Twenty one years. Yeah. How did you get started? Like what were you doing uh before you got into firefighting?'Cause things are going well. You're listening to Twisted Sister, you Yeah, hanging out with the boys, uh, getting in trouble, uh I did get arrested. Uh I was at Speaks uh club once in uh Leto Beach.

And I did get arrested there for uh had some weed and a couple of other things on us. Yeah, we were young. We were so yeah, we just uh and I was going nowhere. I I went to college for like uh maybe three weeks. Oh yeah, it's not enough.

Farmingdale University. I went for s food technology. I was gonna be a meat inspector. Oh really? Oh yeah. Thank God that didn't happen. Yeah, hell yeah, dude. Well I was working in a meat factory when I was a kid. Scraping hanger room floors like Paulie and Rocky, you know, I had the white coat on, I'm freezing, scraping the blood and the fat off these floors all day.

And what was that like over there? So what kind of meats did they even have going in and out of it? Just big sides of beef, big factory, like hanging rooms. Big hanging rooms. And would you be alone in there? production place, you know, big time. Lots of trucks. They would give all the meat out to all the restaurants and everything. And that was right in Mineola. Oh, that's pretty cool. And Mineola, is that here in New York? Yeah, Minneola's pretty much right by New High Park. Got it.

So you're over there, you're in there with the meat, you know. You're in there at night. Like Rocky hitting the meat. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure when nobody's looking'cause that was right around the time, you know, so Oh yeah. Oh for sure. Yeah, there we go. That's what it looked like. Oh, definitely everything turned to veal after this came out.

Bro, you couldn't you couldn't get something that wasn't tenderized. Oh. It was funny because we were all kids too and you would you know, all this meat after the place closed would be, but we never took a an ounce of meat, you know, back then. You got all this beautiful meat. You guys have to do that. You guys are just in their own. Yeah. Yeah. And then I had a uh And so what happens? Yeah, you're in there, you're beat you guys are punching the meat or whatever, and uh

Oh you Was that a common f was that kind of a common future in your area? No, it was not at all. I just got a job there. My friends were all working there, the whole crew was working. But it's fun. And we were the cleanup crew. So once the butchers were all done we would come in with these high pressure hoses and we would just hose this whole place down. Yeah, this partying probably Yeah. And then we'd oil it up with vegetable oil. It was it was a funny job, yeah.

For what was that what was the vegetable oil for? Just make everything shiny and clean because we had on online uh the the inspectors were there. There was the two inspectors every day and they would inspect everything. Oh so it was pretty and if they didn't get their payola Then they would knock a machine down and then they'd have to rope the whole thing off and we would have to come in and clean the machine and then they'd inspect it again.

So there was a little bit of kind of a meat was there kind of a meat mafia kinda going on a little bit of something. Meat Mafia, yeah. Was it really? Mm-hmm. Wow. It was owned by two Jewish brothers, the Cohen's. So you know something.

Something was a foot, you know? Um and so what makes you get out of there? Were your friends kinda graduating?'Cause I ended up working it dude, me and like five of my buddies worked over there at uh Well, I think it was called Save a Center or something. It was a grocery or Wend Dixie, maybe it was called. Dude, one of my buddies would come, clock in, go home. And then he would wake up to he'd come clock out, dude. He worked there for like, yeah, he worked there for almost eleven months.

But we would during like uh but it was so much fun just having your friend bro. Uh there was nothing better, I think, than that time if you were Either like late years of high school or right out of high school and you got to work with like your buddies who hadn't gone all like nobody kind of figured it out yet. You got to work with your friends. That's what it was.

Saturday morning we'd all be banged up, you know, from being out drinking all night. We'd just be getting home. Yeah. And we had to go in Saturday morning to to clean the to oil the whole place. So those were fun trips. We'd had oil fights. Oh God. I think we might we might pick up a a new listenership during this episode. We would have some good oil fights. Really? What? Yeah.

And with seed oil? Yeah, it was vegetable oil. Oh lord. We would even do the trucks in the vegetable oil. It looks like they got waxed. What? Yeah, they were all shiny. And what vegetables was it coming out of? I have no idea. Look up vegetable or what ve I never even thought about that. What could even have that much oil? Maybe an eggplant? What is vegetable made of? Vegetables. You think, but what? They squished him.

Vegetable is made from the oils extracted from various plant parts like seeds, fruits, nuts, and grains, most commonly soybeans, corn, canola, sunflower, and palm. 'Cause that's kind of the oil that everybody's kind of against nowadays, you know. But I guess you guys were just using it to keep stuff shiny. Shiny. Wow. Yeah. I didn't even know people use it like that. Yeah, we had these black trucks and they would look all waxed after we were done oiling them all down. Yeah.

And it stunk too, you know, because it was it was such a big place and there'd be a lot of like the bones and the fat and you'd had to go in the pit sometimes. It was like You would puke. It was so bad smelling. What was the pit? It was kinda like below the floor. Yeah, that's where all the water would drain into the And every now and then our boss would have to go in there. I'd see him reaching in there. He'd have like fat on his glasses and shit. It was oh it was gross.

Oh yeah, dude. Yeah, no, I didn't want to stay there. God, yeah. It was cold. It was cold in there too? And there was freezers there. And the guys that worked in the freezers, you never saw them. It looked like they were from the Antarctic. They had these hoods and these Parkers and their big boots. And you'd see them now and then they were kinda scary, you know, you were a kid, you're like, There's the freezer man, you know. They never came out of the freezer. Yeah, dude.

Oh, that's fucking wild, yeah. Be living in it is hiding from your wife and kids probably in there. Oh God. That's when family life's bad when you're like, I don't care how cold it is, I'll stay in there. Yeah, yeah, that's bad. That's the last job you want is working in a freezer. Yeah? Oh, I'd think so. That was the end of the line. And what kind of guys would do it? Was it tough guys? Was it Russians who was doing it? Fucking guys, butchers, psychos. They got their own toolbox of knives.

You know, the big Oh couple of times they would pick you up by your shirt, you know.'Cause we were just the kids, you know, we run it around. Any of them ever get arrested for crimes or anything like that? Like you think where any of them low key like Dexters or like kind of that kind of guy? Yeah, yeah. They were low key, but they were. Strange some of them. Yeah, that dang, that's wild. But then you had the women, they were the Packers.

Oh they were? Yeah, they would like pack the chickens and all that and wrap it and everything. Yeah. Women do better gift wrapping. They had like tough women too. They were working. There was like the the boss of the women was a real tough off broad. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Some girl would have tattooed Richard Denn on her smoking. Everybody'd be out smoking, yeah, your smoke breaks. Oh and the guy would come with the uh the roach coach and

Call your alpha your coffee and shit. He would? Yeah, the coffee roach. You know, they were out of roach coaches here and everybody would come out. You know what a roach coach is? Uh-uh. It's a coffee truck. All right. Back in the day they would come to like factories.

Oh, so it just pulls up and you go out and get your snack. And they would be like, all right, the coat guy's here. And everybody would be out a break, get their coffee, their lousy donut, whatever he had. A little bit of a break. Yeah. I like that, man. Yeah. Dude, we used to I when I was a kindergartner.

They had uh or I don't know what grade I was in. I wasn't even in a grade, but I but they they it was nap time or whatever at kindergarten. But they would uh I wouldn't sleep, right? I would just keep my eyes open because they had this uh they'd bring in this other lady to watch us. Right.

And I was like kind of curious about it. So I would just kind of lay over there. You were you eyeballing her. Yeah, I was kind of eyeballing her, I guess, you know. Cause me and my mother were always on the outs. I was shopping around. Uhhuh. So I uh I remember like at a certain point she'd come over and kind of kick me a little bit and she'd let me go outside and watch her smoke.

Oh, that's funny. Oh, that was nice dude. And she had pretty nice hair. She looked a little bit like a man. Yeah. But she was definitely she probably What year was that? Oh, this was probably eighty four. Early eighties. God. Yeah. She looked like a fucking man. But

She's pretty she's like only the third woman I'd ever seen, you know. So at that point she was really good looking. Like you don't know, yeah. Yeah, she's beautiful to me. You know, she was dang, you know, she was just stunning, dude. But yeah, she'd let me go out there and watch her smoke and she'd complain about stuff.

Oh, that's funny. God, that was nice, man. Just getting a little break, you know. So that was like it felt like it was my break from kindergarten. Like, oh, we're on break. Oh, I remember kindergarten well. Really? Oh yeah. Nap time. That was the best. Oh snack and nap.

And then out to the sandbox and dig a hole of China. Yeah. Dig a hole down to a fucking butcher shop. They would always put like a cone in the sand. They'd be like, Oh, you're almost in China. You know, be like, Yeah, let's keep digging. Yeah, yeah, dude. And then some kid would get sand in his eyes and he would look like he was Chinese. Yeah. Yeah. That's yeah, that's what I got. Good, dude. Um, so yeah, so take me out. How do you get out of the meat area into the

into the fire. Like take me out of the freezer into the fire, man. Take a look at the five minutes. Well I I went I went for after that I went to a plastic mold injection factory job. Did you Unemployment sent me to. Oh they did? Oh no. We were making there was a game called Orthello back then. It was like a black and white chip. Did I remember that game? And we were making the chips and we made the colored beads.

So it was all like these plastic mold injectors. The color beach for like what Mardi Gras or something? Yeah, Mardi, or people just buy'em for their uh crafts and stuff like that. All di they're like a hundred different colors. Yeah. And I could never remember the color after I backed. Boxed it up and get ready to send it. I'd be like, Oh, amist, uh but brown, green, uh I'd I'd put something down and then the guy would come back, You can't baby, you can't be yelling at me.

You can't send these out and I'm laughing. He's like, What are you laughing about? I mean I'm making three dollars an hour so I wasn't Dude, I remember one time I ate a bunch of mushrooms or whatever after school. Yeah. And I worked at this mail center, right? My job was to mail out these insurance forms to these different companies around the country. Well, I'm in the mail room, dude. I'm not doing real good.

Oh, I could imagine. Yeah, well my body had gotten really hot, so I took all my clothes off and uh I mailed my put all my clothes into a box, mailed my mailed them to someone. Oh my God, that's great. Dude, my first girlfriend, her mom got me that job. Her j her dad. Uh shout out Mr. Earl. He was a fire chief actually. Oh really? Yep. And uh but anyway, I got laid off. Um

And yeah, her the mother had to come. Thank God it was a day it was raining because she let me borrow a raincoat she had so I could go get in my car. Yeah. Wow. So anyway, we've made some tough choices over the years. But uh but I did have a have a good time. They were stay th they had a firehouse down there on Choppatulus in New Orleans.

And it would be great because the Mardi Gras parades were down there. So we'd go down there and the firehouse would be open on days like that and all the things. It was beautiful, yeah. I think bring it right up. It's right down there off off a Chop of Tulas over there in um That was it right there. The w uh Oh I see it. Yeah, it looks like they made it into something. Yeah, they made it into something. Wow.

But yeah, anyway, it was a great time, man. It was a great time. We go over there, everybody's cooking hot dogs and just cr you know, just having a great time, you know. That was a beautiful time. Oh, the caging. Yeah, we had so much fun, man. Oh bet. So how do you get into there, man? How do you get so you're you're you're over there making jewelry and stuff? Well, the funny part is they sent me to this. place called Stonewell Plastics in Mineola.

And I go in and I got this little Mexican guy he's doing the interview with me. He's got He's like middle aged little guy. He's got a little pencil mustache, you know. So I'm sitting there, I'm eighteen, you know, and he goes, So uh what's your name? And I said, uh Tony Bonfiglio. He writes it down. He says, And how old are you, Tony? I said, I'm eighteen. Writes it down. He goes, And Tony, were you born here? I said, No, I was born in New Jersey. He starts laughing. Oh, you'll do, you'll do.

And when I went back there I realized I was the only American in the place. Everybody else was foreign. So you're in there learning Spanish, huh? Yeah, Spanish.

What languages were they? Yeah, who was uh who was mostly Spanish. Yeah? Yeah. It was some black people, but even them I didn't understand because some of them were from Brooklyn. I had one friend, he would drive me home, we I would say I'd shake his head and he'd shake his head and we don't know what the hell either was saying. Oh, dude. I still can't understand. I'm there. I'll be like, yeah, yeah, we're a motherfucker. Yeah, dude. I mean look, bro. Um

So you so you're in there and d are you just like disin from me or how do the winds how do the winds blow you over to the fireworld? Well then I went my father got me into the printing union, the amalgamated lithographers of America Local One. Wow. And I did that for about four years. But I took the fire department test when I was eighteen. I was nineteen and like seventy-eight.

And was that part of school you had to take in? No, my neighbor came over and he came in our back door with an application, Johnny Lalima. Thank God, Johnny, saved my life. gives me the application, he says, you'll never get rich on this job, but it'll put a roof over your head and food on your table. So I'm sitting at my kitchen table I'm like, Okay, Johnny, thanks you know. I had no idea it was gonna be the biggest

career move of my life. Dude, what yeah, what made him even come over there and do that on Wonder? I guess he knew I was going nowhere because he was my neighbor and they saw us all hanging out all the time, you know? Yeah. Now you figure this kid'd be a fireman. It'll be all right, you know? Yeah.

So thank God. I mean he saved me because see I was going the the printing union was going south, you know, computers were coming in. Yeah. And they uh they weren't printing any more on these big printing presses. So So I got that and then uh about a year later I took a physical test after the written test. The written test we took in a high school somewhere in Queens. And was there a lot of people taking those tests at the time? Forty thousand.

Forty thousand people wanted to be firemen. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Cause the the job I think in in a lot of ways it's a very family, like it's a like It's a lineage job. It's like a lot of families do it. Definitely. Um and there's a lot of esteem with it, you know? Yeah. Wha especially at that time, what was it like? Like was it a very revered position? Do you even think you could get it? Get the job? Yeah.

