I think hotel's had a secret meeting recently.
It was a very short meeting.
Everyone flew in and they said, everybody here?
Very quick. We're not going to own any mistakes anymore.
That's it. Head on back.
How you doing?
This key gave me, I just tried it in my door. It's not working.
Did you put in anything magnetic?
No, you just gave it to me and I just tried it and I just came back.
I was expecting a good key and an apology.
And I'm holding a bad key and getting an accusation.
Did you put the key next to anything magnetic?
I am a red horseshoe magnet salesman.
Okay, okay. I know what happened now.
I remember you gave me that perfectly good key.
And I tossed that into my bag of samples.
Then I scooped that up all half-hazard-like
and started swinging everything a sunder.
I remember here in Zippen and Zappen.
Was that the key becoming demagnetized?
I remember there was a big Chess.
I remember this one.
I remember it.
I remember the last time I was standing on the door.
I remember it.
I remember the last time I was standing on the door.
And my lack of education hasn't heard enough.
I can read the writing along the wall.
Cold or cold, but give us those nice black colors.
Give us the greens, the summers.
Makes you think all the world to the sunny day.
I got a knife.
How many people know growing up today with a Nikon camera is or Codicrone?
Nobody knows what Codicrone film is any more.
But it's made by the Codac company.
And I think you can buy it online.
I think people still stockpile Codicrone film.
But do you ask any high school person to be in a Codicrone film?
I got to know what Codicrone film is.
I don't think Steve knows what Codicrone film is.
Yes, I most certainly do.
Okay, this is going to find out how old you are there, Steve.
I'm Don Rose and thanks for joining us here at 709 at WRJN Radio.
Home town radio refreshed as civic media station.
And Steve is going to enlighten you.
He's part of a landmark here in Racine.
That you probably drove by a million times.
You might have looked at it because it is kind of interesting to look at.
But you probably don't know what's inside that building.
And that's the Racine Firehouse Museum.
And Steve Salvo works with the Racine Bells, which operated, correct?
Yes, that's correct.
Now these are the Racine Bells.
You see them in the 4th of July parade with the fire, not fire truck.
Yeah, fire trucks, I guess.
But they also have like, I guess these were, they were like food trucks, I guess,
when you went to the, what are those, what are those big van type trucks?
So the Racine Fire Bells are a nonprofit volunteer service organization.
And these are not the, this is not the baseball team.
Correct.
No, there's, there's no e on the end of bell.
Okay.
So the fire bells are a support auxiliary to local fire departments and police departments.
So the vehicles that you're referring to are our rehabilitation vehicles.
The old term was canteen trucks.
Right.
These are food and stuff.
So they're actually, in most cases, they're typically old decommissioned ambulances
that we are repurposing for that use.
But the fire bells will show up at emergency scenes and provide, you know,
water and coffee and gatorade and snacks and such for police officers, firefighters
that are going to be operating at a scene for a long period of time,
especially in inclement weather like, you know, we've had in the last couple days and so on.
Well, I digress from time to time in my interviews.
And there was a Superman episode on the TV show Superman where just these trucks
are called the fireman's friend of these guys would come in the fireman's friend
and serve coffee and everything to the firefighters and sandwiches and stuff
because they're fighting these fires.
And they put on these fire retardant suits and going to rob the place.
All the fire was on.
Then come back and continue to serve food for the fireman.
But that's not what the receive bells did.
Exactly.
That was it.
That was in Superman, the TV series.
Now, where is this building?
It's a very unique looking building.
So the firehouse three museum is located at seven hundred six street,
which is in downtown or seen.
We are just the kind of kitty corner from Racine City Hall.
We're right across the traffic circle from Racine City Hall.
Okay, then that's not the building I'm thinking of.
I'm not thinking of the one that looks like a castle, but that's not this one.
Correct.
I know where the one you are now, because I think it was on the tour of homes
at one time, the parade of homes.
I think we actually went in there.
