The Joys of Fighting Him with a Volunteer Fire Department

Hello! Here comes the fire department! Watch the people swarm! Uumpp! Ouch! Excuse me for living. This is no place for a peaceable spectator. I'm going to cast anchor in this doorway until the mob gets past.

No, thank you. I'll not join the Marathon. But you don't know how homesick and happy it makes me to see this crowd run! I've been in New York a week now, and honestly this is almost the first really human impulse I've seen a citizen give way to. Until this minute I've felt as if I were a hundred thousand miles from Homeburg, with all train service suspended for the winter. If I could find the man who stepped on my heels while chasing that engine, I'd thank him and ask him what volunteer fire department he used to run with. See 'em scramble.

Whoop! Here comes the hook-and-ladder truck! This is nothing but Homeburg on a big scale. I'm beginning to envy you city chaps now. That makes the fourth engine that's come past. You get more for your money than we do. Look at that chief hurdling curbstones in his little red wagon. If Homeburg ever gets big enough to have a chief's wagon, I'll suffocate with pride.

I see it's the same old story. Fire's all out. It always is by the time you've run nine blocks. Watch the racers coming back. Stung, every one of them—gold-bricked. There's a fat fellow who's run half a mile, I'll bet. If his tongue hung out any farther, he'd trip up on it. But he'll do it again next time. They all do. Learning to stop running to fires is as hard as learning to stop buying mining-stock in the West. And it's just as big a swindle too. The returns from running to fires are marvelously small. They tell me that a hundred million dollars a year goes up in flames in this country. I don't believe it. If it does, I want to know who gets to see all the fun. I don't.

I've run to fires all my life, until lately, and I've drawn about three hundred and seventy-five blanks. Once I almost saw a big grain-elevator burn in a Western town. That is, I would have seen it, if I had looked out of my hotel window. But I'd run two miles to see a burning haystack in the afternoon, and I was so dead tired that I slept right through the performance that night. And once I did see a row of stores burn, back in Homeburg—at the distance of a mile. I was in school, and the teacher wouldn't dismiss us. By stretching my neck several feet I could just see the flames leaping over the trees, but that was all. Some of the bad boys sneaked out of the door, but I was a good boy, and waited one thousand years until school was out and the fire was ditto. I've never felt quite the same since toward either goodness or education.

Some men run faithfully to fires year after year and view a fine collection of burning beefsteaks and feverish chimneys and volcanic wood-sheds, while others stroll out after dinner in a strange city and spend a pleasant evening watching a burning oil-refinery make a Vesuvius look pale and sickly in comparison. Luck is distributed in a dastardly way, and as for myself I've quit trying. I don't run to fires at all any more. The big cities have fooled me long enough by sending out forty pieces of apparatus to smother a defective flue. I stay behind and watch the crowd. It's more amusing and not half so much work.

Of course in Homeburg it's different. You city people don't realize what a blessing the fire-fiend is to a small town. Fires mean a whole lot to us. They keep us from petrifying altogether during the dull seasons. And they don't have to be real fires, either. Any old alarm will do. Our fire-bell sounds just as terrible for a little brush fire as it would for a flaming powder-mill. It's an adventure merely to hear the thing. Take a winter night in the dull season after Christmas, for instance. You have begun to go to sleep right after supper. You've finished the job at nine o'clock, and by two a.m. you're sailing placidly southwest of Australia in a seagoing automobile.

Suddenly the pirate-ship in the rear, which you hadn't noticed before, slips up and begins potting away at you with a dull metallic boom. The auto slips its clutch, and the engine begins to clang and clatter, and somebody off behind a red-hot mountain in the distance begins ringing an enormous bell just as you slide downward into a crater of flame—and then you wake up entirely, and the fire-bell is going "clang-clang-clang-clang-clang," while below you hear the ringing crunch of your neighbor's feet on the cold snow, and outside the north window there is a red glare which may be either the end of the world or another exploded lamp in 'Bige Brinton's chicken-incubator; you won't know which until you have stabbed both feet into one pants-leg, crawled all over the cold floor for a missing sock, and run half a mile, double-reefing your nightshirt to keep it from trailing out from under your overcoat. That's what a fire-alarm means in Homeburg.

