New York - Day 22 - Hudson

Saugerties/Woodstock KOA

Tuesday, 22 May 2018

Being unable to visit Eleanor Roosevelt’s home as I’d planned today, I decided to take a look at the FASNY Museum of Firefighting in Hudson.  (FASNY stands for Firefighters Association of the State of New York.  I had to ask.)

FASNY Museum of Firefighting

I spent an hour and a half in there and left only because I was overloaded with information and underloaded with nourishment (it was lunchtime).  I learned a lot that I want to remember so, mindful that people reading this won’t care as much as I did, I’ll put that stuff at the end.

FASNY Fireman's Home

The museum stands in the same grounds as the home for firefighters.  As far as I could tell, it’s a senior living place for people with the one thing in common of having fought fires.  And it looks like it’s pretty well funded because it’s got a lot of land, a baseball field, a cemetery, quite a few memorials, 2 horseshoe pits, a large building that looks like a fire station but had tables set up to feed a lot of people inside – anyway, lots of things, all in excellent condition.

I spent some time after my visit doing errands – gas fill-up, wine shop, grocery store – both in Hudson, which is on the east side of the Hudson River, and in the town of Catskill, on the west side.  Between the two is the Rip Van Winkle Bridge (of course it’s true, I’m not capable of making this stuff up) across the Hudson, which finally gave me a good view of the river.  It really is pretty.  Woods all along both sides, and they continue along all of the river I’ve been driving along these last few days.  This whole area is heavily wooded, with many hills – right next to the Catskill Mountains after all and not far south of the Adirondacks.  I can see where the Hudson River Valley school of painting got its inspiration.

Now that it’s spring here, complete with April showers (never mind that it’s late May), the wisteria and honeysuckle are blooming and it’s really pretty.  Everything’s finally green.

Ticks are common now.  I find one on me at least once a week and ditto on Gracie.  They just don’t seem to like Dexter, though, which is a good thing but I wish I knew what makes him special.

I’ve been trying all month to get photos of the license plates and finally managed today.  The bright yellow ones seem to be the current plates, and the white with blue trim seem to be the previous ones that everybody’s still using.  I'm sorry I couldn't get a closer shot (that's what my camera doesn't want to do anymore) and am hoping you can blow these up if you want a better look.

 While I was taking pics of plates, I shot this photo of a handicapped parking spot.  I’ve noticed they use this symbol frequently here in New York.  Better to show that physical disabilities don't make a person helpless, as other symbols do.

Museum of Firefighting

Here’s some of what I learned:

• In 22 BC, Emperor Augustus created what became the largest well-trained and well-equipped fire brigade in the world, and it was the last one for 1000 years.
• In the Dark Ages, there was no organized firefighting because there was no centralized government or authority.
• In the Middle Ages, William the Conqueror ordered that bells be rung to warn people of a fire. It stuck; later, bells were used on fire trucks and are still important symbols to firefighting.
• In medieval France, there was a law called courvre-feu that required all fires in town to be either out or covered by a specific nighttime hour, so people could sleep with less fear of fires.  From this comes our word “curfew.”
• In 1648, Peter Stuyvesant, governor of New Netherlands, appointed fire wardens who inspected people’s chimneys and fined the people if they harbored a fire hazard.  It was also the law that a homeowner was fined if a fire occurred in his home.  The fines were used to buy firefighting equipment which, back then, was basically buckets and ladders.  These measures actually went a long way toward reducing the number of fires.
• Most homes in the colonies in the 1600s had thatch roofs, but Stuyvesant outlawed both them, in 1647,  and chimneys made of wood, in 1648.  I can see where wooden chimneys and thatch roofs might present fire hazards.
• In 1731, New York City assessed a property tax to pay for pumpers and the city’s residents eagerly awaited their delivery.  Possibly the last time a property tax pleased people.
• In 1736 in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin helped organize one of the first volunteer fire companies in the colonies.  When he wrote, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” he was referring to the obviously hazardous, though common, practice of carrying hot coals in open warming pans from one room to another.
• Among our earliest volunteer firemen, count Paul Revere, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Hancock and Samuel Adams.
• In the 1800s, all water pipes were made of wood.  Firefighters would drill into a pipe to get water to fight a fire and then plug up the hole.  That’s where our term “fire plug,” meaning a fire hydrant, comes from.
• The sliding poles in fire stations to take the men from upper floors to the engines were introduced in the 1870s; the early ones were wood, and later they were made of metal.
• Pulling the equipment trucks was considered “a man’s job” by firefighters who refused the suggestion of using horses – up until the cholera epidemic in New York City in the 1830s when they had no choice because there weren’t enough healthy men to haul those heavy trucks.  That’s when they learned that the horses actually worked pretty well.  Someone developed a quick hitch harness that allowed a the horses to be attached and ready to go in 14-18 seconds.  Horses were used until the early 1920s.
• There were no water tanker trucks before the 1930s.  People mostly used a bucket brigade or pumped from any easily available water source – a well or a pond, for instance.  Otherwise, they mostly just had to watch the fire burn.
• Water works well on fires because when water is heated by the fire it becomes a vapor; the vapor takes oxygen from the fire; fire can’t burn without oxygen.  How about that?
• In 1968 Bell Telephone first introduced 911 for emergency calls, but that applied only to the phones on the Bell system.  By 1999, when Pres. Bill Clinton signed a bill designating 911 be used for all phones in the US, at least 20 different emergency numbers were in use by all the different independent phone systems.
• 69% of all US firefighters are volunteers – 756,000 of them.
• The Edmonds Company in Hudson is the oldest active chartered volunteer company in New York State, founded in 1794.
• Forest fires were numerous in the 1920s and 1930s because they were deliberately set: blueberry pickers set them, knowing the potash remaining would provide a bumper crop of berries the next year.

While I was at the museum, there were 2 busloads of young elementary school kids touring.  The museum has lots of interactive exhibits, which I enjoyed too.  One of them allows the kids to be part of a bucket brigade to put out a fire and they had a great time doing it.  Not a real fire, of course, but it was a pretty good substitute.  

The museum has dozens of firetrucks from different eras and types.  It also has a semi-resident Dalmatian, Molly, who I met.  She's a descendant from one of the original mascots of the local fire company.  The museum had an exhibit on how Dalmatians became identified as fire company dogs. 

Good museum.  The $10 admission fee was worth the visit.