Wolcott Memories - Fire

My cousin Rob recently posted a really nice picture of Russell’s Pond. It’s especially nice because of all the recent rain and the pond is quite full. Looking at it took my mind in two directions.

The first was about water, but I’ve already blogged about the water in Wolcott (see http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/09/wolcott-history-lakes-and-ponds.html and http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/09/wolcott-history-rivers-and-brooks.html).

But then I was looking at information on Russell’s Pond on the Wolcott Conservation Land Trust website (see http://www.wolcottlandct.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Russell-Preserve-Overview-and-Maps.pdf) as several acres of our original home was given to them by my mother in her later years. On the one page you can see the current Russell Preserve in yellow along with the other 10 properties that our 23 acres was divided into. But just to the east of our property was some property that was still owned by Mr. Seery when I was growing up and on which he had a charcoal pit where I worked. This got me thinking about the opposite of water – fire.

Bagging Charcoal

My first paying job (at about age 10 or 12) was bagging charcoal at the “charcoal pit” at the end of the road. A local neighbor, Mr. Seery, who owned the land, would cut down some trees, and put the logs in an enclosure. He originally had a single enclosure which was basically a large metal box. After filling the box with wood, he would light the fire, seal off the opening, and pile dirt around it so that the fire would be very oxygen deprived and only burn down to charcoal instead of ash. After a few days he would unseal it and allow it to cool. Later he added a second enclosure constructed of concrete block, but the process was the same. While the burning process was going on the enclosures were quite hot and you didn’t want to get near them until the cooling down process was completed.

Mr. Seery hired myself and my cousin Dave (he was six months younger than I) to do the dirty job of bagging the charcoal. Our equipment were round-end shovels (minus the handles), sturdy double thickness paper bags, pieces of wire with loops on the ends, and a “twister”. We would scoop up the charcoal, fill a paper bag, wrap a wire twist tie around the neck, put the twister through the loops and pull it – which would twist the ends together and seal the bag. We got paid so much a bag. It was dirty work, but both Dave and I were hard workers and it was good pocket money. Not sure how my mother felt about how black I got doing this, but it kept us out of trouble and taught us good work ethics.

Forest Fire Crew

My next paying job was working with my uncle on the state forest fire crew that he ran. Most paying jobs require you to be 16, but since he was the crew chief, I and my cousin Dave started a few years before that. The volunteer fire companies relied on these state crews for anything that they could not reach with their trucks and hoses, so if it was in someone’s backyard or near the road they handled it, but if were farther back in the woods then it was passed to us.

Such fires were either called in by someone who saw it, or they would be reported from one of the fire towers located around the state. These were very tall towers, located on the tops of hills. You climbed up numerous sets of steps then entered through a trap door in the floor. They were open on all sides and there was a spotting telescope in the middle. If the fire were close enough that the spotter could identify where it was, then they called it in. But if were farther away then two or three spotters would get a fix on it and through triangularization they would coordinate to get the location. My aunt worked in the tower in Burlington which could tell where most of the fires in Wolcott were located.

We would ride with my uncle to the closest road access to the fire, don heavy Indian Tanks and take either a rake or broom as we trudged back into the woods to fight the fire. I had a pair of heavy red rubber boots that I wore for this. Over the years I fought fires at several locations in town and also a few in neighboring towns such as Plymouth or Thomaston. We got paid the princely sum of $1/hour at the beginning (later raised to $1.25). If we missed meals, then either the Red Cross or the Salvation Army had a food truck and would come out close to us so when we got out of the woods we had sandwiches and cold drinks. (Because of this, I have continued to make periodic donations to these organizations that were so kind to me all those years ago).

One of the “benefits” was that if the fire was during the day we were allowed to miss school to fight the fire. One pair of fires is especially memorable to me. We were called out on a fire on a Thursday night and didn’t get back home until early morning. While I could have missed school on Friday, I had a teacher who didn’t believe in any excuses and if he gave you a make-up test it was bound to be so hard as to be unpassable. So I went to school anyway. Just after getting home, there was yet another fire and so I went out again. This was a fairly big one and although we got all the flames out we had to “baby sit” the fire location for several hours, putting out all the embers under the stumps. I finally got home late on Saturday – after having been awake for about 60 hours. I had a quick shower and went right to bed where I slept around the clock plus. My parents didn’t even wake me up for church the next morning.