Tales From the Station

During the summer the fire department used to have field days that all the old timers still talk about. These events were astronomical in the amount of work involved from planning, doing and cleanup. The last time we had a field day I don’t even think I was a teenager at the time. I still remember it, though.

The field day was always held around this time of year by agreement with all the other fire departments. The event started in winter with the printing of field day books that were sold with a chance at prizes drawn during the field day. The book was full of ads from various businesses that supported the fire department.

Then the recruiting began, this involved getting dozens of people to agree to make salads for the event and distribution of salad buckets. Then there was lining up the entertainment, kiddie rides and games of chance. Then there was getting the food arranged and delivered. The school was instrumental back then since they had cold storage and cooking facilities and the field day was held in the field behind the school.

The days before included an incredible amount of work by the Ladies Auxiliary working in the kitchen and the firefighters erecting tents, booths and putting the barbeque pit together. There was other things going on all the time. For one, the tents had to be put up, but first they had to be repaired. For some reason the tents went into storage the day after a field day and weren’t looked at again until the day before the next field day. This left all the repairs to be done last minute by a frazzled firefighter with an industrial sewing machine.

There was a parade and a whole other pile of work involved in doing that. I remember one year Dad stopped traffic while I ran across the highway with one end of a banner that was being hung right in town. Another firefighter ran it up a ladder and Dad let traffic go stranding me in front of the gas station. He just yelled across the street “Go to the school, I’ll pick you up there!”

Dad was treasurer at the time and got busy taking care of bills and other such items. In the meantime I was at the disposal of the other firefighters who had me straightening nails that Henry Hudson must have brought with him when he first traded with the Mohawks. Then it was time to construct the barbeque pit, I couldn’t help with that, but the guys were nice enough to let me carry concrete blocks for them. After a couple of hours of bull work Dad finally showed up to give me a ride home to do….chores.

There was the famous chicken barbeque that we still do, just not in the epic proportions made back then. We have done, at the most, 400 dinners at any given time. Back then they served over a thousand dinners. They lit the fires for the barbeque at 5:30 in the morning. The fire was lit by the security detail that watched over the grounds all night, just in case.

Just after the parade the people came in droves. The chicken would start flying off the racks and right onto the plates. It still happens today when the chicken runs out and the servers are screaming for more and the cookers won’t let one piece of chicken off the rack until it was done. The good people would patiently wait, sometimes in the rain, for their golden pieces of goodness to finish.

The Field Day itself was often a crap shoot since the event was outdoors. Some years we had great weather and the field day brought in enough to carry the fire department to the next year. Other years heavy downpours kept the crowds away and it took months to pay off the bills accumulated by the field day. It was all a gamble and some years the department cleaned up and other years the department took a loss.

When you think about it, it wasn’t just the firefighters working this thing it was also their wives and families, friends, neighbors and, sometimes, people who strayed too close to the work and got shanghaied into helping. It was a community event that involved just about everyone coming together to help a worthy cause.

The old timers were talking about the field days at the station one night. The stories were getting nostalgic and a lot of laughing was happening. In the middle of the stories I asked “Would you do another Field Day?” To which a half dozen voices immediately shouted “NO!” followed by some dirty looks and interesting euphemisms. Case closed, we’ll leave it up to the Wellness Day committee.