Yeah, I think I you know,'cause I was nineteen I was in great shape and uh the physical test is really where they separate everybody. The written test was a joke. I mean, it was like a third grade questions, you know. Yeah? Remember any of them or no? Uh well I you know I saw the the sanitation guy he was saying about the dirt and the shovel. That's exactly what it was like. What would you use? A garbage truck, a plough or a a shovel and broom? I mean ridiculous.

If you got your name right, you know, that was it. So I got a ninety eight on the written test. Probably the highest I ever gotten any test in my life. Wha but what was the physical part like? Like take me to I had my father took me to East New York to an armory in this real shit neighborhood.

And he parked the we parked uh his Buick Regal. It was like the nicest car my dad ever had. And I bought him these spoke rims for it for his birthday. So we get there and he he says, Here, you take the keys. I'm running for the subway and you take the car home. I'm like, Yeah, you sure dad. You wanna yeah, um don't worry about it. I mean he's an East Harlem guy, so I wasn't too worried about him.

So he took off. I go in this armory. It's like when you get in there it's the size of a football field. And there's a hundred guys that day that are gonna take the tests and they break you up into like ten ten men groups and you go around all these different stations and you take different uh different tests. You had a run, one was a mile.

Uh one was an eight foot wall. You had to jump over the eight foot wall. That was like the separator. Like if you didn't get over the eight foot wall you went to the police department. Sorry guys. Hey. That's what hey, that's what it is, man. Sometimes you gotta separate the beef from the pork, you know? Well the funny part is I got a zero on one of them and if you get a zero on one of those

stations, you're done. You're not gonna get you're not gonna get hired. Yeah, for sure. Which one was you? I had this thing called a ledge walk. So you had to put on a turnout coat, a helmet, you had to put boots on, you had to put a mask on, and you went up on a uh balance beam next to a wall and you had a slide along the wall like you were shimmying along a ledge. It was called the ledge walk.

I'm shimmying along this thing. I'm like, why the fuck would I be on a ledge? I mean, is this job that crazy? What am I Batman? You know, I'm gonna be out on the ledge. And I went all the way down. I touched the line. I came all the way back. And the woman scoring me says, you didn't touch the line down there. Uh-uh. What? And I race all the way back, touch the line. I come back. She says, ran out of time. I got a zero. I was like, uh, that's it. Everything was down the drain, so

Come on, you think she just didn't do it correctly? I think yeah, I do. I don't I think she was there to to knock some of the white guys out because there was too many white guys on the job which they were complaining about. They wanted women, they wanted minorities. I think they were told because I stepped on the line, she wasn't even anywhere near the line. But you know, it's like everything happens for a reason, you know. I mean Right. And so you you you get the zero.

And so but and there's ten stations you you do find on the rest of them, you get out of there. And are you then waiting for your grade? Like do you even like Yeah, so now now after you get all that done, everybody says their half ass goodbyes, you know, I I went back out, thank God my father's regal was still there. Yeah.

Found the found I I got in the Regal, I found I had a joint in my my workout bag. I lit that sucker up and now I'm driving home. We had no directions back then, so I'm looking for signs for the L I E and Boom, I get home, my dad was there. How'd you do? I said, Yeah, I think I did all right. So now It's the girls have a lawsuit because forty girls took the test. The first forty girls ever. Mm-hmm.

And they didn't pass with forty thousand applicants, uh, you know. None of'em passed? None of them passed. Were some of the women in there on that day you were there with that h one hundred people? No, I didn't see any women. Wow. That that day. But uh we had a couple in my battalion when I got there. But uh so anyway, they had a lawsuit, and this lawsuit went on for six years.

So I from that time I took the test, I didn't get a notice that I was hired for six years. Because it was because of the women, because the lawsuit took so long. They usually hire about twenty five hundred people off the list. Now they had to go deep into the list and because of that zero. I was like 4300 on the list. So the women saved me. Thank you. Thank you, girls. I appreciate it. Yeah, because rarely does a complaining woman save you.

Oh, she saved they saved me that day. Brenda Berkman right then. Brenda Berkman. Everybody knows Brenda. Pioneering peep female firefighter. She was the sole named class plaintiff in the federal sex discrimination lawsuit that opened the Fire Department City of New York. The women firefighters. After she won the lawsuit in eighty two, she and forty other women

became f F D N Y firefighters. Was that a cr was that a time where like w were people like supportive of the women? Were they against the women? What did that feel like? Did it feel like they were fully against the women. They were.

It's an all male place, you know. And yeah. And you know, I guess a lot of guys they don't feel like they didn't mind the women that uh merely passed the test. But to just get on because you're a woman that was not you know, today now they have girls, you know, they've there's so much into athletics and stuff, they could pass these tests now. But back then, you know, it wasn't like that.

So some of it they were just kind of stacking the deck, like we're just gonna put some extra girls in. That's it. They went well, yeah, life and death. And a liability for their own life. That too, yeah. But I mean, if your kid is trapped in a fire, you know, you want the best person going to get that kid, not uh, you know, somebody that didn't make it. Yeah, for sure. A hundred percent.

I agree. But they saved me and and I'm the luckiest guy for that. So you're in, huh? I'm in. You made it in. Yeah. And do you remember like Like when you do you get a letter that's like yeah, I'm in, uh you got it? And does it have flame? My wife my wife came s uh I come pulling up in the parking lot from the working at Mastercraft Litho.

And I had a little Chevet. We both s shared this little Chevette car that my wife bought on her own when we were kids. And uh I see her coming across the uh the parking lot with a wave in the I said, what is it? She goes, the fire department watch, six years. Oh, you fire department watching. They're gonna hire you. I said, holy shit. I looked at it. Yeah, Tony Bomfiglio, New York City fireman. Report to Randall's Island, uh eight twenty-three something, eighty-four.

I was like, I'll be there. That's pretty cool, huh? Yeah. Oh my God. I was so happy.

W she was happy at some point. You was happy. I was happy. Where did you and where did you where did you meet your wife, Christine? I I met her. I know she's here with us today. Where did you meet your wife at? Well, I on my block. I was walking up my block in our neighborhood and sh her and her sister just moved in from the Bronx. They they were in the Marble Hill projects. They were like the last ones out of these projects.

And uh so I'm going up the block. I'm like fourteen years old. Yeah. And these shit they're coming down with one of my friends and he's like, Hey, these two girls just moved in from the Bronx, you know, Chris and Bernie. And I'm like, Hey, hey, I first of all I was like thought he was pulling my leg, but So that was like why we met and then you know we went through school. We didn't really date until we were like eighteen. Mm-hmm. Eight, eighty eight. That's a great shot. Yeah. Yeah.

Size thirty two waist back then. Hey, uh look, I'm looking at Christine, okay? Yeah, yeah, she's looking good. Yeah, yeah. You can say what I'm not looking at your waist, buddy. Yeah, we were We were, you know, we were like twenty four years old there. I I was just getting out of the the academy. That's graduation day.

I'm graduated from there after six weeks of training. Oh, that's nice, huh? Yeah. Yeah, dude you got you look pretty pleased. So the funny part is they give us our s your assignment, you know, so I get this thing 34 trucks. Now, like 150 firemen, only 10 are gonna go to truck.

The other 140 are gonna go to engine companies. There's an engine company, they're the water, they got the hoses, and then there's the truck that's the ladders and the you know, they they they break down the doors. Ledge walkers surgery, the ledge walkers.

So I didn't want to go to a truck. I was like real I didn't like the heights. I didn't like the ropes. I'm not sure. Yeah, that's not so look. I got a zero on the ledge walk. Yeah, you got the wrong guy. So uh so and why did they choose you for that then? I have no idea. My father said they saw how good I was at breaking things that they said sent him to the truck. So now I'm gonna see a truck in Manhattan, I'm like, oh man, all right.

So I tell her, I says I got I'm going to a thirty-four truck. They gave me a truck. She's like, they gave me a truck. I'm like Yeah, because most guys are in the engine for like maybe five, ten years before they get to a truck. And so in the engine means they're in the actual fire engine? They're in the engine and they're they're a separate company. You know, their engine A four and my we were out of three four. It was a big hundred year old firehouse.

And so a ladder, they do different stuff than the engine does. Yeah, the engine puts the fire out. Okay. The ladder opens up, opens up the door, breaks the doors down, opens, cuts the roofs open, makes all the rescues and the searches. It's a lot more intimidating because you don't have the hose line. You're you're actually in there crawling around with no water.

No water. Maybe a can on your back. Oh what? Yeah, I was a can man for quite a while. And that's heating up quick probably. Yeah. So you get in a ladder and where's a ladder at? What's that like? Hundred and sixty first street in Manhattan.

In uh on off Amsterdam Avenue in a place called Washington Heights. Washington Heights. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of Dominicans up there. Oh my god. Well when I got there they were just coming in. Yeah. And they took over with Blood man. They they killed everybody. They really oh they took over the drug business because that was the hub. You had the GW bridge right there.

You had all the parkways to head out to North Brooklyn or out to Long Island. So everybody would come in and buy their crack and their cocaine. Yeah. So it was it was badass. I mean, they would be shooting all day long. Was it exciting? It was. Yeah. Oh my God. And the place was so crowded. It was like full of people with these old broken down tenement buildings. Brown stones tenements, all broken down, hundreds years old. The firehouse was a hundred years old.

Did you feel was it exciting to go work there? Did it feel scary? Like what what did it kind of become for? Well, the funny part I was gonna say is that I I went with my wife from the Graduation. I said, we gotta go. It's on 84th Street, I told her. I didn't realize that was eighty-fourth engine when I read the thing. So I take her into Manhattan.

And I take it down 84th Street and there's no firehouse. So I go all the way back up to the west side. I come all the way down. There's no fire. And we're saying, wow, this is nice. Look at this. It's all money. Brownstones, high-end stores. Finally I go around eighty fifth street and I find a firehouse and I I got my uniform on and they tell you to not always knock on the door and say Probery probationary firefighter, Bonfiglio.

This old guy answered the door. What can I do for you, Proby? He knew right away I was a proby just by looking at me with the stuff on. I said, I'm looking for my firehouse, 34 truck. They said it's on 84th Street. He's like, wow, let me look at that. He's like, dude.

You're in with eighty four engine and you're on a hundred and sixty first street. I was like, What? Holy shit. I had to get in the car and tell my wife we gotta go up to a lot of things. And now we left the glitz and now we're in this freaking run down neighborhood. It was like holy shit. The music's a little bit better. Oh, you got a lot of salsa blasting in the streets.

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So you're in there, you're in the ladder. Um truck company, a ladder company. You're in the truck company. You guys are the ones that go in. So you have more of an axe and you do a host. We got a forcible entry team. Okay. A roofman.

And another guy that's called the O V, he's the V he vents out the outside, he goes up the fire escapes. Oh yeah, peeping Tom, probably. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You're the guy, the first guy in the break in the window in or just sitting there by it. You know, I won't say nothing.

So you do you guys get there before the uh the the like an engine gets there or is it just does that try to try to get there at the same time. You never know. I mean if we're leaving quarters together, you know, we always let the engine take off first. Hopefully they go and find a hydrant. Okay, got it. And we try to get in front of the building with the ladder. Okay. Okay, got it. So so take me on on your first fire. My first fire. Well, I've been there like car fires, rubbish fires.

We had water leaks, uh so many water leaks'cause it was such an old neighborhood. You know, when we go to a water leak we gotta find out where it's leaking. Sometimes we gotta break into the apartment, gas leaks. We did everything, all the utilities up there. So I do it for about three weeks and I'm still wondering, Oh my God, what's gonna happen?

With a job, am I gonna what's it gonna be like? I still have no idea, you know. I'm I'm a can man. The the proby gets the can. Okay, and the can means what? I got a a fire extinguisher with a strap on my back and I got a hook. And I'm gonna be the guy that if I can put out whatever fire I can with the can. Oh is d is it actually helpful? Is the can helpful?

It'll put out a c if a good canned man could maybe put out a room of fire. Okay. Okay Yeah, you get your finger over that thing and you spread it around, you know. So it's real. It's real, yeah. Okay, got it. Do you remember the the uh day that you get your first five? Yeah, it was like three weeks in.

And I'm doing my first 12 by watch. So you have a house watch, you know, and you gotta man somebody's gotta man it. It's got a computer in there that comes on and tells you what your alarms are and you acknowledge them. You hit all the lights, you send the companies out.

So I gotta do my first twelve bye. So I but I never done a watch alone yet. So the twelve bye was like, you know, it was a little scary at first. And that's twelve hours? No, I uh twelve to three. You do three hour watch. Okay. So twelve o'clock came. I went in, I took the book over. It's midnight and I'm sitting there and it's like one o'clock in the morning.

And all of a sudden like one thirty I start falling asleep. I'm like sleeping. Look, I've had a job before. I know how it is. I'm sacked out. And all of a sudden the alarm goes off. They the computer goes it starts ticking out this alarm. I'm like, oh my God, I was so scared. I got up, I hit the housewatch light. I'm looking at the ticket. It says engine A4, ladder three, four, first two, fire on an eighth floor. So now I gotta hit all the bunk room lights.

I gotta hit the intercom, say everybody goes. I gotta hit the three bells and then I gotta acknowledge on the computer both companies ten four and then I gotta take the tickets and put'em on the truck side and the engine side.

And then I put my gear on and out the door we go. Let's go, Tony. I'm amped up. Oh man. So now we get there. It's three thirty, quarter to four in the morning, and it's like a projects building, about eleven stories. It was pretty decent building. It was on Amsterdam Avenue. And uh so we're the forcible entry team. Me, my lieutenant, who was this salty guy from the Bronx. Spinelli, he was like a real I mean, he was the war days, you know, back in the sixties and the seventies. How salty.

