West Athens-Limestreet Fire Company - Athens, NY

 

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The West Athens-Lime Street Fire Company was organized on March 13, 1952, and firehouse #1 was built in 1954.  A brand new 500 gallon pumper was its first truck.   In the 1970s it added a second firehouse to serve the southern part of West Athens and provide mutual aid. to 6 other Green County fire companies in three neighboring towns.

Our family engaged with this volunteer organization from when we first moved to Athens in 1958.  I was 7.  I remember my Dad rushing out to the sound of the alarm, whether it was the monthly Saturday drills or an actual fire.  Mom joined the Ladies Auxiliary, and I watched her put on an apron for serving the pancake breakfasts and chicken dinners.  The fire engine backed out to leave a space for setting up tables.  She and Dad went to dinner dances there, leaving us with our grandparents or a neighbor.  I also remember a yearly bazaar right near the main drag—9-W.  Dad ran the booth where he set up a basket at a 45* angle.  For a quarter you could get three softballs to land in it.  Not easy.  My dad could do it though, and often demonstrated.  I helped, collecting the missed balls and returning them to my Dad until I was nearly hit with a wildly thrown ball.

In my teen years, the company held monthly teen dances and sock hops in firehouse #1.  That’s where I heard Little Eva’s “Do the locomotion” and the Stones “I can’t get no satisfaction” for the first time.  We taught each other line dances, and individual dancing like the jerk and the swim.  Music depended on popping a center into the small 45s that we teens brought with us. 

I moved away from the area in the late 1960s, returning only to visit family.  The firehouses and community faded from my awaereness. I knew my older brother had joined the company along with my father and mother, and little more.   But in the last several years it came back into focus when dad died in 2019 at the age of 93, and mom died this year at age 99.   Many who attended their funerals were young and old members of the fire company.  A few weeks later memorials for each of them were held at the second firehouse.  Dad, who had been Fire Commissioner for several years, had the ceremonial “final call,” where the fire company stood at attention while the fire alarm rang.  Mom’s included the biggest spread of sandwiches and desserts I’ve ever seen at the firehouse.  Both included slide shows of their lives.  Good memories were shared by all.

I understand that Mom’s Memorial might be the last event held at the old firehouses, as a new firehouse is under construction to replace the two smaller ones.  But the volunteer organization has been a part of my family for 66 memorable years.  I’ll be forever grateful.

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© 2024 Susan L. Chast

A Writer's Circle Prompt.

Please respect my copyright. 

Writers Circle

 

Writers Circle Presents:

A Celebration of Creative Minds

 

Emcee: Sondra Butler Thompson

Priscilla Shaffer              Behind the Scene

Judy Ballinger                Poems: My Contribution for Today: A Bouquet and                  

Lillian Carnahan            An Old Time Halloween

Barbara Mitchell           Poems: Seasons of Jazz                       

Mariana Eckardt           Preserving Family Traditions: The Plum Pudding Bowl

Valaida S.  Walker         Momma on the Bus                                                                 by Rosa Lee Smith

Blair Seitz                      Photo Essay: Resident Activities

Ruth Thornton and Bruce McNeel    Music:                                             Sentimental Journey and Misty

Bruce McNeel                I Don’t Trust ‘Em Anymore

George Hatzfeld            Tribute: Remembering my Barber                                         Clem as “the Customer”

Susan Chast                    Poems: Female Character’s Speak:                                     Lady Macbeth and Princess

Phyllis Belk                     Friendship: Am I too Old to Make New Trusted Friends?

Work

 

 

When asked about work, for some reason, my mind takes a sharp turn to childhood jobs:  hanging newly washed laundry on the line, hemming skirts and dresses, babysitting, turning over the earth in our early spring gardens, planting seeds, weeding beds, harvesting vegetables and berries, peeling fruits and vegetables for canning—the apples and tomatoes most of all—and raking the autumn leaves that pile up on the lawns.   I’d add high school and college jobs here as well, short order cook and server in an inner city corner store, dishwasher, library aid, proofreader, and envelope stuffer.   

I’m surprised my thoughts take such a turn, because my life calling was to be a teacher, and I spent my entire life teaching—whether high school English, college freshman writing, Quaker Sunday school, or my main love, theatre. In fact, the thing I most appreciate about being a resident at Simpson House is being in the company of so many teachers.

So what do the earlier, childhood jobs have to do with teaching?  I think they have to do with being useful and finding the link between the earth and its people.  Even the college dishwashing, hands gloved and feet standing on wet floors, taking the used dishes from a window that only showed the midriff of each person helped with this learning.  I remember the time I feared I would be fired.  I had dropped a bowl into the garbage disposal, and the entire line ground to a halt.  I picked out the pieces I could see, but couldn’t restart the machine.  My boss came over and switched the breaker on and off, threw up his hands and made a phone call.  By then I was sitting on a wooden chair and crying.  He stood close to me and asked, “Do you think you’ll do that again?”  I doubted I would make the same mistake again.  But I did.  I don’t remember how the line came back on.  I don’t remember cleaning up the mess and leaving a clean kitchen, but I remember walking away thinking that could survive mistakes. I know this was a lesson I learned over and over.

It's awesome and humbling to be human and to work with other humans who, like me, are not perfect but are again and again picking up something they don’t know and attempting it.  Whether to error or to a break through, we carry that spark of liveliness which occasionally rises to the sublime.

Each task is a sea / raging and pulling at me / I love being on earth.

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© 2024 Susan L. Chast

Please respect my copyright. 