It's possible that it was.
Yeah.
So the building you're thinking of is actually old Racine Fire Station number one.
Okay, that's the one.
Which is at 1412 Racine Street.
Right.
And is currently owned by Essie Johnson.
What did I do with it?
To my knowledge, I don't believe they do anything with it.
It's there.
The building is vacant.
They own it.
And I'm not aware that they use it for anything.
Okay, so this one is Kitty Corny from City Hall at 76th Street.
It's an old building.
That it is.
It was built when.
It was built in 1881.
And it served as an act of fire station for the city of Racine until 1968.
Did you commissioned in just a wall for the service of fire station then?
So in 1968, well actually in 1967, the city built the safety building.
The combined police and fire station.
Yeah.
Which they are still operating out of today.
And at the time that that facility opened in 1968, the city closed three fire stations.
They closed fire station one, which is a kind of castle building that you're referring to.
They closed fire station number three, which is our museum.
And they closed what at the time was fire station number five.
It was their old headquarters station, which was located at 4th and Wisconsin,
right across from a journal times building.
And they were able to close three buildings.
This is kind of an interesting little tidbit.
They were able to close three fire stations and combine them all into one building.
Because when those stations were originally built, they were built for horse drawn fire apparatus.
So they out of necessity had to be closer.
Horses could only pull the heavy equipment so far.
And so we moved to a period of time when all fire apparatus is motorized.
And they realized they didn't need three fire stations in that one small footprint of areas.
So they were able to come cover it all from the current safety building.
Do they have stables in those buildings for the horses?
Yes, as a matter of fact, they did.
That's probably one of the things about the museum that I think most surprises people when they come through
is the fact that the horses that pulled the fire apparatus actually lived in the building with the firefighters.
You know, and in New York City, they have what they call the handsome cab rides.
And they also have police on horseback in New York City.
And people are shocked to find out there's actually a giant stable in Midtown Manhattan.
And I say to them, what do you think they do with the horses at night?
I mean, they take them to a farm upstate New York.
No, they actually have a stable building.
It looks like a farm.
It's right in the middle of Manhattan.
That's where they keep the animals.
In the back of Radio City musical hall, they also have stables because when they do the
Nativity scene at Christmas time, they're going to put the animals somewhere.
And so they build stables in the rear of Radio City musical.
So they do have stables.
So in the earliest days, the city or scene, I believe, was found in 1843 and the
Racine Fire Department was founded right around that time.
And in the earliest days, when the fire department was volunteer, they did board the horses at a nearby
library stable because the firefighters were volunteers.
There was nobody in the buildings to care for the horses around the clock.
So the horses were boarded somewhere nearby.
But once the fire department converted to a career fire department, the firemen were in the building,
24-7.
And so the horses were in the building, 24-7.
And if you come to the museum, you can still see some remnants of where they were.
I got to go there now that I know all this effort to check it out.
The most obvious, if you look, the majority of the building has a wood floor and towards the back of the building,
it transitions to concrete and everything from the concrete back is what was originally the stables.
The haloft is still there.
There's an opening in the floor.
So the haloft was on the second floor.
And there's an opening, about a four by four foot square opening in the corner of the building,
where the hay and oats and straw would be brought up to the second floor,
when they were delivered, and then they would be forked or shoveled down to the first floor stables
as the horses needed it throughout the week.
So you still got the fire pole there?
Yes, we do.
You ever try it?
Years ago, we used to slide the pole routinely for school groups when they would come through
and our insurance carrier would put a stop.
Really?
Yes.
Is it that difficult?
I've never tried it.
It looks easy.
I mean, Jim, when I was in high school, falling off of a log.
I mean, we used to do the ropes.
We used to climb to the ceiling using the ropes.
And then we slide down the ropes.
It's got to be better than that because that burned when you're wrapped around your thighs.
I don't think coming that too fast.
But you still have to do the demos anymore.
Correct.
That's too bad.