Salty means you know like you. Oh yeah. Yeah. He was salty. Yeah, gout burly mustache, unruly hair, gout in his smile, huh? Yeah, dude, definitely. Great guy though. Yeah, just like he was raised in an ashtray. Oh yeah. Oh. This guy, yeah. So we the forceful entry teams, a Cam man, an Irons man, he's got a an axe and a halligan, and the boss. And we're the three guys. So now we go into the lobby door and we hit all the buzzes.

3:30 in the morning. And there's people in there sleeping. Yeah, no, they're they're in there. So all of a sudden they start by who is it? Who is it? And you're like, fire department, open the door, open the door, fire department. So they budge you in. Now go in the lobby. Nothing's showing. Nobody's bailing out, you know. So I'm like, eh, I don't know, so this might not be it. Take an elevator to the seventh floor'cause the fire was on the eighth floor.

So we get to the seventh floor and you never take the fire the elevator to the fire floor for obvious reasons. So we take it and we take the stairs to the eighth floor and we get in this hallway and now it's like a big projects hallway. I don't know if you've ever seen one of them, but they're painted green and they got like fluorescent lights and it's long. So we go to all the doors and we stick our noses in the jams trying to smell smoke. We don't smell nothin'.

So the boss says to my friend Jimmy the Duke, he says, Go up to the next floor and check it out. Calls down the battalion, says, Yeah, we got nothing showing on the eighth floor. We're gonna check out the ninth floor. So with that now we go into the hallway and my friend is on the top of the stairs and he says, Lou, I think we got something.

So I'm like, oh shit, this is it. I'm in this project hallway caught at four in the morning. I'm running up the steps with my hook and everything. And there I and the I said the boss says, Well, what do we have? And the Duke opens this door. And I was like, Oh my God, if if th if there was a gate to hell, this was it, okay? black shimmering smoke that look like satin curtains

Just going in all different directions. And my first thought was, No way we're fucking going in there, right? I see these guys. Hey look, let me see a two-bedroom. Yeah. They're pulling their boots up and they're putting their air, they're turning air bottles on and everything. I'm like, oh shit, this is it. So now we're getting down on our hands and knees and uh the Duke tells me, You you hold my coat. Okay. And I'm like, you sure I'm holding your coat.

So you're behind him crawling? I'm behind the Duke, the boss goes in first, like this black abyss we just crawl into on what are y'all what are y'all looking for? The fire apartment. Oh we gotta find it. Oh, so you this is just the hallway. The hallway. Oh I got it. Somebody left their door open. Pull up that hallway you had, Nick. Is that the one from the actual building?

Oh, this is a general one. Yeah, I think I know what you're talking about though. It's narrow hallways. Narrow hallways, long green. Yeah, look at that color. Yellowish green. That look just like that. Oh. So now we're on our hands and knees and I'm I'm got his coat. I got the can on my back. I got my mask on, and we're in total blackness. And I'm crawling down like a hundred feet.

And I'm saying in my mask, I'm saying, what the fuck am I doing here? Yeah. This is fucking crazy. I'm never going to do this again. I felt so helpless. And what am I gonna do? It's pitch black. We're we're crawling in a hallway we've never been before. Yeah, dude. Oh yeah. So we crawl up there, then all of a sudden we the Duke stops and he says, uh we're at the fire door. And I'm like, Oh, okay. Can't see nothing.

sex traffic and or something, you know. They whatever's g anyway, whatever's going on, it sounds kind of out of sorts, you know. It's out of sorts. Anyway, so carry on. Sorry. So it's something that I never I'm like I'm not doing I'm quitting in the morning. I swear to God I was quitting. I was like, what are we gonna do in here? I I well Yeah. I can't see, I'm on the ground.

So finally we crawl in and and I crawl in and and I hear the boss, he's up ahead of us in the apartment already. He says, Bring the can in here. So now I crawl past the Duke, I'm on my hands and knees, and about ten feet up I see the boss on his knees with a glow of the fire. He goes, You see the fire, it's to the left and I look and there's a room on fire.

It looks like cotton candy. The flames are like f all over the place. And how much is it protecting you? How much is your suit protecting you at that point? Nah, nothing. No. You just didn't take it off, bro. Yeah, no, they they're no they're just coats, you know, to keep you warm basically. You got your leather helmet on. Keep you warm?

But and and at that point, does it kind of take on a like do you start to feel a little bit more empowered kind of or something? No, I felt scared shit. I just wanted to get out of there and get this fire over with. So now I I see him and he says, Do you see the fire? And I look to the left and I say,

Yeah, I see the fire. I'm in this mask, you know? And he says, Hit it with the can. I got the can and I'm on my knees and I I I go to hit it and nothing comes out. I hit it again, nothing comes out. I didn't have air in the can. It's like a total fuck up for a pro You should have put it in there? That's my fuck up. Oh, my first job. So I said to the boys, I got no air in the can. I've used that excuse a lot of times.

A lot of times over the years, buddy, I'll tell you that. And I wanna apologize to a lot of those women out there. Uh but yeah, yeah. That was my excuse. I got no air in the can. You know? That's a good analogy. I got a ladder issue. But go on. Fully extended. Fuck, you must have been embarrassed, huh? I wasn't embarrassed, but yeah, I felt like, oh man, I'm gonna catch some shit for this. Yeah. Did you like just make a sound like you had air?

Like I didn't make no sounds. I couldn't believe it because I mean you always check the can, you know, you gotta pressurize it, put a little water. So he says, All right, back out to the doorway. So I pair now the fire's coming out over our heads in the hallway. And I get to the door we came in crawling, and the elevator was right across.

from the apartment, fire apartment, and the door opens and there's eighty four engine without a mask on or anything. They got they took the elevator to the fire floor and they got stuck. And they're going down on their knees and they're trying to put their masks on and I'm in the I'm yelling in my mask. I'm like, get the fucking line in here and put the fucking five. I'm screaming. I'm like out of my mind now.

So finally they get in, the line now it's black again. And the line is the w is the hose? The hose. Okay. And it's all asses and elbows now in this hallway, you know, that's what we call uh organized confusion. And everybody sort of bringing the line past me. I see him get up to the apartment. And the boss says, there's the fire to the left.

He crack I hear the the line crack, you know, I get the water comes up, he cracks it, and now he hits it, you know, and he starts pushing the fire in and I squeeze past them to make'cause I got to search. The apartment, that's my job. So and you're searching for it to see if there's anybody in there. Bodies, yeah. Wow.

So now I'm searching along the wall and still can't see. And I'd get to a window and I'd smash it out with my hook and I would stick my head out the window because this is the first time I could see again since we left that Stairwell, you know. Oh yeah, you gotta get some fresh air. Fresh air and and some view of something. Yeah. So then I go around and then all of a sudden the they they knocked it down fast.

And I run into the Duke, the Irons man, and he's like, Yo, Proby, you broke your cherry, man. Congratulations. And I was like, Wow, I took my mask off. It was kinda like still gray smoke and steamy, but it was better than the mask, you know, because that was so confined. So I said, Yeah, Jimmy, I said my first fire, but I this might be my last fire. I said, I don't know if I'm doing this again.

And there we were, we overhauled the the apartment and we threw the mattress out the window. We took everything out. Throw the street down into the street. And who's down there catching that? He just hitting whoever. That's free. Back then, like nobody here. Who gives a shit? Yeah. Just hopefully nobody's down there. You yell out, look out. And then you throw the burning mattress out the window.

Oh shit. I'll throw my ex wife out there, bitch, you know? Don't let's take that out. Let's take that out. And then I'm looking out this window and it's encrusted with all these embers and shit, you know, like gold and amber and everything. And it was like five thirty in the morning.

And the Manhattan skyline was turning purple. So I had all this beautiful thing I was looking at I was like, Wow, this is some sight, you know. Excuse me. Yeah. Yeah, it was definitely rock and roll, man. I was like, Yeah. So now I had to get back and I w I put the air in the can when I got back, changed all the masks and everything. Now I had to go up and see the boss, you know.

Take my medicine. So I walk up to the truck office and I knock on the door. It's open. He says, Yeah, come in. And he's wiping his face down with a towel. He just came out of the bathroom. I said I may like puppy eyes. I said uh Lou, I'm sorry about not having air in the can. And he's like wiping his face. He goes, Yeah, don't worry about it, kid. Shit happens. And I was like, Oh, ho, oh, wow, thank you.

I f I was 23 years old, you know, and I'm so now I'm walking out. He goes, hey kid. And I turn around and he goes, You did a good job. And I was like, oh, wow. That's awesome. Yeah. And then I'm driving home saying, Am I quitting this fucking job? Because it was like It was like nothing I've ever experienced. And I I growing up I did a lot of crazy things, but this was the scariest thing I ever did. But yet it was so exciting and thrilling. I mean, I got home and and the grass was so greener.

The sky was so blue and the air that I was breathing was so appreciated. And you were alive. I was alive, man. It made me I was like, Wow, that was something. Of course that wasn't my last job. I won twenty one years more after that. So What kind of like made you decide or you just have to go back to work and it just kept being like that or like Yeah, no, I you know, yeah, them you know, we were a busy truck back then because we had a lot of fires, a lot of of occupied fires which are really

They're a lot more intense than a vacant fire or, you know, something like that. You know, you got a lot of people bailing out and they're Sometimes they're trapped, you know, you gotta get to them in the truck. That's their job. You know what's almost uh hearing you say this and like thanks so much for your time, Tony too. I appreciate it, man. Thank you. This is like an honor. Oh, thanks, kidding me.

Yes. You guys are pioneers, you know. You you're the you're the millennial pione pioneers at y with entertainment these days. I think you change the whole scene.

Oh well I just I think it's like people just we gotta find more humans that have the best stories, you know. Exactly. It was so crazy. We're just like we're coming to New York and we just get an email from you the other day that you had seen that we put out a thing about uh about looking for somebody that works in a in in a fire department. And um my producer's ex forwards it to me is like

Can you believe we just this guy we're gonna be there? I was like wow seems really interesting. So I think it was meant to be. Hey, I think so too. And I think I was about to say, I think it was meant to be that your first fire didn't have any p nobody was in it.

Yeah. Because that would've that could have been super scary, huh? Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. W take me through like some of the times where there was somebody in there. Like how how much of a different scenario is that? Is the energy different when you get there?

Who lets you know if somebody's in there or do you even know? Like take me through that process of like right when you get there and then take me into one of like a a a fire where it was um inhabited. Well one well this one fire where I uh uh we we lost this little girl and that uh that one really hurt me a lot because uh we got to the apartment And my my lieutenant, he was an I a little Irish guy, the bravest guy I've ever met, uh uh Lieutenant Maloney.

and I would chase him up to the fire of the door, the caller, and he would knock on the door with his little crowbar, Bye, Department, open the door you know, he'd sound like some cartoon, you know, the Irish broke So these people open the doors and we walk in and there's a the card table sitting there. There are about eight people playing cards, they're eating.

We're standing in the kitchen, the three of us, and they we're like my lieutenant says, Oh, what the hell did you call the fire department? So they're looking up, they're like, Yeah, I think something's burning in the back. It was a big apartment.

So we're like looking at each other, something burning in the back. What the hell is this? So now we go down the hallway, my lieutenant's cursing under his breath, you know, he's like, All these artists, motherfuckers sucking fucking shit. Yeah, they're still playing cards. So now it's just fun though. Cards can be fun. They were. But we get into the l living room and there's like these French doors. I don't know if you know the French doors probably from uh

Is it like that kind of thing? They're glass paneled and they they're like two doors you open to a room. They're both French doors. And you think there's gonna be somebody French in there, but there ain't. Yeah, no French people. It never is, dude. There never is. Typical French. You'll send the doors, we'll be there. They're not. Typical French. So anyway I I uh I opened the French door and the room is on fire. Like holy shit

Close the door. We get down on our knees, start putting our masks on, and we're calling ten seventy five. That means we got to working fire. He's telling the battalion, you know, the engine now, they're coming up with the line. So right before they they got the line, I says, All right guys, it's right here. I put my mask on. I said, Showtime and I went to open the uh the French doors.

And I get a call over the handy talkie. There's a kid in the room. He's my friend the O V is with the uh mother out in the street. So now we bust into these doors. They're hitting. Thank God we had the water. Hitting them. And I'm frantically looking for this kid in the dar and black smoke. I'm on the bed, I'm I'm feeling all over the bed. I want I gotta find this kid. And is it mostly feeling? How far can you see? It's nothing. And you're feeling with gloves on too.

Yeah. Sometimes gloves, sometimes you forget your gloves, but yeah. What? Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, we were you know we back then we were like less un less equipment better. Yeah. You wanna get in you wanna get in, you wanna get out quick too. No, that sounds like a guy who forgot his equipment. Ah yeah. That's that's always put air in the can. Yeah, put some air in your can, Tony.

That's always that guy's excuse, you know? Exactly. But that's a great attitude to take. Like, nah, guys, if there's air in this cam, we're gonna have to be here all afternoon. Yeah. We're in and out of the way. I could have probably put that maybe put it out with the cam, but anyway, so the engine, I'm in there, I'm going around. And finally I'm going around the wall and I could feel I'm oops sorry. I'm under the bed feeling around, trying to find this kid.

And I get to a window, I break the window out and I look out the window. And I see my Irons man that was with me. He's in the street with the kid, the a limp limp kid, you know, and they take in the kid. They open the battalion car door. He throw they go in there and they rushed off the Columbia Presbyterian. How'd the kid get out?

No, he carried she was unconscious. Oh, he found she didn't make it. She she didn't the kid was dead. Unfortunately she was burnt. Uh they tried to revive her at the hospital, but it it didn't work. So I'm I'm overhauling now and I see my lieutenant and I said, uh, I just saw Jeff in the street with the kid. He's like, Ah, Anthony, the kid was right there behind the door. And I was like, Oh, I was crushed, man. I shut that door. I felt like I killed that kid, you know?

