"In Brownsville in the 1970's you were a target if you were a fireman. They would call in a false alarm and when you pulled up in front of a tenement the crowd would be up on the roofs and throw rocks and bottles and human shit and anything they could get the hands on. Of course when there was a real fire they would demand that you rush in to save their asses. Which you did because it was your job. The knucklehead that hit you with a rock yesterday was the one you dragged out of the building because he started a mattress fire when he fell asleep smoking his Kool's."
"You would be amazed at the stupid shit people will do in a fire. One time we rushed up to the top floor of a four story walk up that was burning like crazy at four in the morning. We hammered on the doors and broke them down to get the people out. There was garbage and derbies and all kinds of crap in the hallway. It was almost impossible to pass to get to the apartments to get the people out. We break into this one apartment and this mutt gets up out of bed rubbing his eyes. There were a couple of kids sleeping in a crib and a trundle bed. No woman to be seen. We grab the kids and start to leave. This mutt goes "Hey Man what about my stereo? I spent a lot of scratch on dat." Didn't give a crap about his kids just his stereo. I said "Oh your stereo. No problem I will take care of that for you." I took it and threw it out the window."
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I grew up in East New York, about two miles north of Brownsville. Brownsville where there was at least one fire a day and one fireman attacked per fire. But I won't get into how heartbreaking Brownsville became because Schmendrick would come out of the woodwork and yell "Bigot!" My friend's mother used to walk down to Pennsylvania Avenue in Brownsville to do piece work in a garment factory to supplement the family income and walk back in the dark and no one thought a thing about it. No more.
My Dad had a Saturday gig at a furniture store where he was the accountant. He would go and record all the payments where people would pay lay aways at a dollar or two at a time. I would go with him. We would take the G train and get off at the Flushing Avenue Station. The only white faces on the train. In the station. On the street.
We would walk past the Pfzier chemical plant which had guards all over the place and it was only one more block to Broadway. The houses were interspersed with empty garbage filled lots. It looked like the photos you would see of bombed out houses in WW2.
I would have been scared but my Dad assured me we had nothing to worry about. You see none of the knuckleheads were awake. So as long as we were out of there by 3pm we were good.
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