“Firemen Games” – By Jack Bennett
Jack Bennett was a Marine and came on the LAFD and promoted to Assistant Chief. He retired and has since passed away. While on retirement he wrote a book titled “Firemen Games” based on his early experiences on the Department in the 1950’s. Only the firemen’s names were changed in the story. Jack is known as “Curly.” The following is a small part of the book that Jack sent me a few years ago about his experiences at Old Fire Station 16 which was located at 139 N. Hope St. from 1904 to 1962 and Old Fire Station 28 located at 644 S. Figueroa from 1913 and closed in 1969.
Fire Station 16
Firemen Allen (Curley) was now headed for his second probationary station – Engine 16. This was in the heart of downtown Los Angeles on Bunker Hill. Fire Station 16 was located on North Hope Street surrounded by apartments and old hotels commonly called “flop houses.”
This was 1955 and the firemen’s protective clothing was a turnout coat and pants. The pants were only worn during the night time responses or when caught in the shower. During the daytime hours firemen would be responding in dungaree pants or heavy wool pants, a dungaree jacket or wool long sleeve shirt, a turnout coat and helmet. The only available SCBA was in a green suitcase carried on the truck companies. The breathing air in these SCBA’s was oxygen. The only breathing protection was a Burrell canister type mask. Most of the time no breathing apparatus was worn during firefighting operations.
Most of the alarms were to apartment houses to extinguish a smoldering mattress fire. There was nothing worse than a midnight pissy smelling mattress fire. You would hold your breath, enter the room, squirt some water from the water gun, roll up the mattress, grab your mattress rope, tie up the mattress so it wouldn’t open in the hallway or the elevator and get outside for a thorough overhaul.
Sometimes things didn’t go as expected. If you were in the room longer than you thought necessary, a sudden urge to vomit would overcome you. It was then time to get your head through the window and let it all go. Pity the poor person down there in the street.
Then there were those times when the mattress rope came loose and the mattress would open up and with a fresh supply of oxygen, burst into flames. They never lost a building from these mattress fires, but they did scorch the walls a few times. One of the things you were not supposed to do was to dump the mattress out of the window to the street below. If this was done from a fifth story window the night sky would light up with a glow as the burning mattress fell to the street. If this dumping was done from a second story window on the backside of the hotel, nobody complained except the Captain.
One night Curly heard gun shots in the neighborhood and the firemen all ran to the front windows to see what was happening. Nothing could be seen but they did hear sirens. Then suddenly the front door buzzer sounded. There was a guy bleeding all over the doorstep. He told the Captain, “they are coming to kill me.” Quickly he was pulled inside and given first aid. Then came the Police and the “Brown Bombers” from Central Receiving Hospital. Everything now was under control and 16’s had survived another typical shift.
Fire Station 28
Fire Station 28 housed an engine, truck and salvage company at 644 So Figueroa Street. All were fully manned with a Captain, Auto Firemen or Engineer and at least three firemen. 28’s was one of the favorite stations to send rookies. A rookie fireman was expected to receive insults, razing, jokes and anything else thought up by the other firemen.
(Frank’s note: Old 28’s is a restaurant now and faces the new Wilshire Grand Hotel, the tallest building in the city that opened in June, 2017).
The rookies were told by the Captain to polish all of the brass poles in the station. This requires getting a tall step ladder, some red rags, some polish and get to work. Curly had been polishing one of these poles when all of a sudden it rained buckets from the second floor. Captain Henry heard the water splashing on the apparatus floor and told Curly to go get dried off. It wouldn’t be a normal shift without going through two sets of dungarees or fatigues. (Frank’s note: Dungarees were a set of blue cotton pants and jacket worn during work at the station or work details outside. Fatigues were a wool uniform long sleeve shirt and pants usually worn after the station work was finished.)
One of the most cleverly executed games occurred in the dormitory at about midnight. Picture this—off in the distance one could hear the sound of a train whistle blowing occasionally and the chugging of the locomotive. This was not too unusual at 28’s, but then the sound of the train seemed to get louder, and louder, and louder. The damn train was real close and everyone was waking up, wondering what was going on. Suddenly, the dormitory door burst open, and a strong light moving back and forth entered into the dormitory. By this time some of the firemen were out of their beds, not really sure what to expect next. The sound of the train at this moment was intense and ear shattering. Across the dormitory ran fireman Herby Troost with a portable spotlight in his hand. The S.P.R.R. had arrived at 28’s. All aboard!
The games at 28’s were not all water and jokes. There was the serious kind played in response to fires and other emergencies. In addition to the mattress fires, we had an occasional barn burner. Barn burners at this time were mostly found on Bunker Hill. If you lived on Bunker Hill in the good old days, you were living in the ritzy area of town. That was not the case in 1955.
Many of the old hotels were being demolished and that paved the way for an occasional barn burner. Fighting a fire in a vacant structure may sound like a piece of cake: large streams, surround and drown, and go home – but not always that way. There was one barn burner that Curly would not forget.
As 28’s approached the fire, Curley could hear the Captain getting instructions to set up a ladder pipe and protect the exposures. Open cab aerial ladder apparatus made it easy to get a good spot in a jackknife position. Curly was told he would be the nozzle man on the tip of the aerial ladder, kind of like a hot dog on a stick. Everything went as planned and soon they were flowing 600 gallons per minute from a straight stream nozzle about 70 feet in the air. Being on the tip of the aerial ladder in a big fire was quite an experience. One could see the world burning, and a feeling of total power over the fire gods soon developed. However, there were no communications with the nozzle man, and as the aerial ladder started to go closer and lower to the fire, Curly could only yell and sweat. Finally the smoke cleared and the fire was tamed.
Submitted by Frank Borden