It's just as interesting in the daytime too. Imagine a summer afternoon in Homeburg about three o'clock. It's hotter than a simoon in the Sahara, and the aggregate business being done along Front Street is nineteen cents an hour. The nearest approach to life on the street is Sam McAtaw sitting in a shady spot on the edge of the sidewalk and leaning against a telephone-pole, sound asleep. You're sitting in your office chair, with your feet on the desk, dozing, when suddenly you hear footsteps outside. Whoever is making them is turning them out with great rapidity, and that in itself is novel enough to be interesting. The footsteps go by, and you look at their maker. It is Gibb Ogle surging up the walk and yanking his ponderous feet this way and that with tremendous energy. Nothing but a fire or a loose lion can make Gibb run, and you don't take any stock in the lion theory; so you tumble out after him.

By this time Sim Bone is on the street, and Harvey McMuggins is coming up behind, while half a dozen heads have suddenly sprouted from as many doorways. Your heart beats with suspense when Gibb comes to the town-hall corner. Hurrah! He's steering for the fire-house. You're overhauling him rapidly, and by a big sprint you beat out Clatt Sanderson, and grab one handle of the fire-bell ropes. Gibb grabs the other, and then you let her have it for all there is in you.

Did I say anything about Homeburg being asleep? Forget it. Before you've hit the bell a dozen taps you can't hear it for the tramp of feet. Every store in town is belching forth proprietors and clerks. They are coming bareheaded and coatless; some of them are collarless. Chief Dobbs, who shoes horses in his less glorious moments and keeps his helmet hanging on the forge-cover, dashes into the engine-room, grabs his trumpet, and begins firing orders, not singly, but in broadsides. There's nobody there to order yet, but he's just getting his hand in, and ten seconds later, when the first member of the company arrives, he is saluted with nineteen stentorian commands in one blast. Half a minute later the engine-house is clogged with fire-fighters, and the air is a maelstrom of orders, counter orders, suggestions, objections, and hoarse yells. Then a roar of wheels sounds outside, and you drop the bell-rope handle and go out to see the finest sight of all.

I suppose those old Romans thought the chariot-races were pretty nifty, but if an old Roman should reassemble himself and watch the dray-race to a Homeburg fire, he'd wonder how he ever managed to sit through a silly little dash around an arena. From the south comes a cloud of dust and a terrific racket. At an equal distance from the east comes another cloud of dust and an even more terrible uproar, Clay Billings's dray having more loose spokes than Bill Dorgan's. The clouds approach with tremendous speed. Bill is a little ahead. He is lashing his horses with the ends of the reins, while from the bounding dray small articles of no value, such as butter-firkins and cases of eggs, are emerging and following on the road behind.

But Clay isn't beaten—not by a thousand miles. He's going to make it a dead heat or better—no, Bill hit the crossing first. By George! That Clay boy is a wonder. He deliberately pulled in and shot across behind Bill, cutting off a good fifty feet. His team stops, sliding on their haunches, and ten seconds later is being hitched to the hose-cart, while Clay is on the seat clanging the foot-bell triumphantly. It's the fiftieth race, or thereabouts, between the two, and the score is about even. The winner gets two dollars for the use of his team. I've seen horse-races for a thousand-dollar purse which weren't half as exciting.

In the meanwhile more messengers have arrived from the fire. It is in the Mahlon Brown barn, and late advices indicate terrible progress. As fast as forty-nine rival fingers can do it, the tugs are fastened, and the cart is off down the street with a long trail of citizens after it.