So uh we go to Presbyterian. Oh, so before we leave, now the deputy shows up, because now we got a 1045, which is a body, and he's like, uh, well what happened here? And we're in this apartment. People are still playing cards.

So my lieutenant says, Well, we came up to the apartment and I said, I'll tell you what happened and now the deputy looks at me, you know, I go, You see these motherfuckers over here? I said, they didn't bother to fucking tell us there might be a a kid in that back room and I'm throwing F bombs at'em. And the deputy says, Uh, Lieutenant, you better control your man So the boss puts his arm around my shoulder. He says, Come on, come on, Anthony called me Omphony. That's Anthony in a brogue.

Amphity, let's go down to the street, you know, and we went down to the street and we went and we picked up my friend Jeff at the hospital. I said, How'd they make out with the kid? He said, They were trying to revive her, they were bringing her to the burn center. So that was the last we heard of our but

I think that's a good thing. But you there's no way you could have known that, right? Because you go in and the kid was hiding behind. You'd think somebody would tell us there could be a kid back there. Oh, it's heartbreaking. Oh man. Do you ever find out why they wouldn't let you know what was going on there? I guess there was like an SRO bit or something. They were renting out that little back room. room to this woman and her child, you know?

So it was pretty bad. And I had a few of those. I mean, right after I got over was getting over with that one, I got another one where uh we showed up without our masks on because It was the middle of the day. Yeah. No, I get it. There was nothing showing. We get out and the guy says, Yeah, they're working on the oil burner all day. And we had a lot of oil burners, you know, they would they would they would smoke up. So we're like, uh, ten twenty says on the box.

Which means all the other companies, take your time, don't blow the red lights and shit. So now we're heading up to the stairs to the caller's apartment. It's you know, forcible entry team, me, Lieutenant Clipper and this guy Jimmy Lynch. And we get to the door and the woman opens the door and we go in the apartment and it's like a slight smoke condition in there, but slight.

So we're like, what's what what do we have here? So my boss says he was a smart fireman. He was from rescue two. He said, I think we're uh we got something above us. Usually it's below us, you know. But this I guess because the light was the smoke was so light. So now we get up, we don't have no masks or nothing. We get to the I see smoke coming out of the doorway, you know, the the locked door in the hallway.

So I turn around, I donkey kick the door open, like three kicks, it kicks open and we got a black wall of smoke. We're like, holy shit. Now we got after the ten twenty, we gotta give it ten seventy five, which means now we have a fire.

So now we're crawling in No masks. No masks. We're on our bellies. Was it better or worse without a mask in this worse. It was worse. Yeah, yeah. Because you could feel the heat? Yeah. You know, back in the day when they didn't wear masks like in the sixties and the fifties, everything was wooden cotton. Then once the sixties and seventies and everything's vinyl and plastic and it's a whole different smoke, you know.

It's poisonous. So it gets you. That's a great point, right? Yeah. Yeah. Back then you could suck the cotton and the and the wood, you know. Yeah, it's like yeah, you were probably a pack of cigarettes or

You're like, hell shit, I wish somebody I wish somebody had a couple of tobacco plants in here, I'd crawl around for another two minutes in here. Exactly. That's what it was like. And things would burn slower back then too, wouldn't they? Well back then, yeah. But plastics will take off a lot faster. Yeah.

So anyway, he crawls in and we're like, oh shit, we gotta go in. Jimmy goes in ahead of him, and I'm the last guy in. We're like almost on our bellies crawling in, and I hear the horrible words, we got bodies. I'm like, oh my God. Now we got to give 1045s. So we had 1020. That means don't come. Take it easy getting there. Now we went 1075. Now we got two 1045s, two bodies. So with that I get a a body, a little girl come they pass it back to me.

And I cr I like shimmy out of the apartment. I don't know any. I can't see nothing yet. I still can't see nothing until I get to the stairwell. I knew I had a kid in my arms. I see it's a little girl, you know, face is all darkened. So now I'm like, oh shit, I'm gonna run her down to the EMS is gonna take her in the street. And I go running down to the street and there's nobody there.

And the all the people are screaming, you know, they're yelling and screaming and I'm holding this kid and I'm looking around because we gave the ten twenty. We were take your time. There was nobody there yet. Yeah, they're at the malt shop.

I put the kid down, I do C PR on on this little girl and I You know, I put her down, I cupp her head and I pretty much all I knew was like a fifteen and two, you know, you get two breaths into her and then you give her fifteen c and this went on for like ten minutes before I got relieved and The sound that she was making when the air would come out they call it machine gun breath'cause it's like And the smell because I had the smell of the burnt lip.

Ah, so finally c somebody came over and they started taking over and then the EMS came after ten minutes they let me Go. So now I'm like I'm walking around the sidewalk, all these Dominicans are very emotional. They're all screaming and yelling and crying and everything. Praying, some of them probably. Praying everything. Yeah, for sure. I figure let me go back up to the floor because my the other two guys were working on the mother.

And when I got there the EMS already w w took over and I was like, Holy shit And it was like the first fire we had where the windows didn't break open. They were the new windows that the Gambino crime family put in in all of Manhattan and they didn't break like the old windows. So it never got air. So it smoldered and they died from the the smoke. God. And that stayed with me for years. I would like sometimes I would smell and taste the the uh burnt lips and everything and oh it was horrible.

That's heartbreaking. They're like, what who do you even talk to for about that kind of stuff? Do you guys go to some of the services? What is some of that like? I w got back in the firehouse. The guys were listening up, they knew. Uh I took my my turnout coat off and uh I just went in. I took a shower. We all took showers.

And then the boss says into the office, you know, let's talk about it. So he says, you know, we did everything we could. There really wasn't nothing else we could do. I mean them not having the mask didn't hamper us at all because we still got the bodies. And uh so then I went home. My wife heard about it already on the news and uh so when I got home they all greeted me and that was pretty much

You know, all I got was some nice hugs and some tears at home. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you get over, you know, it takes a while though. I mean, I had a couple of things. I had this uh

this junkie that we w we kept called three times we got called to the sixth floor. He kept lighting fires to stay warm in the winter. Yeah. And he was a young black kid, you know, and uh So we would have to climb up these vacant stairs. I had to pop a hole in the in the cinder block walls to get in. Vacant building. And a couple times it's happened. Yeah. Oh well it's the first one. We go up Sixth floor, dark, cold. It's icy. It's about thirty degrees out. A nice kid?

I I have no idea. I got to the back with my and I see my Irish lieutenant yelling at him. He's like, What the fuck you doing? You can't light a fucking fire, blah blah blah And he was sitting there and he was in the corner and I I came in and I put my flashlight on him. And he was looking at me with these eyes, you know, and I was like, God, he had like tombstones in his eyes, you know. And he was only about sixteen, seventeen.

So we put the fire out, we leave. Two hours later we get called back again. Go up all gotta climb these stairs. Six floors, no steps, just the risers. God and no lights, it's dark. So now we climb all the way up again. We go through the thing. He lit it up again. Boy says, yo, you can't fucking do this. He's yelling at him and shit.

I got the light on him and and uh and the the p funny part was we just had uh we just uh broke into an enterman's cake at at the firehouse with the vanilla icing that we would keep in the fridge, get it nice and stiff. So as my friend Jeff in the dark he's putting the fire out, I put the light on him and he's still got the vanilla icing on his mustache. Somebody took a peace for the road, Jeff, huh?

The boss is you and uh interrupted his dessert. Three companies and a battalion are responding every time. And we got chains on, it's snowing, it's not like no right. So you get a lot to get out there. So the third time I hear we just we just got back from something we went in our bunks and we get in the bunks and we were like uh a little pillow talk before everybody was sleeping and then before you know it. Boom, same box, here we go again. I hear the borsh yelling, fuck.

Shit, I'll kill that motherfucker. Yeah, dude. Let him cook at this point. We're sliding down the poles. This guy's trying to get to heaven and you guys keep Oh my god. You guys keep coming in and r ruining his trip. Third time, so we're in the rig, and I said to my friend uh Jeff, I says, let's tell the boss, stay on the, don't even come up the stairs, we'll take care of it. And surprisingly he agreed. So when we got to the door I says, Lou, we'll take care of it. You stay down here.

So me and Jeff go up those my light my light, my die hard battery died on me. So I had like no light left. I'm trying to follow Jeff's light and we're going up just on the risers and then there's no platform, so you gotta like lean over your step to get on. And when you get to the fifth or sixth floor, you're looking down at this skeleton staircase.

What? Yeah, so now we go in, go through the dark apartment again. He's in there again. Now he's got candles burning because we broke his bucket up. Smashed it all up. So we're like, holy shit. So now uh Jeff is like leaning into him and he says, Listen, you can't fucking do this anymore And Jeff's like the good cop, you know? I'm the bad cop, so I I lean into him, I look at him, I says we come back here again, I'm throwing you out that fucking window.

And he just looked at me, you know? And that was it. That was the last time we went back. We left it. We took his candles. But Years later f I would see that kid's face looking at me and it it made me feel so bad, a wasted life like that, you know heroin, he had the the works, everything. That's scary. And the fact that he kept going back to do it, it's just that power of addiction, you know. It was cold. Oh. Well, I guess it'd keep you warm. Yeah, he was in a vacant, yeah. Oh. Yeah.

A lot of shit like that. Bacon's with disgusting. 'Cause it's just p anybody could be doing there doing anything, huh? Yeah, they're shitting on the floor, they're drugs, needles. And you're crawling around in there because you still have to save them. Oh yeah. Yeah, vacant fires.

Yeah, do you start to develop a certain like uh attitudes towards humanity or drug users or society? Absolutely. Call them skells. They're all scales to us back then, you know. And uh matter of fact, on my block, we had a a tight block, 161st Street, and we had a uh a bodega. A uh a gypsy cab dispatcher, a whorehouse, and bunch of drug apartments. Yeah. And it was a busy block. And we had two guys on the block that were almost there the whole time I was there. They and they were the lookouts.

And w one guy was uh bald and we called him eight ball. And the other guy always had a hat and we called him the hat. So th and the funny part was they would watch our cars for us so nobody would break into the cars and shit. But Yeah, I mean I would see every agency there is come down and radar block through the years I was there. ATF, Man Manhattan Nat uh Tactical North.

CIA, I mean everything. The I tell you who was the b the worst ones was the FBI. Yeah. They come down with machine guns and all I've never seen anybody that and then they clear the street. They they they hit all the apartments. It's amazing. I bet they were all just visiting that whorehouse out there. I would I would inspect it now and then I'd go in there with my hat and the thing and they'd all be looking at me, you know, be like, What the fuck you want? you know.

Like, I gotta inspect this place, you know. What was it like in some of those joints? Was it interesting in there? Was it just women trying to just survive most of those trips? Some middle-aged, young, not too young, Dominican women. I guess they took care of the the the cab drivers and stuff and they had the different rooms, you know, everybody had their little bed in there. Just trying to sit and I would inspect it, you know. Oh I got you you got condoms, the condoms are here.

Making sure the alarm works, ladies. Yeah, they would be like, Come on. And some of them would be other the prostitutes would be like, Get the fuck out of here, man. You know, they'd be up all night. They didn't want nothing to do with me. Oh, I'm sure. Yo fellies, fells, fellas, boys, guys, you know what time it is? It's time to level up and get that wiener up. I'm on the stairs. Blue Chew just dropped something crazy. I'm talking next level championship belt gold plated energy. Blue Chew Gold.

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and I guess somebody started a fire, right? And I'd be like as a comedian you go to different hotels. You're always in hotels over the years. And I got to the point where every now like Uh, you know, every seven weeks somebody'd start a fire, pull an alarm. Right. And so in the middle of the night, you got to go downstairs and be outside.

So I finally decided for myself, I'm gonna wait until I'm not going out there. There was never it was never a good fire. Right, right. So I was like, I'm waiting out there for forty five minutes or whatever while they see if there's a fire or not. Right. So I finally said I'm staying in the room until I smell smoke or whatever. So one time I'm in there, I just made this big sandwich, dude. It was really good. It was real I was one of the better ones I've probably ever made in my life.

And a guy. Yeah, I remember this big Firing with an axe comes in or just opens my door and the alarm had been going off for a while. Um And he's looking, he's looking for me and I was like, is there a five? Did I miss something? Yeah, he's like, you gotta get out of here. I was like.

Bro, I every week they doing this shit. I'm not going. Right. I need it all the time. But that's the cry wolf thing too though, you know. Oh, for sure. I knew it was on me. I think you know, hey, if it's bad, come back, you know. Right. And I think he's like, Fuck you, you know.

I don't blame him. Yeah, that's that's a fireman attitude. Yeah, and it should it should be. Hey, come back if I'm gonna burn, you know. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Uh yeah, there's just a lot of pressure. Yeah, like immediately I was putting all the pressure on this guy.

Um, but yeah, what what were some of the environments you went into? Like, did you ever just walk into an environment like oh well this is crazy or like Um like a drug den or like a um Oh plenty of drug dens. I mean every building had a drug apartment where they would sell drugs. Oh yeah. Yeah, but this one fire that I went to uh it was a it was in the middle of the day. It was like the second floor. We pull up. Fire's blowing out four windows. I mean, it was going good.

And uh so we run out. Now we're second due, which means we go to the floor above the fire. So the first due truck has the fire floor. Second do goes to the floor above, which the floor above is really shitty because that's where the heat's going up. That's where everything's going, you know. So now we get up the staircase and it's starting to bank down and get dark. And uh I see a guy runs past me, no shirt on, no shoes.

He's got like a three year old kid under his arm and a hefty bag. Oh yeah. So a politician probably. So he slips by us, you know. So now we're going to take the door in the hallway above the fire apartment. And it's getting smoky and my boss puts his mask on, but we have to take the door, so I wanted to see a little bit. So I'm hitting the a you know, the guy's got the halligan in the door jam and I'm smashing it with an axe and he's trying to get a bite on the jam to bust the door open.

