The Firemen

Almost two decades of Harvard Freshmen have learned to hate the buildings erected at Cambridge St. and Broadway. Since 1934, no man's sleep has been safe, as the doughty firemen race out to one of the 1,000 odd alarms that the Central fire House answers yearly.

A red brick building of generous proportions, the station was designed to blend with the ivy covered Harvard buildings in the vicinity. The Cambridge Fire Department prides itself on having the most collegiate looking, fire station in the country. Certainly it is one of the largest in the country. Most fire houses are two story affairs, but the Central has three stories, equal actually to five ordinary stories since the ground floor, called the apparatus room, is three stories high.

Because of its central location in Cambridge, this station is the headquarters of the Fire Department. The Chief, John F. Collins, and his deputies have their offices there, and the Fire Alarm system centers in the building. All calls first come there and are then relayed to the station nearest the fire.

The fireman's job is not the joyous round of pinochle games, maiden rescuing, and whizzing through streets that ordinary citizens, when forced to the side of the road, are wont to claim. He must answer calls in the most miserable weather, and if his beat happens to be Harvard, or another college, he can be sure that he faces heckling, flashbulbs in the face, and an agonizing spurt of low humor begun by the question, "Hey, why do you wear red suspenders?"

Perhaps the most glamorous of the companies housed in the Central Fire Station is the Rescue squad. Its members do anything from ambulance work to extracting children's heads from Iron fences. One of the more grisly tasks is investigating suicides. According to Lieutenant Paul Touchette, his squad has never been able to save a Harvard man who had decided to become a late Harvard man. "At least it's nice to be able to say," remarks Touchette, an avid Harvard booster and member of the Band, "that Harvard men do a professional job, and never botch it up."

Added to the usual duties of a fire department is a rigorous training program that the officers and men periodically undergo. When up for promotion, a fireman must be prepared to answer questions in any of 33 fields, including First Aid, Plumbing, Construction, and Chemistry. The Central Station has several classrooms for the rookies and auxiliaries. They learn while on duty, and many veterans join them to brush up on new techniques. All rookies at the Central Station have the added responsibility of knowing the location of all Yard buildings.

In the midst of a fairly dangerous job--injuries are quite common death is not unknown--the firemen try to keep a cheerful outlook. One Christmas Eve, not long ago, Central Station answered a call near the Square. It was from the house of a widow with four children, and the kitchen, where the fire had started, was gutted. There was a tremendous hole in the roof, and it had been alternately raining and snowing for days. The firemen brought the blaze under control, nailed a tarpaulin over the hole, cleared away the debris, and before they left, one of them remembered to wish the widow a Merry Christmas.