Bill's team, badly blown, is hitched to the hook-and-ladder truck, and willing hands push it out through the door. There is always more or less of a feud between the hook-and-ladder boys and the hose-cart boys, because the former get the second team and rarely arrive at the fire in time to hoist the beautiful blue ladders before the hose-cart gang puts the conflagration out. Indeed, the feeling has gotten so strong at times that the hook-and-ladder gang has threatened to double the prize-money by private subscription and get their rig out first, but patriotism has thus far prevented this.

You have rung the bell until you are tired, by this time, and, besides, the human flood has rushed on, leaving no one to whom you can explain just how you thought you smelled fire and beat the world to the engine-house. So you set out for the fire yourself and jog over the half-mile in pretty fair time, considering the heat. It is an impressive sight—not the fire itself, but the event. Two thousand, two hundred and nine people are there—that being the population of Homeburg minus the sick and wandering.

In the midst of the seething mass are the hose-cart and the ladder-truck. Around them dozens of red helmets are bobbing, while the quivering air is cut and slashed and mangled with a very hurricane of orders: "Bring up that hose—" "Whoa, keep that horse still—" "Bring her round this way—" "Bring her round this way—" "Hey, you chumps, the fire's this side—" "Back up that wagon—" "Come ahead with the wagon—" "Get out of here till we get a ladder up—" "Axes here—" "Turn on that water—" "Turn on that water—" "Turn on that water!!—" "Jones, go down and tell that wooden Indian to turn on that water." "Hold that water, you—" "Hold that water!" "Turn her on, I say." "Turn her—" "Wow—turn that nozzle the other way—"

And then the water comes with a mighty rush, yanking the nozzlemen this way and that and sweeping firemen and common citizens aside as if they were mere straws.

As a rule, this is the climax, and the end comes rapidly. By this time Brown, who had put the fire out with a few pails of water before the alarm sounded, has persuaded the department to call off its hose, the barn being full of valuable hay. So there isn't anything to do. The water is turned off. Gibb Ogle explains to the one hundred and eleventh knot of people how he was going past the place when he saw the tongue of flame, and every one disperses after a pleasant social time.

Everybody is tolerably well satisfied except the hook-and-ladder gang, which, as usual, is skunked again—never got a ladder out. A couple of the axmen had a little fun with a rear window, but otherwise the affair is a flat failure. They go back sullenly, but are comforted when the roll is called, when each member who was present draws a dollar from the city treasury. As usual, Pete Sundbloom is late, and tries to edge in to roll-call, though he was a mile away from peril, but he can't make it stick and gets the hoarse hoot when his little game is discovered.

I want to ask you—isn't that a pleasant interruption on a dead day? It makes life worth living, and I really wonder that there isn't more incendiarism in small towns throughout the United States.

Of course all the alarms aren't fizzles. Sometimes we have a real fire, and then the scene defies description. When a fair-sized house burns down, Chief Dobbs is so hoarse that he can't talk for a week, and when the row of wooden stores on the south side went up in flames a few years ago, the old chief, Patrick McQuinn, burst a blood-vessel and had to retire, the doctor having warned him that he must never use a speaking-trumpet again.

I was away at the time, but they tell me that was a grand fire for the hook-and-ladder boys. They were right in the middle of it, and every ladder in the truck was out. There was some trouble over the fact that the big extension ladder was too tall for the buildings, and when Art Simms had climbed to the top, he managed to fall fifteen feet to the roof of the furniture-store, bruising himself badly. But, on the whole, great good was done, and the second story workers were kings that day. When the hotel caught, and the hook-and-ladder gang got into it, the way the upper windows belched mattresses, mirrors, toilet-sets, pictures and beds was unbelievable. Almost everything in the building was saved, and some of it was successfully repaired afterward.