Now, when is it open to the public, by the way?
So we don't, we're a small organization.
We don't have a lot of members.
And as such, we don't have regular hours.
So what we do is we do open for public events and our scene.
Starting in April will be open for first Fridays.
Oh, you do open.
Okay.
We open on first Fridays, again, in the better weather.
So typically from April through November, we're open for party and the pavement.
Party and the pavement is usually our biggest day of the year.
We typically get like four or five hundred people through the museum during party and the pavement.
We open for the downtown holiday parade and events like that.
We also are more than happy to open for anywhere from Wanda, any number of people.
So I think in the past year, I probably gave 15 or more private tours.
A lot of times we'll have retired firefighters families will reach out and say,
you know, my dad was a firefighter for the fire department in these years.
And so they'll come through the museum and such.
I'm pretty sure I went through those my wife as part of the parade of homes.
I thought they brought it through there, brought us through the museum.
I can almost swear to I can ask my wife about that.
She would know more than I do.
She has a bunch better memory than me.
And we're going to talk in a few minutes about how you still accept members of people want to join the Racine Bells.
We'll talk about that.
I guess I'm going to talk about with this and upcoming events and so forth.
I'm floored that you were open that many times a year.
Had I known that, I would have been in.
You know, it's one of those hidden treasures in Racine people don't know about.
I think we really are.
A lot of people will come in and just as you started this segment and said,
I've walked past this building a thousand times and I've never come in or I've driven by a thousand times and I've never been in.
Yeah, people they kind of think we're I'm not sure they think it's kind of a non-antity but the reality is yeah,
we're actually open quite often and it's pulled on a second.
Steve Salvos here from the Firehouse Museum here in Racine, more coming up.
719, WRJN, a civic media station, home town radio.
We're fresh.
It's time to leave the door.
I want you to move around the street.
Knowing you're out of love with me.
But this is not what I want.
It's time to leave the door.
I want you to move around the street.
Knowing you're out of love with me.
But this is not what I want.
But this is not what I want.
It's time to leave the door.
The味.
I miss you when I'm in gibberish.
8, 940, 1,6075 up the road.
If you want it to drive up the road right, I want you to pass this right now byvero.
I've seen it's cloudy and Steve Salvo's here from the Racine Firehouse Museum.
Now, how did the Racine Bell's name come into it?
It's called the Racine Firehouse Museum, right?
It's a firehouse three museum.
Now, where's the three come from?
Because that was fire station number three.
I'm slow, but not that slow.
I'll get John eventually.
Let's talk about some of the exhibits you have there.
And this goes back to the 1800s.
You know, and I always say that sounds old.
My house goes back to just a little over the year 1900.
I think 1906, 1910, something like that.
But this is just a little older.
This goes back to the 1800s.
So tell us about some of the exhibits you have there.
So we're kind of excited.
The most recent acquisition that we've got is a bell.
And it's a bell from 1868.
And back in 1868, there was a fire station.
There was a, it would have been a volunteer fire station at the time.
It basically shared the playground with Jane's school on Main Street.
And so this is the bell that hung in the tower of that fire station
and would call the volunteers when there was a fire.
And in 1888, by then, there seemed fire department had converted to a career
or a full-time fire department.
And they moved that station.
More accurately, I guess they built a new station over at Lincoln and Barker Street.
And they no longer had a need for the bell.
They donated the bell to the school.
And so the bell has been in Jane's school since 1888.
And so with Jane's school closing,
we, as the museum, were well aware.
Are we closing?
Yes.
I lived near Jane's school on Main Street.
Oh, they're closing that, huh?
They just redid it recently.
They rebuilt a lot of the items.
My understanding.
Wait, let's listen.
According to Steve Solve.
So one of our, one of the members of our organization works for Unified
and was, was aware that the bell was there and was aware of its connection,
you know, to fire history in Racine.
And so we reached out to Unified.
And eventually we were able to negotiate its return to the fire department.