A Car Equals Freedom

 

1971 Mercury Capris

I was 24 and in the middle of a tough divorce. My husband had taught me to drive in his deep-green 1973 Karmen Gia, a neat 4-on-the-floor. But I didn’t earn my license until a year later, with my father’s help. That's when I bought my first car for almost nothing--a turquoise VW bug with a black bonnet and green trunk and beautiful magenta pinstriping. The year was 1975, but I don’t remember the year of the car and I don't have a photograph. As soon as I was legal, I packed the VW and moved from Upstate NY to Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut where I was working on a master’s degree. As my parents would say, I didn’t look back.

To me, right from the get-go, the VW bug stood for independence. I used it between work and school until I had to jump start it, and until I had to manually lift the break pedal to release the brake. And when it died in Middletown a year later, I gave it to people who used it in its two working gears—first gear and reverse— to bring deliveries from the bottom of their hill to the top. Last I saw it, it sat at the bottom of that hill as a container for armloads of chrysanthemums. By then I had bought a dream of a used car—a brown mercury capri with almost 100,000 miles on it.

Those were lean years.  I was a workshop leader of theatre games and improvisation and a beginning director.  Both jobs were volunteer in the evenings and on weekends around the real work which brought in money—at times waitressing, at times substitute teaching.   My first full-time job was as a speed reading and study skills itinerant instructor which brought me to Connecticut and Pennsylvania—all in the safety of the brown Mercury Capri.  I tied a broomstick across the back seat to use as a clothes rack, and lived out of the car.

Freedom.  

When I landed in Philadelphia in 1977, I would often drive around the city and suburbs to become familiar with my new home.  I enjoyed getting lost and then finding myself again.  Once, the capri died at a city stop sign when I was on one of those escapes—or escapades.  I was somewhere in Center City or South Philadelphia, and there was at least 6 inches of snow on the ground.   A man on the far side of age 50 asked me if I needed help.  I asked if he knew where I could use a phone, and he walked me a few blocks to what I remember as a warehouse to use one.

The large room was filling with musicians shedding winter coats and warming up their instruments.  Two of the musicians went with me to push my car to the side of the road.  They explained that they were part of an opera company—or was it a music society?  I no longer remember.  One of them gave me the name of a garage to call—and everyone made me welcome as a visitor.  I think I stayed for 10 or 15 minutes before I felt I should be outside near the car.  The rescue went smoothly, and the garage fixed my car.  

Later when I started thinking through the sequence of events, I realized how dangerous the situation might have been.  My friends were quite concerned that I didn't call them instead of walking into a strange part of the city with a strange man. I suppose I was lucky. But I had felt kindness and honesty throughout my emergency.  I wished I had written down names and addresses, because when I tried to get back to the music hall to thank the men who had helped me, I couldn't find it again.  Now the experience and the disappearance has a magical quality like in the story of Rip Van Winkle, without the intervening 20 years. 

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For an old poem to the VW, see Flagship from 2012.😊

© 2024 Susan L. Chast

Please respect my copyright. 

A life of Independence

 

 I remember my first glimpse of independence, which was when Mom and Dad drove me to freshman year at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.  I don’t remember a word they said, as Polonius-like, they cautioned me on how to behave in my first independent setting.  They said I looked at everything wide-eyed, and I was lost to them.  It may have been so.  I had sisters for the first time—in roommates and lunch lines, study, and play. 

And then there was dating and marriage and divorce—all of which depended on freedom to be and to chose.  All choices of which were radical departures from the paths my parents had chosen for me. 

But the next major event in independence that was a revelation to me was getting my driver’s license and buying my first car.  To move from passenger seat into the driver’s seat was indescribable independence, containing both freedom and control.  I was in control of a private space for the first time, and I could go wherever I wanted to go. 

And, as it turned out, that private space on wheels was a step toward what I really needed in order to feel independent and to pursue the career I wanted to excel in.  Though I had relationships and friendships enough, I moved alone into a room of my own for the first time.  And that is how I lived the rest of my life, in control of my own place and space.  These days I find I hold a little envy for those who have children and grandchildren, but despite a certain amount of loneliness, the freedom—the complete independence—is what nurtured my soul.  It’s as if my brain and spirit expanded into domestic space, leaving my heart free to love freely, and especially let the love of God pour through me toward others.  I think of this when I think of my mother’s motto, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

When my father died and Mom lived alone for the first time ever, lived alone after 72 years of marriage, I offered to help her with the things that come up for a woman alone.  But she took to it like a hummingbird to sugar water.  Her mourning continued in the evenings especially, in the hours after dinner when she missed the companionship of her husband.  During the day, she thrived in her art.  She rearranged the furniture and made a studio space in every room.  She had guests for lunch, she tutored and led small classes in drawing, etching, pastel, and acrylic.  And she lived alone—with aides for mornings and late evenings—up until  three weeks before her death.

 A year before she died, in July 2023, I was staying at my mother’s house during one of Mom's hospital visits.  When she returned home she accepted about 5 days of round-the-clock-care before asking us to leave, by 10 days of round-the-clock care, she demanded that we leave.  Her freedom and independence had become that important to her.  On reflection, I wrote this poem:

I watched her house and she
reach for each other, I felt her cat’s cold
shoulder, and heard sharper questions about
who moved what and why.  I returned home,
humbled, sure again that her nest was hers
and my nest was mine.  At what age do we
stop wanting independence?  In my own
home, cat leaning on my legs, repainting
them with her scent, I know the answer is
never.  Someday, I may have to insist
on assisting, or help her to move.  Someday
I will need someone to do that for me.
Until those days come, I’ll love the nests
we build for our adult selves, neither nestling 

nor child, but ones at home within ourselves.

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Please respect my copyright. 

© 2024 Susan L. Chast