This truck would have rolled off an assembly line a couple of years before I was born, but already I'm picturing the places it may have been, the people who rode it to fires and rescue missions, and the lives it has no doubt saved. I can't help but wonder who the owner is, if it's someone who just loves the older apparatus, a collector, or could it be perhaps a family member of a firefighter from the department maybe. I can google all these things, and I just might, because deep down I have this very real craving to know the backstory; to learn the details that are woven into the history of a fire department and a community; to put a name with this machine and time frame. I feel a need to find those who know the story, so I can listen and write it down, saving bits and pieces of a local legend along with the photos, because I'm aware that far too soon the speakers will be gone.
I spoke with someone at a fire station a few months ago about a possible gig; an opportunity to document some of the tales along with my perspective on vehicles. He was a person who I hoped would be the golden ticket to a project like this, a process of preserving history, and he had both the antique equipment and the older firefighters nearby. Well, some of them at least; because he then told me of the department's recent loss; the passing of the only remaining charter member just a few months earlier. "It's all gone with him" he explained in distress; "we lost the last original who knew all the stories". I wanted to blurt out that is isn't too late, that there are others who have walked the walk and fought the fires and who have faithfully responded to that siren's call for more than half a century, but it seemed futile.
There aren't a whole lot of folks who value my excitement at the chance to get the older guys down to the station to sit by the trucks and tell me things I can weave into my slightly off-beat and altered images. But I want that opportunity because I suspect there will be stories, laughter, and recollections of incidents and years gone by, and I know their words would meld with the photos perfectly to create a time capsule that others will appreciate down the road.
I believe there's a concept people miss when they've lived in one place for a long time, if not all of their lives; it's a connection to the past that some take for granted. It's the legacy that was his father, and grandfather, who also served in this same department, and it's the spirit that lives on in future generations, like the ones which are playing nearby as we talk. I want to say that these stories could one day mean so much to these children as they read them to their children - and that because he doesn't have a torn family like mine, there is the ability to document and save all this right now.
Let's do this, I want to say, but he's hesitant to commit to such a project; I'm afraid of coming across as an overly crazed artist; and so I smile, thank him and leave instead. Maybe near year I'll find the ones who are eager to talk and to tell their stories; maybe as time marches on someone else will realize the memories that made a fire company into a local legend are fading away and allow me to create my pictures against a backdrop of words. A tinge of sadness comes over me, as I realize that in today's hectic world, perhaps others don't feel the same urgency to save these fragments.
Thanks for reading and have a wonderful week ~
Andrea @ Altered Delmarva