So finally we get it, we bust the door open, we put our masks on. and we go in and we're crawling around and the engine company did a good job. They knocked the fire down pretty fast, you know. So as we're crawling around, it's starting to the the black smoke's starting to go away and it's getting lighter. And I'm on I'm on the floor and I'm I bump into a uh a dresser. I'm like, oh now I could start to see a little bit. I put my light on the dresser. All the drawers are open.

Stacks of hundreds and fifty dollar bills. Every drawer. I mean, no twenties, no t it was all coke money. Yeah. And I'm like, oh my God, you know. I'm I'm still like a I'm like my one year there, so I'm a I'm a junior man. You're like, I gotta get something for Christine. Well that's it. You know, I got a an angel and a devil on my shoulders and they're fighting it out, you know. I'm looking at we're in smoke, so I mean it ain't like a setup. Nobody's ever gonna know.

So I'm thinking, oh my God, I could buy myself a new Harley with that money and oh and then I was like the the angel be like, Oh, you bite a new Harley and you're gonna crash and you'll you'll get paralyzed and I'm like, Oh shit, the heck could happen So now I told the senior man, I said, Eddie, come here, look in this drawers.

Shit, Tony. He's like, what are we gonna do here? Oh, Eddie's setting you up again. Yeah, I'm like, you're the me senior man. You tell me what you're doing. Well, this is dirty Tennessee guys. I could have been stacking thousands in my pocket. If Eddie would've been like, Hey, let's take a little, you d you have to, huh? I would've yeah. Yeah, you got to. I think just to even make sure that it is what it is, get it back home. Right.

I I you know, I was young, I I had this oh, it's dirty money, it'll bring me uh bad juju, you know. Could have. Yeah. You have no way I mean I think that The karma of it, who knows? Yeah. You don't know. So the boss walks in, you know, the lieutenant, and he's like, What do you got? And I was like, Well, you got all this.

Drawer full of mud dresser full of mud. He's like, Oh, I don't see nothing. He was like, I don't know if you ever see Schultz on Hogan's Heroes. He's like, I see nothing. He turns around, he walks away. You know, we're like So now we go out and it's still a little smoky, but we could see we don't have our masks on and there's another uh room with a padlock on the door.

So he's like, Take the door. So he puts the the ads in to the halligan and I whack it with the axe. Yeah. The door and we bust it open and Theo, I'm telling you there was like half the Coke in Manhattan was in there. Bricks. All the way to the ceiling on all sides of the walls. A pile of cocaine about 18 inches high on the table. We were like, holy shit. So the boss gets on, tell the battalion we got a drug apartment, send the PD up.

So now we're like waiting for the PD to come. We wanted them to come before the drug dealers got back. So finally two two uh NYPD guys show up and they were like, Yeah guys, what do you got? I said, Well go in that room and go in that room. I said, That's the money room, that's the Coke room.

So they both go in and at the same time they go, Holy shit. Wow. They call a backup, you know. So now we're like my boss is like, ah, we're out of here, you know, we d we we don't want me nothing part of this. Whole show here. I'd have stuck around, man, you know? Like Joey Diaz says every now and every now and then you bump into a Colombian, you know? I love Joey D. Oh, he's the best. Oh my he was a fireman in the Colorado or some shit. Denver.

Was he a fireman? Yeah, but he was selling blow. He said the all they had was a pickup truck. I don't know if you ever saw I think it was on Rogan, maybe. Yeah, I don't it's not like Yeah, he said, I was just selling. It was an easy way to sell Coke. He said, I'll go around

People call the fire department Sorry Joey, but you did tell that story. No, people call the fire department. He shows up in a pickup truck selling Coke. Well he says it was a ski lodge place. There was never any fire. Oh yeah, that's a great idea actually, dude. Yeah, the ski lodge so it was like perfect for him. Yes, Joey Diaz has talked many times about having been a volunteer firefighter, which is really a drug dealer, in Aspen, Colorado.

In the nineteen eighties. Can you imagine him doing that? I bet if you were anywhere with Joey in the nineteen eighties, every place was asked in Colorado, dude. I go to a restaurant he recommended in in Jersey, a Chinese restaurant. Is it a good spot? King's oh, he says, Oh dude, this is the real deal. This is the Chinese food. You know how he talks, right?

So I go there and the guy's name is Freddie, the Chinese guy. I'm like, Freddie, Joey Diaz sent me here. He's like, Oh yeah, Joey Diaz. He said, he popular? I say, yeah, he's pretty fucking popular. He's like, oh I didn't know. Food was excellent. Oh, yeah. Thank you, Joey. I love that food. Joey has the it's like, bro, I'd be like, dude, my friend died last week in uh Buffalo, New York. He's like Oh, next time you're in Buffalo. It does yeah, it doesn't matter your friend died.

It matters. You gotta walk eleven blocks to get this prosciutto, right? He's like y the only way you can get there is by foot, right? I'm like, This sounds very alarming to look. But dude, he's always got the best food recommendation. Absolutely. He just loves life, man. He just always has a connection to life. Oh man. What stories. He's so funny. He's one of the best. I love him.

Yeah, I don't know anybody like him. But I bet in your line of work you probably met a lot of guys not like him but with similar energies like him. Oh. Crazy people. When I ha when I got on in eighty three, we still had Vietnam vets that were in the fire army, you know. Really? Today it's more college kids, you know. They came out of college and they get they take the test. Yeah, a lot of guys that want to be in the calendar, but it's a whole different thing, you know. Nothing to

The g the new guys, they you know, they're all great and everything, but it was a diff different atmosphere with the Vets guys. And plus back then, you know, they didn't have computers. And you know, there was no cameras, it was B C so you got away with a lot of shit. Yeah.

Today you're on cat you go on YouTube, they see you fighting the fire, the O V, the Roofman. Yeah, you if you fuck up people are seeing it right there. People in the chat are like, Get rid of this guy. Like, what's he waiting for? Why doesn't he go in? Where's the hose line? What's taking him so long? Yeah, yeah, dude. That's all the comments. Yeah, like Caruso's a pussy, you know? Like like dude, he ch is his first day on the job. Absolutely.

Dude, that is crazy that that's how it's gonna be. Everything's gonna be streamed and people will be able to comment at the moment. And the other day I was watching the chief had like a uh some kind of iPad thing or something and they had a drone in the air and the thing was showing them all the the the roof, the holes, the fire, the back. It was like a three D thing. It's like, you know, everything changes, you know. Yeah, there's already a real estate agent there.

Everything's changed. Changes. So, you know, when I got on, the the guys from the sixties and seventies, they were tough motherfuckers. So some of'em had come from like come from war actually and big time. And this was just another place where they at least had like camaraderie, they had a brotherhood. Exactly.

Organization. So, you know, you had your lieutenants and your captains and your chiefs. Did the stress of the job ever affect guys too much? Was there scenarios like that that kinda happened or not really? No, I think most guys love the job.

What made you end up kind of loving it? Like what made like what kind of changed for you? Like or when you look back Brotherhood. Really? Oh my God. Like family. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's why, you know, I did fifteen years in thirty four truck from a proby. I did fifteen years. I think I left there in ninety eight.

But uh yeah, I mean I had a lot of friends that uh I'm still today, you know, we're all together, the wives, the kids. The kids are on the job. Some of them are already captains. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's something that's so nice. It's just that that's one thing that's harder I even notice about life, even just like A as you get out of times in your life where you're either in in school where you have like teams that you're on or like your buddies are always around or in the college

you don't really find a lot of places where there's that much camaraderie anymore. No. You just don't find it. No. That was it. That was it there. Big time. We'd make the meals. Yeah, yeah. See, this is a uh Uh the two probies are coming off their probation. So when you come off probation, you throw a big party in the firehouse and the they all got lobsters and uh filet mignons and

And uh they have a big celebration. It's a lot I remember my my proby meal. It was it was a lot of fun. We'd I came off with another guy, Richie, who we both came out of the academy together. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, I know all these guys like family. A lot of them aren't aren't even here with us anymore. Really? Oh yeah, and that pick that's old. A lot of'em who's gotten older passed away even or they passed away, yeah. Some of'em uh

I don't know if some of them might have even passed away on nine eleven. Oh yeah, huh. Yeah, that's a great shot. That's awesome, dude. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you could just feel so much excitement there. Oh god, the fun we would have, and the meals that I would make. Really? Incredible. That's why they kept you around, huh? Oh, I was a good cook. Were you? Yeah. Yeah. The first meal I brought in, my mother made meatballs and s and a sausage and a whole Sunday gravy.

And I bought Gabadil and I brought it all in with the bread and everything and the guys loved it. You know, the Irish guys call it red lead. That was what they call tomato sauce. They loved it. They were like, Man, that was so good and everything. But you know what, kid? You gotta make it here next time. So I was like, Ah, I get it. You gotta make the meal in the firehouse'cause that's where everybody comes together. Yeah, because it could be all over the firehouse, but

That's where everybody who's chopping this, who's cooking that, who's sauteing things. Yeah. Who's doing the entertainment. The camaraderie. I would put my Louis Primer on the stereo and we would just be going, you know

jump drive and whale and uh you know I'm just a gigolo and place would be hopping. Yeah. Oh, it was fun. Oh, that's nice. And great meals. About eleven guys would eat at the same you know, we'd all eat at the same time. Yeah. And then everybody chips in at the end of the meal because, you know

City doesn't pay for anything. We pay for everything. That's crazy. All our TV. All they get paid for is a firehouse. Everything else we have to buy. Really? Yeah. Is it still that way? Yeah, still that way. Wow. Well, when I was on the job, you you bought your own turnout coat and you had a helmet. I brought some helmets here too. And the helmet fit perfectly to your head. They made it a mold to your head. So you didn't need a chin strap. It just stayed on there.

And then uh when Giuliani came in as mayor And we had a couple of fires where guys got killed and everything. And he couldn't believe how shabby we looked. Because we had the nobody fixed their gear. Yeah, the coats were all ripped up and you know it looked sh we I loved the way it looked. Like the Blaze News Bears, huh? And all the other fire departments around the country and everything, they already had bunker pants and bunker coats.

And they had hoods that you gotta wear these ho I hated all of that. I hated the bunker pants. I hated the hoods. And uh so that that changed right there from the from the uniforms and then they gave us a new helmet. Three sizes, small, medium, large. And they had to have a damn chin strap to hold it on. It was a lot heavier. Oh. I hated it. Yeah. But you get charges if you didn't wear it.

You know, if you took your old helmet and you got caught with it or you got caught without your bunker pants on,'cause it was like the the takeover, you know, it takes a few years. before the old timers really give in to all the changes. Everything takes a few years to kind of seep in. Oh especially in the fire department's all tradition. Yeah.

Yeah, dude. That was one of the nice things. Even like whenever I would go with my it was my first girlfriend, her dad. Whenever I'd go over there, it would just be nice to see the guys all spending time together, you know? Yeah. And they would know other fire departments around the city. It was just like there was like definitely a um

It was like this kind of secret society that was a little bit it was a little hidden kind of'cause you don't really think about the fire department all the time, you know? I didn't. But yeah. But they're right there, dude. Yep, yep. And they're and they're the first ones that you have to get involved when things get bad. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

Um yeah, if it's okay to talk about what what was what were things like during 9-11? Like what was I mean I know kind of like what some things were like, but when you look back on it, like how how Well I got there I got off work that morning. I did a twenty four hour tour on the tenth. And I just got home and I had a power wash and painting business on the side. Oh yeah. And I had my Dominican helper waiting for me at home, you know. So I got home. I we came in, I'm making coffee.

And uh my wife calls me, she's at work and she says, You see what happened? They flew a plane into the towers. I'm like, You're kidding me? I put a little TV on that I had in the kitchen and I'm like, Holy shit, I'm like What happened? Did the guy have a heart attack?

Flew in by accident. Yeah, some guy fucking just couldn't get a raviolo down there. So then I take you we get to the paint store and the guys are all around the counter with a TV and I come in and the guy Tony turns around the foot he says, Why the fuck is they? Fucking terrorists flew planes into the fucking towers. And I'm like, holy shit, now I see both towers going. Now I know, you know, it was an attack.

So I says, All right, we gotta get out of here. I got I had to paint a rabbi's house in in Woodmere. So I got this painting truck with ladders, Tony's power washing in paint. I raced to w on the way there I hear the first tower collapses. So I'm like Oh, I'm cursing. I'm like, motherfuckers. My Dominican guy don't speak English. He's he doesn't really hear, but he knows something bad. He knows the towers.

So now I get another twenty minutes or ten minutes later or whatever and I hear the second tower. come down and I I was out of light. I put my foot on the brake and I just started crying. I was on the on the steering wheel because I knew how many guys just got killed, you know, from this whole deal. Oh. Oh, I was crushed.

So you like yeah, at that point did you know because you were privy to the information of or you just knew how it worked? You know. Could you have gone back in or you weren't you weren't even allowed to go in? When? Like at that moment since you had just gotten off of a shift? No, well now I'm I'm ra I I race to the the the uh rabbi's house. I throw the ladders, the paint, I knock on the rabbi's door.

I says, Listen, uh, Rabbi, I'm a fireman from New York City. I I gotta go to the t the Trade Center. I knew he knew it because I could hear the T V on inside. So he was like, okay, I said Roberto's gonna take care of everything. I told Roberto, listen, I don't know when I'm gonna see you again. But he's like, No worry, no problem. My boss, I take care. He was such a great guy.

So now I'm racing with my van and I'm going in and out of the L, I don't know, the elevated train and I've got a ho my hand on the horn and I'm pedaled to the metal and everybody's probably looking like, what the fuck is with that painter? I'm in on the wrong side of traffic. I'm just ble like the French connection. I'm in and out of fucking cars.