And where was it in the school?
What do they keep it?
I believe it was right in the front lobby.
Oh, so it was never in that school.
Yes.
Yes, it was on display.
That's a version of a Liberty Bell.
Oh, sure.
Okay.
Doesn't have the crack.
Okay.
Kind of interesting.
And we're still kind of in the process of researching this.
But again, the bell was cast in 1868.
But in, in raised lettering on the bell, there's a reference that says,
Fireman's pet.
And, and we think that that is sort of a little bit of an offhand shot at the school.
In the 1800s, volunteer firefighters were not necessarily the most desirable role models for school children.
And so there was always some tension between the school and the volunteer fire station again.
I'm talking about 1860s, 1870s.
And so we suspect that when they gave the bell to the school that they had this Fireman's pet line added on the bell
because it's raised.
It's not engraved like it would have been when the bell was new.
It's raised.
And we suspect that was a little bit of a kind of a shot at the school
over there, the kind of poor relations that they'd had over the years.
So look at that.
Okay.
What else you got there?
So we're really fortunate.
We have one, we have an 1882 clapping jones, which is the manufacturer horse drawn steam fire engine.
To our knowledge, this is the only one of Racines, at one time Racine owned, I believe it was 16 fire engines.
This is the only one still in existence.
This particular piece of equipment has been in the possession of the Racine fire department.
It's entire so since 1882.
We're just so fortunate that somebody through the years saw the foresight to keep this.
To keep this somewhere, many of these vehicles were simply sold for scrap, melted down.
I have to imagine that during World War II, when there was metal shortages,
somebody had to have looked at this and said, hey, there's metal in this.
It could be used for the war effort.
But somebody saw the foresight to maintain this.
Steam fire engines are quite rare.
Off the top of my head, I'd say there's probably fewer than a hundred of them in the United States, still in existence.
And this is on display at the museum.
And this is on display in the museum.
Exactly.
You know, you look at these old fire engines, you know, when they portrayed them in movies.
And you wonder how they ever put the fires out with those things.
They weren't like high pressure hoses like they have today.
But they just wonder how did they ever put...
And the city was made a wood.
So everything was going up in flames back in those days.
Like, you know, when there was a major fire, there was a fire.
So as a matter of fact, Racine's Great Fire was in May of 1882.
And that's kind of what drove prior to that Racine still had a volunteer fire department.
And it was after the Great Fire of 1882.
Just as you said, most of the buildings were built out of wood.
There were no fire codes either.
There were some, but they were they were quite, quite limited.
So the Great Fire of 1882 destroyed a good portion of downtown Racine.
Actually destroyed one of the volunteer fire hoses.
Required assistance from Milwaukee Fire Department responded.
The Kenosha Fire Department, the actually the Chicago Fire Department actually came to...
What you were saying?
1882.
Okay.
I don't see how many photos of that.
Kenosha been horrible to look at.
I mean, when it was in flames.
I mean, that's kind of the most frightening thing to see, because it spreads.
Again, these buildings were made of wood, so it just spreads.
So it's not a coincidence that our steamer at the museum was manufactured in 1882.
It was one of two steamers, I believe, that were purchased that year.
After the Great Fire, the city realized that they had to improve their fire protection.
And so they converted to a full-time fire department.
They upgraded their equipment and such.
So the museum building, which was built just before the fire was built in 1881,
was originally built for volunteer.
Again, at the time the fire department was volunteer.
But after the Great Fire, they started to convert to a career fire department.
And so the museum was actually the one of the first stations that housed
full-time career firefighters in the city.
Yeah, they're thinking, too, were these horses spooked when they pulled up to these fires?
And it's got to be scary for these animals when they pull up to these giant flames
and they just parked the horses there while they put the fire out.
So fire horses are a little known, but a fascinating aspect of history.
Fire horses are legendary for their strength and for their loyalty and for their skill.
These horses were actually highly trained.
Oh, are they?
Oh, absolutely.
