Hook-and-Ladder

This is the sort of thing Rochester had: no cab roof (open), no trailer enclosure (also open) = an older hook-and-ladder, probably from the ‘50s.

—“You didn’t have anything to do with hook-and-ladders, didja?”
I asked that to a gentleman backing his black Chevy Equinox out of where he parked in the parking-lot of where I get on Lehigh Valley RailTrail in Mendon.
So began 25-30 minutes of constant yammering, proving yet again the absolute joy of striking up a conversation, which I discover 70 years late.
“The hook-and-ladders were before my time,” he said. “What I worked were the Quints that replaced them.”
I had noticed a “Retired Rochester Fire-Fighter” plate-surround on his car.
“What I started on was pumpers,” he added; “the Quints came later.”
I guess a Quint is a combination pumper and ladder truck.
“When I came to Rochester in 1966,” I said; “they were still using hook-and-ladders. They had one at that fire-station on University Avenue.
It would barrel out of that building, siren at full-wail, and it was a real siren,” I said; “not one of them wonky electronic gizmos.
Down University it roared toward Culver Road, giant airhorn blasting all-and-sundry = ‘GET OUTTA THE WAY!’
And the back-end steered. I saw one clout a tree after angling off Winton onto Humboldt Street.”
We talked and talked and talked and talked. He seemed to be a grizzled Trump-supporter, but he kept talking to me.
Give ‘em a chance, and they talk your ear off; although I avoided politics and religion.
That parking-lot is also for adjacent baseball fields.
“You see that wall over there with 220 on it? My son was the only kid that could hit over that wall, and that’s at age-12.”
Yada-yada-yada-yada. My knees were starting to ache, and I needed to use the Porta-Pot. But he needed someone to talk to.
I struck up multiple conversations on that rail-trail, which is why I go there so often.
“My dog’s ashes are by that marker,” I said to two ladies.
“You realize you’re sitting on a railroad culvert?” I said to a hand-holding couple at trailside.
Long-winded conversations began in each case.
“This trail was once a railroad,” I noted; “Lehigh Valley railroad’s Buffalo-extension.”
“I see the pocket imprint of a SmartPhone,” I said to a pretty lady. “What ya got there?” She smiled and pulled out her Android.
People wanna talk, even men occasionally.
“God bless you!” Mr. grizzled Trump-supporter said.
The couple’s husband said the same thing after perhaps 10 minutes of trailside talking.
Face-to-face is so much more fun than the written word, which is one-sided.
And now, 70 years late, I discover that.