Never forget?

I didn't post a 911 remembrance this year. I was out at a small ceremony and didn't want to do it when I came home. I know a lot of people say "Never forget." But I think most of America has forgotten.

This is a photo of my father in law pulling a hose in Brownsville in 1971. The conditions we had in 1971 are back today. The Black Liberation army had shot down Officers Piagentini and Jones in their patrol car in an assassination as just happened in LA. The mutts applauded and celebrated then too. The black neighborhoods were in flames and the firemen had to go put out fires when they threw cinder blocks down on them from the roof. My father in law would tell stories about those days. About how he had to stop probies from rushing in to save people because they would set fires, then make holes in the flow and cover them with a sheet so the firefighter would fall and break a leg by falling down a floor. He had a ton of stories about how the animals acted back in those days. Those days are back with a vengeance.

Two kids on a high school football team carried flags honoring the thin blue line and the thin red line on to the field where everyone else had Black Lives Matters flags. They were suspended and thrown off the team. It only lasted a day because of the outcry but that is where the schools head is at. You can honor criminals who die of a drug overdose in police custody by looting a CVS and setting fire to a church but if you honor the fire department you get thrown off the team.

They tried to cancel the reading of the names but a private group funded it and got it done. That is what it is going to come down to if anyone is going to remember. The memory is fading. In time it will be like the dead of World War One. Something in a history book. A white mans history book if they even let us have that anymore.

Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

KLEM TV

link

Lead follow or get out of the way.

People always think things are worse now then they ever were before. Now if you just think logically you know that is not true. You know I am a big Western fan and my wife asked me if I ever wanted to go back in time to the old West. I always said no because I didn't want Doc Holiday as my dentist pulling teeth with a pair of pliers.

It is much the same with race relations. You talk about your Ferguson and your Black Lives Matters. Well in the Sixties and the Seventies we had the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Army and riots in the streets much worse than anything that is happening now. The FDNY was on the front line.

You see back in the day the Fireman were targets. They would get hit with bricks and bottles as they rode on the back of the trucks. Why? Why would you want to stop the guys that were coming to save you. Part of it was pure hate and despair. The fireman and the cops were the only white people they saw. The only way to get out their frustrations and anger. So they would throw a brick at a fireman holding on to the back of the truck on his way to saving their Auntie's life. Dummies.

Dad and his friends always told stories of those days and the things that happened. How one call box had thirty seven false alarms in one 48 hour period. So how did they fix that. They spread dog shit on the call box so the mooks wouldn't touch it. Tough shit if there was a fire. So to speak.

Lead follow or get out of the way.....

That saying was on a plague that his fellow fireman presented to Dad on his retirement. I am kinda cheating by posting clips from Rescue Me. He hated that show. Pretty much wouldn't watch any fireman shows or movies. Not Chicago Fire. Not Backdraft. Certainly not Rescue Me even though he did say they got the basic vibe of the Firehouse sort of right.

He never wanted to watch them because he called them all reruns.

You see Dad was just like the lead of that show played by Dennis Leary. The tough rebellious ball busting Irish guy who wasn't an officer or officially in charge. He was just the guy that everyone followed.

Firehouse 283 did more runs in one month during the 1960's than all of the runs in the City of Chicago did for that year.

When his firehouse friends came over Captain Joe Bono who was a probie in 283 and learned his trade under Jim Kelly said....."I never worried about going into a fire if I was with Jim Kelly. I know I would be safe."

The other fireman that were there all nodded their heads. Even their lieutenant who was nominally in charge. The all had stories of things that Dad taught them.

Lead, follow or get out of the way.......

James Joseph Kelly was born on December 22, 1937 in Mineola Long Island to immigrant Irish parents. Shortly thereafter they moved to Willliamsburg Brooklyn where they resided thereafter. They were very poor. His father Thomas was a sanitation worker who was not paid very much money in those days. Unfortunately his parents suffered from the Irish curse and he had a very difficult childhood.

He had the kind of childhood you would see in a movie starring Jimmy Cagney and Pat O'Brien. In fact the person he most reminded me was Jimmy Cagney. A tough no nonsense Irishman with a soft soul for people who needed his help. As a young child he had to step up to protect his sisters. One of them told us many stories of the things he used to do. He never spoke of it. He just did it.  That was who he was.

A Hero falls.....

I have been out of touch the past few months. Especially the past three weeks.

Lisa's Dad has been very ill. He was in hospice at home suffering from the accumulated disabilities he incurred from being a NYFD fireman through the sixties and seventies. Those were the guys who went into fires to save people without any gear. No fancy tanks. Nothing but a hose, an ax and a glass screen in the front of their helmet.