TRAINS AND FIRE ENGINES

Growing up in Brooklyn, so many years ago, there were very few things in life that excited me more than: 3 PM on a Friday afternoon, Mom’s lasagna, trains and fire engines. The lasagna was for special holidays like Easter. 3 PM was the magic hour on Friday afternoons in Our Lady of Lourdes School. Being freed for a few days was kind of nice! Getting away from the teacher was a respite, in spite of homework.

But the things that really got my excitement were trains and fire engines. The fire engines lived down my street, on the next block, between Stone Avenue and Broadway. Hull Street had its very own fire department that we lent out to other streets. We were just nice guys. Often a stick ball game was interrupted by the parade of one or two fiery red trucks, with shiny brass and chrome fixtures that meant very little to a young man’s eye. The gold leaf lettering, made for a romantic picture or heroism, and galore. My mind would roam to where they may have been, what they may have done, and whom they may have saved. I would try to catch the eye of one of the men hanging on the back of the trucks, as they passed, and wave.

The sound of the alarm, the sirens ranging from audible to deafening, they got my attention, and made my blood rush in excitement. I would race down to the fire house, and watch as the men slid down the pole, jumped into their jackets and climbed the trucks, often as the were just leaving the firehouse, pouring through the big garage doors and onto the street. Their fire hats sat on their heads and announced: “Here we come, hero for the day!” Each man looked smart in his heavy coat, leather hat and big old boots! Often, the chief in his red sedan following the trucks toward Broadway and the flow of traffic, closing out the fire engine parade.

Often at nights in the summer, I would race down to Rockaway Avenue and Fulton Street to the corner subway station. I think it was the A train I would wait for. The IND or Independent Line as it was called. The station was right outside of Louie’s, a clothing store. On the platform, behind the turnstile, I would wait for Dad. He was returning from work at the New York Laboratory and Supply Company. Tony had on his grey fedora, wing tip shoes and had a folded Journal American under his arm. I could spot him in the crowd as it piled out of the train.

The train would enter the station, and as I watched it, reminding me of my Mother’s Olympia Typewriter, as it ran down its track. I used to watch the trains sit on the track, making loud noises and vibrating, but not moving.

In the summer, my uncle who worked for the Long Island Rail Road: would let me stay at his house for a few weeks. Often he would take me down to Patchogue Rail Road Station, where he worked and climb on board the trains as he cleaned them. Watching the locomotives, steam belching from above and below the engine, a monstrous black behemoth, slowly rocking its way toward me, the long line of commuter cars in tow, would set my imagination off. Where did it come from? Where was it going? How do you ‘drive’ one of those things?

Often as the train sat in the station, it would unhitch the engine, which would then push it to another track, and then to the other side of the car lineup to head in the opposite direction. My uncle would let me stay on the train for that maneuver, which just made me crazy with delight.

I could remember waking up early on a sunny summer day, and I could hear the faint whistle of an incoming train, as it gently woke me from my slumber. Whoo, Whoo, Whooooooo! It was a great alarm clock, and told me: Rise city boy, because you are spending another day in the country! Ah! The sweet distant sound of the train passing early in the morning, and the smell of a lilac bush meant Patchogue!

Sorry to ramble so much.

Please remember my pals Joan and DD