Hold on a second, I want to continue that.
That's fascinating.
I never knew they had specially trained horses for this.
Because that was one of the they pulled up to these fires and these horses don't seem to be spooked.
Steve Salvos here, the routine Firehouse Museum.
And that's located on Sixth Street.
We'll talk more about where you can find it.
It's 729 at WRGN Radio, a civic media station.
Home town radio refreshed.
Stay where you are.
Just as I thought it was going alright.
I found out I'm wrong when I thought it was right.
It's always the same.
It's just the same.
That's all.
I could say day and you'd say night.
Tell me it's black.
Wait, I know that it's white.
Always the same.
It's just the same.
It's just the same.
And that's all.
I could leave, but I won't go.
And my heart might tell me so.
I can't feed a thing from my head down to my toes.
But why does it always seem to be?
It can't be true with you looking at me.
It's always the same.
It's just the same.
That's all.
It's 735 at WRGN Steve Salvos here with me.
And he's one of the people responsible for the Firehouse Museum.
Which is located at 706th Street, Kitty Corner from City Hall.
I got the mayor coming in Friday.
I'll see what he knows about this.
I'll put him on the spot right there.
Mayor, you've got to work.
You can probably see him out of his window.
We'll see what he knows about it.
So we were talking before we left about these horses,
because I would have suspected that these horses would have been spooked
when you bring them up to a fire, you know,
with all the noise and all the flames.
And you know horses would get spooked by that stuff.
You say they're specially trained.
Let's continue talking about that.
So the fire horses were considered.
It's kind of hard, I think, to understand this in our modern times here.
But in the time of horse-drawn fire apparatus,
the firefighters quite honestly were considered dime a dozen.
They'd be hired off the street.
All their training was on the job.
Some would take to the job and would work for 30 or 40 years.
And others would quit after a week or so.
The horses, on the other hand, they had to be trained to carry out their duties.
The horses cost significant amount of money.
So the horses were viewed as a much more valuable asset if you can believe it than the fireman.
Actually, he were.
When they returned from a fire, if it was 10 degrees outside,
it didn't matter how cold the firemen were, it didn't matter how wet they were.
The horses had to be taken care of first.
The horses had to be exercised.
The horses had to be wiped down.
The horses had to be fed and watered.
Then the firemen could think about taking care of their own needs.
So to your question about whether they were frightened by the exposure to the fire and such,
to a certain extent that was trained out of them.
But at the same time, the person responsible for getting the apparatus to the scene,
so the driver, the driver, once it got to the scene,
did not actually typically fight the fire.
The driver would take responsibility for the horses.
And if necessary, that meant on hitching the horses from the apparatus,
covering them, leading them away to a safe area,
a lot of times the bigger concern was if there was smoke.
They couldn't leave the horses where they would be exposed to the smoke.
So they'd have to walk the horses, you know, upwind of the fire
to where they'd be away from the fire.
And then the driver would stay with the horses and maintain their safety.
That's a lot of work.
It is.
You have to be fighting the fire and you're going to take care of the horse.
Well, that's the driver you said did that.
That would have been the driver.
Nowadays, the person who drives the fire apparatus also operates the fire apparatus.
And in the time of the horse drawn era, that was actually two separate jobs.
I've mentioned the steam fire engine that we have in the museum.
And that required an engineer to operate the boiler on that machine,
on that piece of apparatus.
Much like an engineer to this day still maintains the boiler in a school
or the boiler in some public building or whatever.
But again, at that time, you had a driver who was responsible for getting the vehicle there
and taking care of the horses.
And then the engineer was responsible for mechanically operating the steam fire engine.
And then you had hose men who would be the fireman actually applying the water onto the fire.
So how did they get the water out?
It was steam operated, you said.
So was it steam pressure that pushed the water out to get onto the fire?
Yeah, so it's a steam engine.
Much like a steam locomotive would move the steam boiler.
The steam engine provided the propulsion.
