Report From Engine Co. 82 - Dennis Smith [55]
I am standing in the middle of the cellar floor. There is a big oil burner, and an oil tank that takes up a good part of the room, a table, a few wooden benches that were liberated from a school, and about three dozen standing jacks that were recently put there to support the aged apparatus floor above. The oil-stained concrete floor around the pool tables is covered with squashed cigarette butts. I start to push the broom around the floor. As I near the oil burner I notice the grating cover of the sump pump is moved to one side, leaving a gaping hole in the floor. Some of the men urinate here instead of walking upstairs to the bathroom. I stop pushing the broom. I take the hose connected to the oil burner water system, and hose the floor around the sump pump. I kick the cover over the hole, and hose that down. It looks a little cleaner now.
The cellar swept, I return to the kitchen. Billy-o is there tacking a notice on the bulletin board. He tells me that Chief Lany, the Chief who works opposite Chief Niebrock and us, has come down with hepatitis.
“I don’t know for sure, but I bet he got it here,” Billy-o says, “and there is only one way to make sure it doesn’t spread. Read this.”
The message, typed in bold letters, reads:
TO ALL MEMBERS OF THE BIG HOUSE
Due to the recent discovery of a case of hepatitis to one of the members, the second such case in a year, a consensus was taken from the members on ways to improve the sanitary conditions in the kitchen, and elsewhere in the house. One CD. [cave or cellar dweller] suggested a bidet to be put over the sump pump. Another suggested a delousing machine, or a personal flit gun for everyone so they could spray themselves and their old lady before and after work. But, the serious-minded among us prevailed, and the consensus was to purchase a dishwashing machine or two. This costs money, so one dollar per payday will be collected until we have $700.00 (7 pay days). This, of course, is voluntary, but the alternative is leprosy, syphilis, gonorrhea, common cold, etc.
Thank you,
Billy O’Mann
“It’ll never work Bill,” I say. “I like the way you presented your case, but as long as there are probies around here to wash dishes you’ll never get the guys to part with seven bucks.”
“That’s the point. As long as the probies wash the dishes, the dishes never get done right. They don’t have their heart in the work.”
Billy-o is right. The dishes and the silverware in the firehouse are always greasy, and we do need a dishwasher, but we just went for three hundred for a meat slicing machine, and few firefighters will be willing to cough up the dough for a machine that is not absolutely necessary. Inflation is hurting all of us.
It is a quarter after ten as the bells signal Box 2743. First run of the day. Charlotte and 170th streets. A day never passes that 2743 does not come in.
I can feel the cold penetrate my feet as I kick my shoes off and climb into my boots. Marty Hannon of Engine 85 is on housewatch, wearing his heavy rubber coat, and a scarf wrapped around his neck. He pulls back the canvas, and the pumper turns up Intervale Avenue.
There is a young girl waiting in the cold for us. She is about twenty-one or two, thin and sickly. She wears fur fringed slippers, and her cotton housecoat flaps in the wind. “My husband,” she says, “he took an O.D.”
“What’s the address?” Captain Albergray asks.
“811 Seabury Place, Apartment 6,” she answers.
The pumper takes off, leaving her to walk the short block to Seabury Place. We reach 8n. Someone has painted a sign on the marble wall of the vestibule: “NO JUNKIES ALLOWED—ENTER AT YOUH OWN RISK.” How ironic. We climb the stairs to the second floor. Captain Albergray