I get to the firehouse and it's chaotic. Everybody's running in. What are we gonna do? Who's going? How are we gonna get there? One guy said he was taking a boat because my firehouse in Howard Beach was on a canal. Yeah, so I s my friend Whipper comes in, he's got a suburban and my friend Bobby comes and they was like, I'm going in with my suburban, whoever wants to go.

I'm leaving now. And were there some guys that did not want to go, did not want to be involved? No, everybody went. Wow. Yeah. So we grabbed our gear. A lot of guys went to a staging area. They made that mistake because they got stuck at the staging area. We took the we took my friend Suburban right to the pile right there. I mean, we we we were heading down Woodhaven Boulevard and I'm like And there was no traffic? It was traffic.'Cause I mean every the you know, the shit hit the fan already.

So uh the whip is driving crazy, my friend the whipper. And he I'm like, Whip, don't get anybody killed or I'm enough people already, you know, slow down a little. So we get to the L I E and the cops have it shut off, the entrance to the Long Island Expressway. So I stick my turnout code out the window. And they they move the cop cars and they wave us in, you know. So that's that had to feel crazy. Was there some f I mean, obviously there's excitement, probably a ton of adrenaline.

Fucking adrenaline. What are we gonna do when we get there? Right. We said we're gonna be an ambulance. We're gonna take bodies and we're gonna rush them to the hospital. That's what we figured. So now we're racing down there and we get to the midtown tunnel and and my friend Whip is a driver, man. He he's the best. We're doing a hundred and we're going through the midtown tunnel and it's like a a a a time warp with the the lights and the yellow bricks and we're doing a hundred miles an hour.

We come out, we head downtown, you know, by the midtown tunnel, we head down, and we he takes us right to the rubble. And we get out of the car and now it's dark, like an eclipse, and all the stuff is coming down on us, all the paper and the ash. Yeah, it was dark. That walls was standing still. Did it look something like this or it looked like that only day? Oh, that's a few days a week later or whatever maybe. But it was dark and uh when we got out of the car we couldn't breathe.

So we had a rip up t shirts and we put them around our faces to breathe. And then I noticed there was an old hardware store right across the street with like a glass door. So I grabbed a tire iron, I went over. I smashed the door open and we all went in. We grabbed ropes and masks and and sledgehammers, all c whatever cops came in behind us. Everybody was grabbing shit. So now we start the climb, you know, and it was like

The top of the Trade Center was only about six stories high now, you know? And we were climbing and it was nobody around. It was quiet, dark, eerie. And we heard all the pass alarms going off that when firemen aren't moving makes a screechy noise. And you could hear that all around, you know. And there was maybe one or two other firemen. We were the only ones there. And we were going in and out of voids, in and out of voids, going. Anybody hear us? Banging on shit?

And waiting to see if that happens and nobody, nobody. Finally we worked our all the way up to the roof of the Trade Center, which was Astroturf. And now you could see And it looked like it went off for a mile, you know. It was like a movie set. It was so crazy. And on the one side was the uh EAB bank.

And it was on fire. And they had excuse me, they had uh mesh, like the black mesh covering it. And all you saw was the black mesh and the the flames coming out. It was like satanic. Oh, it was so creepy. And uh so now we're climbing all all around uh inside in and out of voids and uh we did this for like

Maybe about one o'clock. We got there at eleven thirty and my friend Bobby says, Tony, I I'm my throat's closing up. We gotta get water. So I said, Whip, we gotta get water, we gotta head to the street. Now we're c now now it's like

One o'clock, people are coming in from everywhere. Firemen from uh cops, firemen, uh National Guard was coming in. So we worked our way to the street and then we needed water. And uh there was a guy, uh a Wall Street guy with expensive suit on covered in

cement dust and he had a bottle of uh water, you know, like big bottles? The big bottle and he was going around giving everybody water and, you know, trying to wash their eyes out and shit. And we were just waiting our turn to get some of that water. And as we were doing that, these four women, they come out of nowhere. They set up two barrels, a piece of plywood, they had one the bread and peanut butter and jelly, and they started making sandwiches out of nowhere.

And uh I got a little m emotional because I it was like uh uh you know, to see all these people coming together, right, at this time, no matter what your race, creed, color. working together. So we passed the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We had the water and we went back. But before we got up, a deputy gets up on a on a car and he yells to whoever can hear, you know, and it was like

Six truck, we just got a call. They're trapped. They're in a shaft and we're gonna find them. We were like this is the first time we're hearing anybody's alive. We're like, Yeah, yeah, we're uh so we will everybody's Starts running for get gear and there's a a rescue truck that was crushed.

And we ran over to the rescue truck and we started opening up compartments. I grabbed a jackhammer, we grabbed some bit big ass jackhammer, bits, bottles for air, and now we start heading out to look for them. Oh, we were on a mission now. You know, now we're looking for it. So now another two hours climbing up and down these con

But meanwhile building seven, which is the big building everybody talks about, was on fire from the moment we got there. Every floor really burned. Every floor. And what caused that fire? Just the collapse. Yeah, I'm talking they had the two trade centers. Oh, the classic collapsed right in front of them. Yeah. Yeah, there was a lot of buildings on fire. So uh

So now we uh we we're working up and down and I take a fall. I fall into a void and I fall on my right shoulder and my Bobby comes running over. He's like, Kiddo, you all right? I said, Yeah, I fucking hurt my shoulder. He helps me up. I take the jackhammer. I throw it into a void. I'm like, fuck this shit. We had no radios. We didn't know if they found anybody or anything. Oh, excuse me.

My pin. It was almost impossible. It was impossible. Finally we threw all this shit down because it was a couple of hours already, climbing again. And when you're climbing up these big jaggered pieces of concrete. Sure, scary. In and out, in and out.

And we made our way into a uh a store, like a high end store that was maybe three stories up and we went in through the window because three stories up what? High because the rubble was that high. So we crawled into their window and it was a high end women's store. And it's dusty and dark and and we're crawling around. I'm looking under all the clothes to see if there's any anything. We're yelling, anybody here, anybody here? Nobody there. So we worked our way back out.

And now we went to the uh Marriott, which was a hotel right there, and we came in one of these big broken windows. It was right there at ground z it was right there at Ground Zero, huh? Yeah. And we climbed down the debris into the lobby. of the hotel. We're the f the only ones there, you know?

So we're like, holy shit, look at this place, you know, we're looking around. And it was kind of kept okay. It was a big lobby. No, all the there was ash and broken glass and shit, but it was it wasn't collapsed. Right. So I said, look over there. I see a a fireman sitting at one of those little desks in the lobby. We're like, holy shit.

So we go running over. First fireman we're seeing, you know? And he's covered in in shit, you know, no helmet. He's like pale white. He's in shock. And he's sitting there and we're like, Holy shit, buddy, you okay, okay? And he turns and he looks at me and it's one of the young guys that got on rotation. He just left our house and they sent him to Manhattan. We called him monkey man. Wow. I'm like, holy shit, monkey, what the fuck? And he just

He looked up at me and he and he said, All my guys are dead. They're all dead. And we were like, Oh shit. And I'm like kind of rubbing his shoulder. My other guys are like, monkey, monkey, you're all right, you're all right. And he he was in shock, you know. So we're like, look, monkey, we gotta go, man. You know, you're okay, we're gonna leave you here. And it was funny'cause the phone was on the uh table with the little messenger light blinking. It was the weirdest sight, you know.

And we left him, we climbed back out, out the window, back onto the debris. It's a long day. Yeah, we were there fr till like nine thirty at night from eleven thirty in the morning. So we we were going along, we found a hose line, believe it or not, a hose line all the way from the Hudson, and there was a big opening with a like a void that had black smoke was pouring out of it.

So we had the line and for about an hour and a half we just sat there with building seven about a hundred yards away from us, burning. And we sat there, d and one guy would go around through the voids and the other two guys would just hold the hose line, pouring in into this hell hole from hell. I mean, it was like it was horrible. So oh some we're doing that and we see this chief. And he says he starts yelling at us. He's between us and building seven and he says

Drop that line, get out of here. This building's gonna come down. So we were like, oh shit, okay. We cracked it open a little, wedged it into some rocks so the water would keep going down the hole, and we took off and we were like, hey, it was like five o'clock. We're like we're hungry, we're thirsty, we're tired, we're covered in shit. Let's go back to the rig.

his suburban and we'll go uptown and we'll get something to eat and then we'll come back. So we c we get off the pile, like, where's the car? I think it's a few blocks this way. So now we're heading down and there's nobody around still. I mean, as far as, you know Besides Fireman coming in. So I don't know if you ever heard of Penny Crone, but she was like a popular reporter on Fox News. She was a real tough girl. She was yeah, Penny Crone.

And I don't know if she was Fox, but there she is. Very well known New York reporter. She was out there on the street? She was in the street when we were walking and she had a microphone and a cameraman and she came running up to us. She's like, guys, guys

Can you s give me some information what's like down there? So the three of us are standing there and she puts this big microphone in front of me and she goes, Can you tell me? I said, Oh, it's bad. Really bad She put it in front of my other friend, Bobby. Betty says, horrible. My other friend says the same thing. She's getting nothing out of it. She's like, she pulls back, you know, they ask us another question. And I'm like, holy shit, look over there.

And there's this Asian woman covered in dirt, bleeding from her head, and she's got a suitcase in her hand. So we're like we run over to her. We're like, ma'am, ma'am, are you okay? She was in shock or whatever and she just kept like looking and my friend went to take the suitcase and She yanked it back, you know, and then she just walked away. And we were like, holy shit, that was weird. What do you think's in that suitcase? My friend said, Money. Rip on that day, it was full of money.

Batch of yen in there, I bet. A lot of yen. Wow. Some egg rolls. I don't know. But we we got to the suburban and it was covered. Now it was green. It was now gray. So we all get in and it was like Theo, the seat. The leather seats were like ah

We're squishing our backs in, you know. We was it was getting comfortable. I was almost forty at that time. I can't even imagine. And the fact is you're alive. Like you've been through the I can't even imagine like what your body's going through. Oh, we were beat and we were covered in shit. And so it's funny because he put the uh he put the car on and he started up and he put the air conditioner on and it blew smoke, it blew dust at it.

like Lily Munster's vacuum cleaner. They went, I'm like, oh, everybody's getting it choking. The thing's blowing smoke out all the the dust. We're like, thanks, we needed that. Now we're heading uptown, even with the windows open. The dust is flying off the rig, and we go up to 16 trucks. I'm up in midtown somewhere and uh we take a break. I go in, we get a drink of water, I c I call my wife.

What has she been thinking? I don't know. It's like, you know, five thirty, six oh I forgot to say before we got to the car, building seven collapsed. Oh. We just missed it. We heard a roar. My friend said seven just came down. So we were like, Holy shit, we j we just missed it. But you've been near that all day down there. All day it was burning.'Cause there's a lot of speculation about building seven over the years. I think it's all bullshit too,'cause I was there, yeah. I mean

It's it kinda gets me a little uh uh'cause I I ca I I don't know what really happened that day. You know, you know, who knows, you know, who was involved, whatever. I I have no idea. Right. But all I know is building seven was burning all day long, from first floor to the top floor, every window.

So you know, people were saying there was explosions and this But you saw firsthand that it w it had been kind of cooking. And all the firemen that I ever talked to that were there that day, no one everybody says there was no fucking explosions, but Yeah, they have all these things. Like the other day I thought I saw an AI bullshit thing about guys saying uh they heard explosions. Like they're putting that out on the internet and it looks real. You think they're really firemen.

And you gotta be careful today. You never know it's real. Oh yeah. I agree with that. You can't tell anything. You can almost tell a little bit today, but imagine a few years from now with the AI, you'll never be able to tell. Yeah. You'll need like an AI detection kit. They probably will have that.

Maybe we can get in on that. We could come up with it first. Yeah. Okay. Sure. I mean if that's what we met for today to be able to start that and sh and like keep that out of the world. What what about over time with nine eleven? There's been a lot of conspiracy theories and stuff like that. Has any of that grown in the world of the uh

of the fire department culture or anything like that, or is it person by person or um'cause you guys were one of the most affected groups, you know? Yeah, three hundred and forty three men we lost that day. It it's hard to even get over that number. Yeah, it was a lot and we knew it was a lot. When we got we left sixteen truck, we stopped at a Genevieve drugstore and somewhere in Manhattan.

And we went in and we got a couple of bottles of water, about four giant Milky Ways, and some batteries for our flashlight. So now we're covered in shit, you know, and we're up at the counter and the the young girl's ringing us up and she goes

You guys come from the Trade Center? So my friend Bobby says, What gives you that idea? So she just like looked and grinned. She said, All right, no charge for you guys. So we took off, we ate our Milky Ways, we had our water, and then we went back to the pile.

Is there a picture from that day, Nick? Do you have it or are we gonna if you have that, just pull it up. Don't won't even wait for me to see that. That's my two buddies. That was like a couple of weeks later. That's why and the other guy? That's my friend Andrew and Marty. That's back you know, you would have to go down and work at the Trade Center. Yeah.

And uh it was very unhealthy. A lot of guys got cancer. A lot of guys died after the Trade Center. We just had a breathing expert in the other day, this guy, James Nestor, and he has a New York Times bestseller, a book called Uh Breath. And he talks about the is it ground zero. Ground zero lung. Oh, okay. He talks about ground glass lung. It's a condition that um that

happened to a lot of people who were uh first responders mm um at ground zero. Have you heard about this? Yeah. Well, I never heard about the ground uh glass, but uh of course the breathing everybody was in the, you know You if you were there for like a month or two, some guys were there two, three, four months.

My friend Bobby was there uh the whole time, you know. He he just got his nephew on the job. It was his nephew's first job and he was in the troll. He was there every day looking for his body, day and night. Looking for his nephew? Nephew, yeah, for his sister. Yeah. God, that's heartbreaking, huh? Yeah. He's a good guy. He's a great guy too.