It did not move the vehicle, but it moved the pump.
It operated the pump.
So the water would be, at one time, it would have had to have been drafted,
drawn from either the lake or the river or a cistern.
Cisterns were basically holes in the street.
Brick lined like a well, if you will, that the fireman could drop a hard suction hose into
and draw or draft the water out of that static water source.
It wasn't until 1886, 1887, the recene started to get fire hydrants
to where the fire department could just hook up to a fire hydrant and get water that way.
Otherwise, it had to come from a static water source.
This is a lot of work to find a fire.
Yes, it is.
Now they pull up the truck to hook up to a fire hydrant.
Well, it's still a lot of work.
I'm a retired fire fighter after 33 years, and I'll tell you it's still a lot of work.
But you didn't have to worry about a horse.
You didn't have to worry.
I mean, there were a lot of things you had to be concerned about in the 1800s
before you could even get the first water out.
You got to worry about, you know, you got a live animal here.
Yes.
And he's got to take you home.
Yes.
Kind of an interesting story about the horses too is that the horses went when they were no longer fit for fire duty
because these steam fire apparatus were quite heavy to pull.
They had to be retired.
They couldn't be sold to, for example, the dairy to pull a dairy wagon.
Because if a fire horse, if a retired fire horse was pulling the dairy wagon down the street
and the fire rigs went by, that retired fire horse was going to...
You could not untrain a fire horse from being a fire horse.
So they had to be retired basically to pasture where they would not be exposed to that anymore.
So there's a lot of documented instances of that.
This is fascinating stuff.
This is tough people don't really.
You see these old movies or old photographs of old horse-drawn fire apparatus
and you don't think what goes into this stuff.
Because this is an animal.
It's not like a truck you pull into a garage, give it an oil change and polish it up and it's set.
And it doesn't need really anybody staying with it overnight.
Well, animals do.
Physically, it is an animal, but these horses were beloved by the men that worked with them.
How many were at each fire house?
So because you're seen as a relatively flat city,
the seamers could be pulled by two horses.
If you went to larger cities or cities with more hills in them,
it was not uncommon to see a three horse hitch, pardon the pun,
but they needed the extra horse power to pull that up the hills and such.
So we're seen managed with two.
So along with the steamer,
there had to be a hose cart that responded along with.
Because the steamer was, the steamer simply carried the pump.
And that's all it was.
It didn't have hose for spraying the water on the fire.
It didn't carry nozzles or any type of tools.
So a separate hose cart had to run with the steam fire engine.
So two horses would pull the steamer and two horses would pull the hose cart.
Half the crew would ride on the steamer, half the crew would ride on the hose cart.
So to answer your question,
our building, the Firehouse Three Museum had four four stables.
So at one time there would have been four horses.
Now, how much water did each pump or hold?
I mean, it couldn't have hauled that much water.
And there were no, I don't think there were fire hybrids around those days.
You said there were cisterns in the street.
Correct. So the steam fire engines carried no water for firefighting.
The only water they carried was the water that was in the boiler
that was heated to produce steam that operated the pump.
So they, unlike today's modern fire apparatus,
which carry anywhere from 500, maybe 750 gallons of water or more,
these steamers, the only water they carried was the water that produced the steam
that moved the pump.
How much you can hook up to a fire hydrant today and get unlimited water just about?
Right. And and recines, fire hydrant, recines water system dates back to again,
I think it's like 1887.
One of the interesting things we have in the museum is we have a piece
of recines original wooden water main.
So the water mains, and this is common in most places, were originally...
I think don't they still have some wooden ones underground in recines?
Well, this is, this was extricated so to give a little bit of background to this.
So about, some of your viewers listeners will probably be aware that
party on the pavement dates back to when, when 6th Street was all torn up for construction.
And the construction took pretty close to two years to complete.
And when the construction was done, the merchants along 6th Street were so happy
the construction was finally done, they threw a party.
