Fire truck

[wdeturck]

Mike Mizzullo Working

[Racenitro]

The steering wheel is NOT BIG enough...LOL
Is the group following going to do battle for the right to fight the fire...this is what happened a lot in Chicago and other cities....

[Amigatec]

Now where's Al Gore when you need him???

[mmzullo]

Maybe this

[SWilliams]

That looks like one of the old American LaFrance steamers.

The one behind would be the hose tender and somewhere out of the picture would likely be a ladder rig.
That was when you had to be a tough nut to run those rigs.

[mmzullo]

I think an episode on the History channel had said they would fight for the first horse/apparatus to get the first hose line in service. There was always braggings rights. There also showed redered pictures of how horses would break there legs in the rail lines that where in the streets from the trolly cars.
Geezer remembers running on those horse carrages. Sorry Geezer I had to get you back.

[SWilliams]

During the time when the majority of the fighting occurred, the fight was over who got to put water on the fire first, because they would be the ones to get paid if they managed to put the fire out.
This was also the times when fire insurance companies attached plaques to buildings they covered so the responding departments would actually fight the fire instead of just looting the buildings...
When you start looking in the past at Fire Departments there are things that happened that make politicians look good...
Most of those things are now out of the system but there are a few traditions from those days still around. Thankfully most are good things.

[Scott C.]

Trivia time.
Does anyone know where the term "plug ugly" came from?

[Paul B]

Scott

Does anyone know where the term "plug ugly" came from?

Has anyone ever heard the term "plug ugly"? Must be a regional thing us hillbilly's aint heard.....

[SWilliams]

Not really regional. More a City term. Used in Chicago, NYC, San Francisco, and many of the other larger cities that had multiple departments covering them.

[Scott C.]

Old term from back in the days of Geezers picture (or Geezer for that matter).

[J Hayes]

ThesaurusLegend: Synonyms Related Words Antonyms
Noun 1. plug-uglyplug-ugly - someone who bullies weaker people
tough guy
bully, hooligan, roughneck, rowdy, ruffian, yob, yobbo, yobo, tough - a cruel and brutal fellow
Ted, Teddy boy - a tough youth of 1950's and 1960's wearing Edwardian style clothes



plug-ugly
adj
Informal extremely ugly
n pl -lies
US slang a city tough; ruffian
[origin obscure; originally applied to ruffians in New York who attempted to exert political pressure]

[Scott C.]

Nope,
You Googled it but didn't dig deep enough.

In the early years of the fire service, water lines were made from wood. When there was a fire, the first arriving company would drill down into the water lines to get their water. When they were done they would simply drive a wooden plug into the hole as opposed to replacing the entire section. This is where we get the term "fire plug". During this time there were only volunteers, the first firefighters to put water on the fire were paid by the insurance companies. The competing companies would send the meanest, toughest, biggest, guy they had ahead to guard the plug. Anyone from another company who came near it would have to fight him. This is where the term plug ugly comes from.

[J Hayes]

[quote="J Hayes"]ThesaurusLegend: Synonyms Related Words Antonyms
Noun 1. plug-uglyplug-ugly - someone who bullies weaker people
tough guy
bully, hooligan, roughneck, rowdy, ruffian, yob, yobbo, yobo, tough - a cruel and brutal fellow


Isn't the term roughneck related to the oil / gas industry ?

[Scott C.]

Yup, along with roustabout

[ksanders]

Cub Cadet Collectors dot com
Learn about cubs... and so much more

Enough threads like this and I'll be ready to go on Jeopardy.

[J Hayes]

roustabout ? Is that like a Chumlee word for Gopher ? meaning running around rousting things up ?

[Racenitro]

Steve & Mike..that was what I was talking about. Apparently there used to be some pretty hard fought battles while the building burned to the gorund...LOL

[SWilliams]

Yeah that was quite common. The companies would loot whatever was inside under the auspices of "salvage". Then they let the place burn to hide that action.

One of the bad things in my own departments past was letting a hotel burn while the membership was busy removing the liquor and beer from the bar area...
There is also a local department that was known for showing up to fires and setting outside drinking beer while the place burned.

Not good things but many departments have skeletons they want to keep hidden.

[mmzullo]

Some people call fire hydrants still fire plugs. Also the movie Gangs of New York had scenes of early fire fighting. How true I don't know.

[jpence]

They main reason for fighting the other firefighters and not the fire was different gangs controlled different fire departments. Because of this two fire departments came to the fire and a gang fight would start involving the firefighters. Plug Ugly was also a name of a gang in Manhattan in the late 1800's-1900's.

[Jlaws]

The terms roustabout and hostler herder are used on the railroad . They are engineer and conductor crews that take engines out of the locomotive service areas and move them to tracks where they put them on trains , and also take locomotives from the yard and deliver them to the locomotive serice area . Unluckily these jobs are being fazed out . The railroad has a language all its own.

[CCobb]

The insurance company plaques affixed to buildings were called "fire marks" and were in assorted shapes and sizes. They are very collectable today and demand some hefty dollars in some circumstances.