Who, his nephew? No, my friend Bobby. This is his, he's the boxing uh he runs the uh new uh fire department boxing team. He is? Bring him up. Let's get a picture of him. Bobby Maguire, you see him on there. Bobby McGuire, FDNY boxing. He's a golden glove champ. Is he a pretty interesting guy? Oh oh you wouldn't make I don't know if you know the Knicks, but his uncles are Dickie Maguire and Al Maguire and uh Marquette and

The Knicks. Yeah. Oh there he is. His father was John McGuire and uh he was like a big guy in man in New York. Uh Jimmy Breslin actually called him the uh the King of Queens because he opened the first gay bar in Queens back in the day. Oh, that's incredible, man. Oh. Yeah. He sounds like an interesting guy. I'll take you to meet him sometime. Yeah. I bet he's got some great stories too, just from the boxing history of it. You know, Joey Diaz, um

used to uh he used to shovel ice out of James J. Braddock's driveway over in Jersey. Yeah, yeah. I heard him say that. That's pretty wild. He'd give him side of like a couple of bucks. Yeah, he gave him a couple of bucks. And Joey be like, this guy's been punched in the head so many times. He thought he'd give me a five, he gave me a ten.

So but that's just a wild story right there. Yeah, yeah. So go back and show the guys. That's Marty right there. That's Bobby. Bobby Maguire. Bobby Maguire. And what was his his nephew's name, do you remember? Um no, I don't remember. My wife might, but I don't. Oh, right. Alan. He was a uh a lifeguard in Rockaway, the kid. His last name was Alan and he just started on the uh He just started. It was like his first job.

And Bobby was there and I now his breathing is you know, he's had a lot of breathing problems. Once you're there too long So anyway, they're having a fight in uh Madison Square Garden in March. They we fight the cops every year. Yeah. It's called the Battle of the Badges. Who's won over time, over the years, who's won the most you'd think is? Well you know, the cops are double the the amount of pool that they can get. They they're twice as big an organization as us. You know, we're like

We're like thirty thousand, they're like sixty thousand. But we still we get we get some good fighters and uh we beat them quite a few times. We fight. They fight everywhere. They fight in England. They fight in Ireland. Oh, really? Yeah, they'll fight any fire department, any cop. So Bobby and his gang, they kind of this is like a thing they do all year. All year. Yeah. Oh, he's so busy. So he runs this, the FDMY boxing club. Yeah.

Oh wow. They raise like hundreds of thousands for uh tunnels to towers every year. And what is tunnels to towers? Uh that's with the uh the uh like World Trade Center uh foundation where uh the br the guy's brother ran through the from Staten Island, he ran through the tunnel to get to the Trade Center and he passed away. And uh so they started this organization. It's it's huge. Oh, that's beautiful, man. We'll make a donation to them. Oh, that'd be great.

Yeah, right here, born from the tragedy of 9-11, the Tunnels of Towers Foundation carries out its mission to do good by providing mortgage-free homes to Gold Star and fallen first responder families with young children and building specially adapted smart homes for catastrophically injured veterans. And first responders. Wow. Oh, the FDNY boxing club is comprised of active duty members, FDNY and EMS, who train on their own time, established in nineteen eighty-two.

FDNY Boxing has spent forty years raising funds for w worthwhile charities through spirit. Through spirited competition. Yeah, man, we'll make a we'll make a donation to them. I'm uh yeah, I'm going. Bravest boxing team will defend the big apple in the second international battle of the badges, huh? The funny thing is the best fights are in the crowd, the cops and the firemen going at it. Holy shit, the brawls.

One time I was there and uh this this girl cop, you know, she was bad mouthing some fireman and she threw a soda at the guy. And then one fireman says, Hey, you know, I don't hit fireman and the other fireman said, I do and he clocked her. Oh, yeah. Boom, she went flying over the thing. The whole fight broke out. It was crazy. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, once you throw a soda at ya.

Yeah. And with all the if people getting sex changes now, you don't know who's got what on them. Exactly. You know, I'm not frisking you first to find out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um How has the how has the department changed since you got involved in now? Well, from when I was got on and then in like in uh The early uh late nineties, mid nineties, computers came in and that changed a lot. Computers and now uh digital things. We had fax machines and computers.

And that changed a lot of things before it was just writing in a book, you know, now more things are more digital. So they had a little more uh eyes on you, you know. You couldn't get away with as much. Right, a lot more technology stuff. Yeah,'cause back in the day, you know, the the bosses ran the firehouse. There was nobody else that knew what was going on. Whatever they put in the book is what what it was. Matter of fact, when I bought my house it was a funny story. I was twenty four.

And I told my boss, I s because I told the bank, Yeah, this is where I work if you wanna check on my employment. And I gave him the number to the truck office and the So I sit down, this is what I make, you know, and it was like twice what I was making. He's like, ah, you can't say that. I said, just tell the bank, don't worry about it. And it worked.

What um yeah, what did Christine say when you called her that? It must have been crazy. Bernie She's like, Tony, how the fuck are you? What's going on? I said, Oh my God We just got uh firehouse, we're taking a break, uh we're all okay and uh and I'll talk to my wife, tell her, you know, I love her and I'll see her in a bit. I'll call her later.

So I hung up and we went back to the we went back to the pile. So now we get back on the pile. It's like what do we want? We first we're walking along and guys are like seeing other guys that you know, you're hugging. So my friend Bobby sees a guy they're hugging and I'm standing there like on a plateau. And this guy hits me another five. And he goes, buddy, you're standing on somebody. And I was like, oh shit.

And I look down and this guy in this three piece suit, he's like part of the ground. He's looking up at me and I'm like, Oh my God. That was the first body I saw all day. Yeah, so now we're like, Okay, so now we're moving along. What do you want to do? They started a bucket brigade. I don't know, we must add a thousand Home Depot buckets.

And you would pass a bucket and take a bucket. Pass a bucket. For like hours we were doing that, you know, and it it was starting Yeah, it was getting dark out, you know, the the day was getting it was like around seven thirty, eight o'clock. And uh so now we're doing this for hours. My back is killing me. And uh all of a sudden we hear all this yelling and everybody's yelling and cheering. It's 9.30 at night, you know, or nine o'clock.

We're like, what is that? What is that? My friend Bobby goes, look, look over there, down there. And we look down, and here comes a parade of iron workers. with uh heavy machinery, cranes, they got their hard hats on, cut off shirts, everybody's got their fists in the air, they're all hanging off the machines, everybody's cheering like we won the Super Bowl. It was like

It was a drop in the bucket, but they got right to work, started taking off all the heavy shit. You know, I mean it had m months, almost a year to go, but

Oh. It was just a start. Yeah. And it just felt so good. Like we had a chance. Yeah. And then finally we were like, you know, let's start heading home, you know. And I met a few guys heading home. And I was thinking in the back of my mind, all the guys, you know, that that That got killed. We had no idea how many yet. Can you imagine? And uh I run into a friend of mine and he he was off uh in a rescue company and I said, Hey John He said, Tony, how you doing?

He goes, you know, Tony Jerry was working and Jerry was like one of my best friends. And I was like, oh God, I just like stepped back because I knew he was he was in rescue uh rescue one. I was devastated. Like my friend whip saw it and he put his arm around me. He said, come on, Hunu, let's go. Let's leave. And I was like, uh I'm still emotional over it. It's heartbreaking. What was his name? Jerry What? Jerry Nevins. Jerry Nevins. Let's see a picture of him, huh?

Funny story when he told me he was gonna leave to go to rescue. I was like, You motherfucker, are you fucking kidding me? It was like'cause everybody was leaving, you know, I was there fifteen years. I was losing guys left and right. They were getting made lieutenant. He wanted to go to a rescue company. We used to bash rescue all the time. Rescue's like a special company. You know, when when a when a truckey or a fireman gets in trouble, they send a rescue guy to get'em. They're like expertise.

They're like the Marines or whatever kind of or no. And is that Jerry? Yeah, it's Jerry. Oh, there he is. And they were on forty second street, rescue one. So they're right in the middle of Times Square. Oh, they were there. Oh, he made so many rescues. It was amazing.

Wow, so he enjoyed it once he got over there. Oh, I used to go to some metal days and and he'd be there and you know, two, three metals, you know, hanging off of buildings, scaffoldings. He say, you know, there's a lot of times in midtown the scaffoldings would break and they'd have to go over ropes. And uh yeah, he was just a great find. But when he told me he was going to rescue, I was crushed.

I was like, you got to be kidding me. He told me in the middle of a box we were checking out a building. So now I get back in the rig. And we're going down the uh St. Nicholas Avenue and I turned the ladder all the way out. So now it looks like a square, you know? And I'm like this way looking at him, he's looking, he's like, what the fuck? I'm like, fuck you.

And the and I we we straighten it out. Now we're crossing over Amsterdam Avenue and I see them put the lights on. Like, okay, we're getting a run. I see the boss on the phone, you know, and he Yeah, he's taking down the information, puts his arm out like we gotta run. Sounds like a job. Numerous calls.

Numerous calls means you're going to work. That means people are calling. You know, I see a fire, I see a fire, I see a fire. Right. It's not just some weirdo with a Ouija board. Yeah. Yeah, no Ouija boards, no fake alarms. You hear numerous calls, you know you're going to work. So now we go around Broadway and I see it. We come up and it's a second floor. It's blowing out like four windows. And there's an awning with off the fire escape.

On the second floor and it it's still not fire out. I gotta get in there. I'm the O V. That's my job. So now I'm getting a ladder out. I'm putting the ladder up. The Dominican guys in the street, they're helping me place the ladder into the thing. I climb up the ladder. I smash the window out. I put my mask on and I drop in. Now it's blowing.

all the other rooms, this room is getting ready to blow, you know, you it gets hot. So now I'm in there and I'm searching around and uh I I I I get lost. I get a little I get pumped into a Bure on my knees. And I get disorientated and I f and I'm getting getting scared because my ears are starting to burn. I know it's gonna light up. Mm-hmm.

So, which is crazy, I got caught in a closet. You'd never think, how'd you get caught in a closet, right? But I'm crawling in thinking it's an opening and I turned in there. And I'm in this closet. Now I can't get out of the closet. I'm I'm going around in a circle. My ears are burning. And all of a sudden I hear Jerry. He came in behind me and

Jerry had a bite bar, which was like totally illegal. Instead of having a mask with a a net on, it was like you had a little bite bar in the mask, so you didn't need that. You just held it with your teeth, which was totally outlawed, but it made it easier to take it on and off. So I hear him say, Tony.

And I'm like, Jerry, he's like, you gotta get out of here. It it's it's gonna light up. I'm like, I can't find my way out. I was like taking my mask off, calling for my mother. I thought I thought I was I was a dead man. Wow. And then all of a sudden, uh, I heard the engine at the door and I heard this guy McCarthy yelling, Kick its ass, kick its ass, hit it, hit it I heard the water coming in and I was like, Oh, it was music to my ears. I was gonna live again.

And then after that, when I was in the street, I was like a zombie, you know, and and Jerry was like, Yo, what what the fuck's wrong with you? I said, Dude, that was fucking close. He just laughed, you know. But that was it. He went to rescue the next day. I never even thanked him for uh coming in after me that day.

Yeah, I mean it's just even the stories are so like exhilarating. I can imagine like I can't even imagine what it's like really. We were putting a fire out. I made a cover of a magazine. I I think you could bring it up. It was called Fire Command. I I I don't know what it was, you know, it was like one of these buff magazines. Yeah, that's me in the middle.

In a neck brace? Yeah. I look like an Italian organ uh grinder, monkey man, right? I thought you were gonna show me maybe you made the calendar. Yeah. I got the little ringlets in my hair, I got the bow ties on. And and the friend next to me, Kenny, he was a proby. So funny story, we had to take it this line up the fire escape because we got called in as an extra engine. It was a lot of fire. People were trapped. They were having a hard time putting the fire out from the inside.

So we're taking the line up the fire. Now I'm in the engine. I'm detailed. I'm never Harley in the engine. So but when they need a guy and you got an extra guy, you go across the floor. So now I'm in the engine and we're taking this line up the fire escape to the fifth floor. And uh the boss is yelling, this boss is but there's Joe McLaughlin, he's yelling, Richie, get in there, hit it, hit it.

Finally we get they charge the line, we tie it off to the fire escape. I mean it's a lot of water going up that high. He's hitting the water, the guy right here, Richie that's squinting his eyes. And uh we're pushing our way in. We made it up to the fire floor escape. We pushed the fire in and now we're crawling in. We're climbing in through the window. The boss is yelling, They're looking at us, bitchy, they're looking at us,'cause we're outside on the fire escape.

We get in, the ceiling comes down on our heads, all this hot plaster and shit fucking burn my neck. So now we're getting in, we get to like the the engine on the other side is coming and they're making a good push. They're putting the fire out. We're putting the fire out. So now we're at this like wall with a window and I'm I'm on top of something. Me and another guy were like kneeling. I thought it was a pillow from uh uh the couch.

So the boss tells the probe he take the line and shoot the water out the window and it'll take a lot of smoke so we could start to see what's going on here. And as they're doing that, you could start to see a little. The the boss takes his mask off and he goes, Holy shit, look what you're kneeling on. And I look down and we're kneeling on a a corpse with no head, no legs and no arms, and he's all like a crispy burnt.

We're like, ah, we all jump off. We're like, holy shit. I thought it was a couch piece, you know. And it was this, that's what happened. They killed this guy, they cut him up. And then they lit'em on f they lit the place on fire. That's why there's so much fire. You get a lot of fire in the middle of the day. It's usually arson. Somebody poured gasoline or something.