And, and that was actually the first party in the pavement.
We used to joke about that saying, we finally have a new street for cars.
I'll tell you what, first day let's close it down to all vehicles.
And so while 6th Street was torn up for construction,
recine fire fighters from station one downtown would frequently walk down there
to see what their accessibility was because it was such a mess.
So on a daily basis, they'd have to see what accessibility they had if there was a fire.
And one day they're walking down there and they see this, this piece of wooden
water mean being unearthed from underground.
The construction workers had no idea what it was, but thankfully the firemen did.
And so they arranged to have it brought over to the museum where it's on to some.
Look at that, just by accident.
Yeah, that gets great.
I want to get this question in because I don't want to miss it.
I heard, and it wasn't embarrassing that I heard it.
But at the top of fire houses, they had like a lookout thing on the roof.
And people used to just stand up there and look for fires because there was no telephone system back,
you know, and when people can call in and say 911 didn't exist.
So does that firehouse have a lookout tower?
I know the one that you said, as he Johnson owns has a lookout tower.
And that's what that castle lookout thing is.
And the city was relatively small.
There weren't skyscrapers or any tall buildings so they can see around it.
Is that what they have one?
So yes, that was a common feature of firehouses in your scene at the prior to the turn of the century, the last century.
Yeah, the last 1800.
1800.
Yeah, the one before the turn before this one.
Exactly.
So the firehouse three museum did have a watch tower.
Originally it was considerably taller than what's there now.
There was a wooden tower that extended up almost four stories.
At some point and we're not real clear on this at some point when the tower was no longer needed,
it was removed and I like to joke now we have a we have a stubby tower now.
But that is not the actual tower.
It looks almost.
There's a railing around it that almost is kind of gives the impression that it could have been the tower,
but but it is not the original tower that a fireman would have walked watch.
Is that man 24 seven?
We're not sure.
I suspect it was probably man mostly at night when people would have been asleep and would not have been,
you know, there would not have been pedestrian traffic out to kind of become aware of fires occurring.
But we do have one of one of the things we're lucky at the museum is we do have a lot of old photographs
and we have a lot of photographs of that station at that time that shows the original tower.
We have pictures showing the original stables.
The stables have been removed from the building.
You can tell where they were, but once the fire department motorized they had no need for the stables.
And so you can understand that they would have removed the stables to create more room in the building for their everyday operations.
But we have pictures showing the horses that worked out of that building.
The stables as they appeared and a lot of great photographic history of the photographs hanging up there.
Yes, yes, they're on display.
You know, and you can't lose these things.
And I can tell you about stories about radio stations losing valuable stuff because you don't think it's important at the time.
So you just toss it.
You know, people always talk about the good old days going back to the 1800s.
But what a simpler time.
It was too simple.
I mean, this story just explains how simple it was.
I mean, now a fire truck shows up.
They hose down the fire and it's done.
It was a whole to quote my mother in her yiddish.
It's a whole mishagas when you want to fight a fire back in the 1800s.
It wasn't that simple.
You dealt with horses, you dealt with boiler trucks, you dealt with hose trucks.
And you had to assemble all this stuff when you got to the fire.
And again, for my current firefighters who are still working out there, it's not easy today.
No, it's not easy today.
But yeah, there were certainly elements of...
Yes, exactly.
Yeah.
I'm continually amazed by the level of technology that existed in the 1800s.
So, I think, again, a lot of your listeners might be surprised to know that
from the time a fire call was received in the fire station until these horse-drawn apparatus
were on the street and responding, this could be done in just about one minute of time.
So they're hitching up these horses.
I'm sure they had it down to a science.
Well, there's...
Hold it right there.
Should have picked up right where you left off in just a moment here.
At 749 at WRGN Radio, a civic media station,
hometown radio, refreshed more of a steep salvo from the Pirehouse Museum in Racine,
coming up at just a moment.
At WRGN Radio, 1,400 am, 99.9 at 98.1 FM.
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