"One of the nicest houses in the City." say the firemen who
visit Engine 43's new home, which is certainly no
understatement. The glass brick in the recreation room
is one of the feature attractions. The brick are
highly ornamental and provide ample light for study or other
reading. The modern kitchen, with built-in range and
refrigerator, opens off the recreation room making a
very convenient arrangement. On the other side of the
apparatus floor, beginning at the front of the house, there
are private quarters for the officer, next a light and airy
dormitory, locker room with plenty of lockers, at the rear a
fine up to the minuet wash room. Most of the rooms
have Venetian blinds and the whole house is heated by air forced
across hot water pipes form the 200 gallon storage tank. The
only drawback is the single-wall handball court.
Crew
Members
Let me introduce you to the crew. Top row left to
right: A Shift, Fireman D. L. Cirlos of 1923 vintage;
Fireman (operator) J. H. Jonathan, '37; Fireman John O.
Powell, '29; Fireman Carl Clark, '25; Fireman Robert
J. Schenk, '32 (recently made Auto-fireman, soon to be
Captain); Engineer Wm. N. Stevenson, '35; Captain
Alvin L. Nelson, '22; Batt. Chief James F. Martin,
'24; Bottom row: B Shift, left to right, Fireman
Bertram J. Aspinall, '25; Fireman Jack Gordon, '37;
Engineer Raymond Gail (another potential Captain) '35;
Fireman Joe B. Bull, '24; Captain John Wills, '27.
Old Station
The old quarters at 11416 National Boulevard (rented) were
abandoned at 12:30 p.m.,
|
September 27, 1941,
in favor of the new place at 10234 National. You probably
know that 43's is located at
Palms. The old quarters were pretty bad. For one thing
when an alarm came in someone had to hunt around for a string to
pull the lights on as there were no gong lights. The alarms
were received by word of mouth, fire phone and grapevine, which
calls to mind, one time the late Joe Janulaw
answered the grapevine and when told that there was a fire at a
certain address, misunderstood and replied "there is no such
person here--never heard of him--he must work at some other engine
house." The frantic caller wouldn't hang up so after
some further argument Joe turned the phone over to the Captain
with the comment "this guy must be nuts, see what you can do
with him." To make the story complete I should add that
Joe didn't answered the grapevine any more. All this is
changed now. The fire phone is connected to the Westlake
alarm bureau by which means they receive all the alarms over the
area from Culver City to Beverly Hills and from Robertson
Boulevard to Venice.
The house is not the only nice part at 43's. They have one
of these new cab-over-engine jobs by Kenworth-United with a
6-cylinder, 240 horse Hall-Scott motor, 1000 gallon pump, 100
gallon booster tank, metal ladders, etc. There is still
more, the local chamber of commerce says, they have the most
healthful climate in Southern California and the local water has
lots of sulfur in it. If you think it is a nice set-up, just
try to bump one of the boys--they will have you executed. |