The axmen had their innings that day, too. It was a great sight to see Andy Lowes leap nimbly up the ladder and poke in window after window with his spiked ax, stepping backward now and then into nozzleman Jones's face in order to view the effect. The axmen got glory enough to last for years, and it was an axman who put out the last scrap of fire. Frank Sundell was the hero. He was sitting on the ridge-pole of Emerson's restaurant when he noticed a few blazing spots on the shingle roof beneath him. He might have called the hose department; but, as I have said, there is a good deal of rivalry between the two, and, besides, Sundell had had a slow time that day, Lowes doing most of the display work. So Frank reached cautiously down with his trusty ax, cut out a blazing section of shingles, and tossed it to the ground. The crowd cheered, and he was so encouraged that he cut out the rest of the hot spots and put out the fire single-handed. Sundell is one of our very best firemen and stands in line for a nozzleman's position some day.

Of course a small-town fire department doesn't get as much practice in twisting the fire-fiend's tail as a city fire company; but our boys have a mighty good record, and we're proud of them. Since we've had water-works, and the department hasn't had to depend on some cistern which always went dry just at a critical moment, there hasn't been a conflagration in Homeburg big enough to get into the city papers. The boys may be a little overzealous now and then, but they are always on the job ten minutes after the first tap of the bell, and the way they go after a red tongue of flame on a kitchen roof reminds me of a terrier shaking a rat. They are our real heroes,—the fire-laddies,—for outside of Frank Ericson and Shorty McGrew, who work on the switching-crew, and come sailing down through town hanging gracefully from the end of a box-car ladder by one foot and hand, no one else has any chance to face danger in Homeburg.

Of course our firemen don't face danger regularly, between meals, like your big paid departments here, and about the most the ordinary business man gets in the danger-line is the imminent peril of getting a new twenty-five-dollar suit in line with the chemical hose; but we don't forget in Homeburg how old Mrs. Agnew's house burned twenty years ago this spring and the department was late, owing to the magnificent depth of Exchange Street, the roads having broken up, and how, when it got there, the house was a mass of flames, with the poor old lady, who had been bedridden for years, shrieking inside, and a hundred neighbors shrieking on the outside; and how Pat McQuinn and Henry Aultmeyer dove in through a window, with wet coats around their heads and the chemical-hose playing on their backs; and how they tugged and hauled at Mrs. Agnew, who weighed two hundred and fifty pounds, and couldn't get a grip on her, and finally upended the burning bed and dumped her out of the window, breaking her hip, and then dumped themselves out and rolled in the wet grass until their hair and mustaches and clothes quit blazing—after which they retired into cotton-wool for a month.

Maybe your men would have done it more scientifically and entirely saved poor Mrs. Agnew, who died the next month of the broken hip, but they couldn't have stuck to the job any more heroically; and when Homeburg citizens talk about "brave fire-laddies" and "homely heroes" at the annual benefit supper of the Volunteer Company No. 1, they mean Pat and Henry, and are perfectly willing to argue the question with any one.

So we worship our company to our heart's content, and when it comes pacing slowly down the street at the head of every parade, with the members looking handsomer than chorus girls in their dark-blue flannel suits, red belts, and neat blue caps, we look at them full of pride and confidence. Our little boys dream of the time when they will grow up and join the company and wear seven-pound red helmets at fires, and come home tired and muddy in the gray dawn after a fire and demand hot coffee from their admiring women-folks; and as for the Homeburg girls—well, the greatest social function of our town, or of the county for that matter, is the annual ball of the Homeburg fire department.

And let me tell you, when the nine-piece orchestra—all home talent—strikes up the grand march and Chief Dobbs, with his wide-gauge mustache and vacuum-cleaned uniform, leads the company around the hall, every hero with the girl or wife of his heart on his arm and a full hundred couples of the mere laymen crowding in behind, in a long and many-looped line, the Astor ball would have to do business with a brass band and a display of fireworks to attract any more enthusiasm.

That's what the fire department means to us in Homeburg. We don't suffer half so much from fires as we would from the lack of them; and when this new concrete construction makes the world fire-proof, and the Homeburg fire department rusts away and disappears, we will mourn it even more sincerely than we did the opera house with a real gallery, which got over-heated one night twenty-five years ago and burned, compelling us to get along with a mere hall with a flat floor ever afterward.