What is left of the old Volunteer Fire Department, and there is a good deal left of it yet, after all these years, has been givin’ a ball at the Metropolitan Opera House, and any allusion to the glories of the good old times has brought the heart to the lips and even the tear to the eye of the fire laddies who used to “run wid de masheen” and who were present, no longer as boys, but old men, at the ball.
It may seem strange–it is strange– to outsiders it is almost unaccountable; it seems like an insanity; it was a species of insanity, indeed–the wild, devoted, almost desperate love that many of the old time volunteer firemen felt for their engine, not only for the department itself, not only for the particular company they belonged to, but especially for the “masheen” itself, the wood and iron and plate and Brass which altogether made up a fire engine.
Harry Howard, that once famous chief engineer of the old Volunteer Department, in his day the most popular and best known of the fire laddies, had a talk with me the other night about this and kindred points, and in the course of our “big talk” Harry told me some stories illustratin’ strikin’ly the love of the old fire laddie for his engine.
There is a chap, a very old chap now, nearly eighty years of age, livin’ in Elm street to-day, who has a piece of wood in a glass case in the little parlor of his humble home, which he values beyond all earthly treasures. As a piece of wood it is not worth anythin’; in its best days a dollar would have been dear for it. It is discolored with age. It would hardly serve for kindlin’ wood. A Yankee would disdain to whittle at it, and yet if it was a diamond its proud owner could not value it more; would not, in fact, value it so much.
The old man has been known in his thoughtful and lonely hours to draw up his old armchair in front of this piece of old wood and to sit gazin’ at it as if it was a picture of his dead wife or daughter or of the home of his childhood. He has eyed it as reverently as though he were a devotee and this old piece of wood was his patron saint, or as if he were a savage, worshipin’ his fetish. And on high days and holidays, whenever an old friend calls on him and he wishes to specially celebrate the occasion or to give his visitor a treat, the old man in Elm street goes reverently to his little centre table, lifts carefully up the glass case, and handlin’ reverently the old faded, worthless bit of wood, holds it up for the expected admiration and wonder of all who see it.
For this bit of wood is literally sacred–holy as well as historical, in the old man’s eyes–for it is a piece of Engine No. 15, with which the old man used to run when he was a young man, with life before him instead of behind him. He obtained this bit of wood from the painted back of the engine one winter’s night when the back of the engine had been broken to pieces in a fireman’s melee, after a run, and from that night to this–over fifty-five years–the old man has never slept a single night without knowin’ that this bit of wood was under the same roof with him.
And now this relic is the delight–the crownin’ joy–of his life. Looked at from a utilitarian point of view, all this is nonsense. But, heaven be praised, there is somethin’ in a thing besides the mere use of it. There is a poetical as well as a practical side to most things, and looked at from this latter standpoint, this bit of wood is worth the care the old man has taken of it, for it brings vividly to his mind and is associated forever with the dangers and the delights of his younger days, the companions of his pleasures, the comrades of his fights. It suggests, as nothin’ else could, the mingled pains and transports, perils and privileges of the life of the volunteer fireman in the last generation.
Of course this is an extreme case, but it illustrates the point, and there are numberless cases illustratin’ the same point in a modified degree.
The love of an old-time fireman for his machine used to be strikin’ly shown in the workin’ of the government, such as it was, of the old Volunteer Department. It frequently happened that a popular engine company would swell so fast as to become an immense mob, which would be a disgrace, as well as an occasional blessin’, to a neighborhood. In this case the Fire and Water Committee, havin’ charge of the firemen, would disband the company in its original neighborhood, but would generally allow it to be re-started under its old number in a new and distant section of the city, where “the old gang” could not again get at it and it would be able to recommence life under new auspices. Now, the theory of this was all good enough; but in practice it was found not to work at all. For so great was the fire ladies’ love for their “masheen” that they would get to worship its very number, and when they heard that the dear old number was going to be restarted in a new place, why, no matter how far off that new place might be, they would go to it, and there run with the old number once more.
Instances have been known in which men, family men, absolutely changed their residences because their pet engine had changed its domicile. This sounds, at this late day, like a fairy story, or “a chestnut,” but it was not thought so very strange fifty years ago.
As for takin’ trouble for their machines, or encounterin’ privations as members of an engine company, the old volunteer firemen never thought anythin’ of that at all, as I have already shown in these reminiscences.
In my chapter on reminiscences of Old Black Joke engine I showed how particular engines got to be each other’s special chums or special foes. Now these chums sometimes fell out, and then again the foes sometimes got to be friends. Thus Engines 33 and 15 used to be bitter foes, then in course of time they “made up” and got to be warm chums. This reconciliation was marked by the biggest kind of “a love feast.” The two engine companies hired a hall jointly, got up a ball jointly, and then went on a grand jamboree jointly and got a grand headache jointly.
But sometimes two ancient companies hated each other so heartily that reconciliation became utterly impossible. This was the case with Engines 44 and 33. They hated, blackguarded and fought each other all the years that the volunteer system endured, and they have hated each other ever since the system was wiped out. To this day a livin’ member of old 44 will tell you that any livin’ member of old 33 “is no good,” well every old time member of 33 entertains a precisely similar sentiment towards every member of 44.
About forty years ago a member of 44 engine had a son who fell in love with a daughter of a member of 33 engine. There was no earthly objection to the match takin’ place. The young lady was pretty, sensible and virtuous, and her father was worth a plum; while the young man was handsome, steady and promisin’ and his old man was worth a plum also. But the Capulets and Montagues never hated each other more in Romeo and Juliet’s time than did Engine Companies 33 and 44 less than half a century ago, right here in New York. And the moment the two fathers found out their love affairs of their two children, they both raised Cain and Abel and a circus to boot. They cursed and they got ready to do worse than curse–to disinherit; so the match was broken off. A Corsican vendetta was scarcely more bitter (though it was more dangerous) than a fireman’s vendetta in the good old times.
The hangers-on of fire companies always did more to bring the companies into disrepute then the regular members, while sports and pugilists, as well as politicians, used to connect ‘emselves nominally with engine companies for the sake of influence, followin’ or patronage. Rynders was one of the few popular men of the olden time who never joined any fire company, still he was always around engine houses, while his chum and co-founder of the Empire Club, Austin, was sort of half and half fireman or hanger-on runnin’ with Engine 15.
Austin was a peculiar sort of man, almost as peculiar in his way as Rynders was in his. Austin was a small and delicate lookin’ man physically; seemed as if he was in a consumption all the time, yet he was the boss, the leadin’ spirit among lots of fire laddies, sports and pugilists who were physically far his superiors. He really knew very little about sportin’, yet his word was law among many genuine sports. He knew hardly anythin’ about fire engine matters, yet he controlled two or three engine and hose companies. He never fought a prize fight in his life, and would have been easily licked if he had; yet pugilists were afraid of him. His secret was very simple. He didn’t have knowledge, he didn’t have muscle, but he had a saloon, and nerve, and a pistol, and was always ready to “treat” or to shoot on provocation. He had killed his man once, in self defense, and ever after all the fire laddies ,sports and pugilists had a wholesome and safe respect for him; even pugilists looked up to him, for a shooter beats a fighter any time. There is no comparison between a fist and a pistol. There is no arguing with a man who has a revolver.
So Austin was boss, and the members of Engine 15 used to brag of him as “one of us.” Yet he was never a practical fireman.
And it was the gradual increase of men like Austin and outsiders who claimed and got the control of the insiders that led to the Fatal dissolution and break up of the old Volunteer Fire Department.
