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.)
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| 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.
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| 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:
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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.
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In the Dark Ages, there was no
organized firefighting because there was no centralized government
or authority.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Among our earliest volunteer firemen,
count Paul Revere, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John
Hancock and Samuel Adams.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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69% of all US firefighters are
volunteers – 756,000 of them.
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The Edmonds Company in Hudson is the
oldest active chartered volunteer company in New York State, founded
in 1794.
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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.
