Report From Engine Co. 82 - Dennis Smith [84]
I remember as George says this, Billy O’Mann walking, helmet in hand, into the emergency room at Bronx Hospital. The nurse there was having a bad day.
“Listen ma’am,” he said, “do you think you could give us some gauze pads and bandages?”
“Dammit, you firemen are always coming in here and bothering us. Why don’t you go to a drug store?”
“O.K., lady, you can shove the bandages,” snapped Billy.
George continues, “… and the most important tool we use we pay for ourselves—the halligan tool. Why should the city pay for it when the firemen go out and buy it themselves?”
The companies were operating at Home and Simpson Streets. A car was on fire, and Charlie McCartty dropped his halligan tool on the street as he went to open the hood. When he turned around again, the halligan was gone. Back at the firehouse later in the afternoon, the Captain gives a kid two dollars. The kid tells the Captain that he’ll find the halligan under the stairs at 987 Simpson Street. It was there.
“Why didn’t ya arrest the kid, Cap?” someone asked.
“Look at it this way,” he answered, “we just saved ourselves a sawbuck.”
“Jesus, George,” Billy-o says, “all I want is an eight-hundred-dollar parking lot across the street. You just increased the Fire Department budget a couple a million dollars with those complaints.”
“Yeah,” George says, “it’s amazin' what wonders you can do with a flip o' the tongue, isn’t it?” The bells start to come in, and everyone is silent for a moment. The first round of eleven came through. It’s nine o’clock, and the men in the kitchen talk over the second half of the 11-n nine o’clock test signal.
George is right, I think. Especially about the television set. I wish the hell we could get rid of it. Ill never forget sitting in the kitchen, waiting expectantly for Humphrey Bogart to fondle those steel balls in the greatest courtroom scene to be put on film. Here he comes. He’s walking down the hall. He passes his junior officers waiting outside the court. He stops. Good old Bogey, he never lets the enemy get the edge on him. “Good morning, gentlemen,” he says in that cool, polished way. He opens the door, and enters the court. I wait. He salutes the court. I am about to be rewarded for being a loyal Bogart fan. Then—then the bells toll.
I wouldn’t have minded if it was a fire. But it was a false alarm. Yes, get rid of the television. I wasn’t even interested in seeing Jose Ferrer throw a glass of champagne in Fred Mac-Murray’s face. If the administration wants us to watch television training films, let them buy us a television set.
The room is quiet, but the conversation interests me so, that I do not want to see it die.
“The real sad thing about it though,” I say dogmatically, stressing the real, “is that we know the system will never change unless the firemen in this city reabze they are being duped.”
“That’s a grammatical redundancy,” says George. “Duped and firemen mean the same thing. It’s oxymoronic to say that a fireman realizes reality. Two opposite things don’t match up—if we did realize reality we would not be doing this kind of work for a living. Ya gotta be nuts to go into a fire, and crazy people don’t recognize reality. Ergo, ‘firemen can’t realize they are being duped’ is a grammatical redundancy ta begin wit’.”
The kitchen is filled with laughter as George