Yeah. So that was a murder, huh? It was a murder. So anyway, before that, the Kenny's a probie. He's probably about twenty-one years old. And uh he was in softball and he hurt his leg sliding into second base. So we were on inspection. I said, Kenny, what happened to your leg? He said, Oh, I cut it on softball. I said, Oh, that looks fucking terrible. Then we got that run to the fire. So now we're leaving the fire. We're going down the steps. I said, we're all going sick.

with tapping out, right? So I said, we're gonna go with our necks from the ceiling coming down. I said Kenny, take that bandage off and tell'em you got burnt on your leg. So we get in the street. The street's busy. It's all fire department cops. There's reporters in the street and everything. and uh the fire department doctor comes running over to us and uh I said, Yeah, we the ceiling came down on our heads and he's like, Oh

And I says, and this guy got burned on his leg and he looks he calls Keddy's leg up and he looks at the softball injury and he goes, Third degree burns, patch this man right up. So I look at Keddy'cause he didn't know, you know, it was his first take. So now we uh they take us uh we're on the wall, like on Malcolm X Boulevard.

And uh they take us to we say, Where's the boss? We don't know where Joe do Joe McLaughlin is. So we see a bunch of people like standing around, somebody's on the ground, they're taking pictures. I go we go over there where we see uh the boss, he's on the stretcher, getting his head taped down and they're all taking pictures of him. We're like, Lou, Lou, you okay, you okay? And he looks up, he goes

Get the fuck out of my pictures, he says. So we were like, ah okay. He's okay. So they put us in the bus. There he is, ah, the best. Joe McLaughlin. CPO Joe. Well, he w he was, you know, he was in the 17 truck in the Bronx in the war years. So he was like he was a well rounded fireman, a tough as nails. Wow. Yeah. So he says, get the fuck out of my pictures. So we're laughing. Everybody's taking pictures of him.

So now uh they take us to the hospital, you know. So we're in the emergency room in Columbia Press and the young nurses are patching up on and they're laughing with us, you know, and it's a busy emergency room. And uh Kenny's got his thing on and So all of a sudden this like middle-aged head nurse comes in, you know, good looking woman, probably forty or so. And so she goes to Kenny's leg and she moves the bandage. She makes a face, you know, and she's like, When did this happen?

And the kitty's sitting there, you know, he's like, Oh, we're all looking at him, laughing, you know. And she just like patches it up. She goes, You're lucky we love you guys. And we're like, Oh, we love you too, you know? Busted. So About a week or two mm, a couple of weeks later, I come into the firehouse and this guy says, Hey, here's one of the the superstars. I'm like, What are you talking about? He's like, You made the cover of a magazine.

So I'm like, holy shit, you're kidding. So now I go in the kitchen and everybody's clapping and everything. They already have the picture in a frame, right? But they changed it from report on firefighters injuries, they put report on firefighters faking injuries. So y so they put captions on everybody. So y you see the woman with her arms crossed and the bandana. Her caption said, I know those motherfuckers are faking.

And then there's a cop like walking here and he goes, Yeah chief, I got those fakers right here. And then this salty high uh Harlem fireman is looking at us and his thing says, You guys disgust me. Look at that sad face. Oh my god. Those that ringlet hair. I love how you guys already have your neck braces on. Oh yeah, I kept that in my back pocket. Well, we had a prop rop prosit at home. You know, canes and braces. Oh, that's hilarious. Yeah, so that's that was how we made that uh cover.

I still have that hanging today. Just yeah to go down there some memory lane, man, just to think about different things. And just the c to hear about the camaraderie of what like the lifestyle was like. Yeah. Um break up the part about the ground glass lung. Oh, is that what it's called? I just wanted to make sure that we that I s mention it on here so that people know about it.

Let me see. Ground glass lungs refers to a radiological finding on CT scans showing hazy opacities in the lungs, often linked to inflammation or fibrosis from inhaling toxic dust at ground zero depulverized. After the nine eleven attack. The dust cloud contained over twenty five hundred contaminants. Fifty percent construction debris, forty percent glass fibers.

Nine percent cellulose. Yeah. Inhaling the dust led to World Trade Center lung injury, which firefighter with firefighters losing up to twelve years of lung function. Seventy percent of workers showed respiratory decline. Yeah, the longer you worked down there, the worse it was. Yeah. Because the dust really never settled for y for months. Yeah, it's just it's th it's so crazy to think that it created a new disease. Yeah. You know? Probably. Well, you know, think about all those offices.

All those fluorescent lights, all those computers, uh that just got pulverized to a dust. That's why everybody was covered in between that and the cement. It's a lot. Um Tony, yeah, I'll I I there's so many more things I want to talk to you about. Maybe we could have you come back sometime. Anytime. And sh and talk about other stuff. I uh you know Maybe I'll bring Bobby Maguire with me. Dude. Very interesting man. Is he? Oh my god.

Uh no, he seems very interesting. And I want to get a picture up too. Is this his is this uh Richard Allen? Yeah, that's his nephew. That's his nephew right there. Get a picture's son. Of Richie Allen. Yeah. That that's awesome, man. We'd love to maybe get every year they acknowledge him in Rockaway. They have a big thing with the lifeguards and everybody. Yeah, surfer. He was a big surfer. Oh wow. Yeah. Uh.

Yeah, I got uh plenty more stories there. What was the oh the the murder, that was a good story. You know what? I think I wanna save it because there's there's even some basic there's like basic questions like Uh like is our can't s like somebody leaving a candle on, is that like the number one cause of a house fire? Mm-hmm. Um Maybe house fires, uh Probably uh bad electrical work and m a lot of off fires. Arson. Yeah. Big time. Uh those space heaters. Space heaters.

I don't know if you ever heard of the Happy Land Social Club. I don't know. But depends on which one you're talking about. And I yeah, it wasn't that kind of happy last I mean there's a lot of different versions. But uh uh sad story, but uh I think like uh I'm not sure the number, but eight about you could look it up. Eighty seven people died from a gallon of gas in a match. Oh. Yeah, it was horrible. You had to respond to that?

I didn't respond but my friend Sully did. He was detailed out to the Bronx and they were one of the first trucks there and when they got in they were crawling up the stairs and they didn't know what they were crawling over and then when they finally found out it was all bodies so it was like Crazy.

Yeah, the happy lands. And so a lot of times you don't know what's going on, or it used to be, you didn't know what's going on until you got in there. No, probably not. You don't know who who's who said it. You just you're just the adrenaline is running, man. Oh my god, your heart's a pumping.

And thought you never get it never gets like old, you know. Oh my bet. Uh how many years like they would say, we'd get there and be a top floor fire. Now you gotta carry that mask, all your gear, everything. By the time you get to that sixth floor and you gotta put a mask on, you're sucking air. You're like now you gotta put this little man and the mask is like the man breathing, so you only get air.

And I'd be in my mask like I'm getting out of this fucking city. I I'm going to Queens. I thought Queens would be an easier job for me. Westchester, send me to West Chester. Anywhere, you know about getting out of this fucking ghetto. Wow. Well um yeah, Tony, thanks so much for your service, man. Yeah, I would love to uh just have you come back sometime and just be able to

uh just go down like there's some other roads I want to go down and learn more about it. Oh, that'd be great. And just uh but yeah, I think today we just got a really good idea of just kind of the brotherhood. Great of um yeah, just what your your journey has been like, kind of getting involved with fire departmenting. Um oh, what did your wife end up getting a job in? My wife? Yeah. She was a uh worked for a printer and then she worked for a dentist. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Dental like dental assistant and kind of stuff. No, she was she ran the whole like, you know, yeah, took the phone calls. Oh yeah. Keeping everything organized. Yeah, she ran it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, my wife was a hard worker.

Yeah, that's nice. Like I said, she bought her first car when, you know, we were seventeen with her own money, four grand. She bought a Chevet. Red Chevet. Oh dude, if I saw a girl with a car, yeah, I'm going with her. Yeah, I was like, Wow, this girl's got her own car. That's my I think the number one thing I'm looking for in a in a spouse is uh hard working. Yeah. Oh. Cause life's hard work. Yeah, you can't try you can't do the door lock anymore, right?'Cause now they're all electric.

But he always was to say if that girl don't open gets in the car and don't open your door, she's out, you know. So there's all these little tests, but yes, my wife was uh a hard worker and uh a great mother. Yeah, that's a nice thing too. Oh yeah. It's funny because she knows she Sh all them years of being in the fire department, I'd come home sometime and say, Oh my god, I had a fire, top floor was burning this and I'm telling'em all this stuff and like

Did you remember that we have to go to the school tomorrow and and I'd be like, I I just told you this whole story. It seemed like it went right over your head. Blah blah blah. We get it. Yeah, yeah. Matches. Go spit that black tar in the sink again like you always do. Oh, yeah, behind every good fireman, huh? Oh yeah, it's the wives. I got some pictures of the fire department wives.

Well look you can show me that as long as they're appropriate you can show me. Oh they're appropriate. Okay. Good girls. Okay. Well, you know, a lot of them are Bronx girls. Well look, these days, uh Oh yeah. Tough women over there. Yeah.

That's what you need in the world. You need a good, strong lady. This is your book right here, Tales from the Tiller. Yes. I didn't even know you had written this. Yeah. I wrote this uh it just came out in September September. Yeah. Great book. Dude, congratulations. Yeah. A lot of good stories in there and uh I got recipes in there. Clam sauce casino, I think you might like that.

Bro, I'll tell you this. I took a gal out the other night, went to a place, they had clams and white wine sauce. That's kinda like, oh, you would love clam sauce casino. Really? Well, you know clams casino? You know, they put the peppers and the onions and a little bacon on it and then they bake'em. No, I've never had that. Louisiana didn't have clam sauce casinos. Uh they might have had it. We had macaroni. There it is. Oh yeah, that looks like it's a good one.

So I make it by this guy that got in trouble and was sent to our firehouse and uh it was one of his meals and I took it from him and we make it with the spaghetti. So we put it over with the the peppers, the bacon, the onions. Bread crumb and the clams. Oh I want that. I'm a clam guy. Have you seen that kid that says that? No. Bring up that clam kid.

I love this kid. But of course that a fireman's book would have fires with recipes thrown in. Yeah, you know, so it's funny'cause some of the stories are like tragedy and then it goes right into the m the recipe. It's like it's a little weird, but No, no. Oh that kid that does the Italian words. No, no. I'm looking for the kid. Yeah, this kid's hilarious. But the um Who what did I just ask you for now? Clam guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a clam guy. Kid. Have you seen this little card? No, I'd see.

This kid, they interviewed him. We'll finish on him. Alright. I'm a guy who only basically likes clams, really. Yeah, I like that kid. That's all I do. All he eats. It looks like it. Clams are awesome, but this is great. Hated oysters.

Kid's getting a little bit weird. But yeah, that guy's a clam guy, you know? It's getting a little weird. But I could see you guys just like you guys show up at a fire, but you also brought like but you also brought uh dinner that has to be preheat that has to be heated up.

So you're like taking it up to the fire with you, leaving it on the ledge? As soon as you as soon as you sit down to eat, the tone alarm goes off. Oh, every time, huh? Uh and what happens is they g we have a big thing of foil paper and one guy just starts cutting the foil papers off. And the other guys start rapping this. Otherwise the cockroaches will walk away. We had so many cockroaches in the firehouse. Oh my God. You can never get rid of them.

We'll have to hear about it next time. Uh you have a book, Tales from the Tiller, the true stories of hero, yeah. Uh true stories of heroism, heartbreak, and humor. The luckiest guy alive in his journey. in the F D and Y. That's awesome. Who helped you put it together? Just me and my son. Oh yeah? Yeah my wife, yeah. Oh that's excellent. Yeah it was all in house.

And my brother in law who was in Utah in uh Seattle, he he worked for Microsoft and he did all the proofreadings. Really? Funny story is it uh you know, he he threw his shoulder out working the mouse doing all my corrections because every every chapter had like a thousand corrections on it.

Well that sounds like an insurance scam. But uh that'll be the next book, you know? Uh but no people are already telling me, when are you gonna write another book? I'm like, well I'm just trying to get this one out now. You know, it's hard. I go on the Instagram, that helps.

And some there's always some asshole you write one book, it's like, when's your next book coming out? That guy he hadn't even read he can't even read. It's always people that can't read. Like more tales from the television. There you go. Hey.

Hey, if it sells. You never know, man. Well I've enjoyed your time today, man. Thanks for thinking with us and just kind of taking us on a little bit of a journey. Um, yeah. I I I we have t we had so many questions for today, so I'd love to be able to get to more tomorrow. Yeah, I can't believe how fast it went. Another time. I know. When you're having fun. Hey.

You're the man. I'm just glad we're not on fire in here today, man. Checking this lobby out over here too. It's about a thousand years old over here. I know this place is pretty cool, man. Yeah, it's cool. Have you if you get to go to there's like a bar over there and a restaurant just at each end? I I went and I looked at'em. Yeah. Yeah. It's just cool. It's funny'cause I've been in man uh like big hotels in Manhattan before and uh the lobbies are like tremendous, you know. I mean it's

stores and restaurants. So I thought it was going to be I've never been to the Chelsea. Yeah, this is a nice place to come if you just come for a meal or something. Like um they went to the bar last night. It's nice in there, huh? Yes. The suite. Yeah, this is one of the sweets and it's but yeah, it's it just feels like

I don't know. To me, it just feels like a lot more uh chill here. Yeah, definitely. And relaxed. But thank you for your service. I want to say that. Thank you for coming today and helping us share uh memories of of some of your comrades that have fallen over the years and that have all also served. And uh we appreciate it.

And we appreciate your wife and uh son Dominic. We'll have to put a picture of all of all of them together at the end of the episode. And uh and thanks again, man. Thank you. Yep. We had a good time. Pleasure, man, and an honor. Well, appreciate it, Tony. Thank you very much. Thank you.