Young Ken Mannion went with me to the play Sunday. We parked in a garage on East 13th, across the street from a firehouse. One of their ladder trucks was out front.
Don’t know what they were up to---sorry, couldn’t resist. Don’t know what they were doing, but it reminded Ken and I both of the scene in the movie Roxanne when the company of inept volunteer firefighters forgets to put the ladder down on their way home from a fire. Steve Martin as their chief, C.D. Bales, chases the truck back to the firehouse and finds it half in and half out the bay and the ladder sticking out of an upstairs window.
Ken and I stood there for a little while, cracking ourselves up remembering scenes and lines from the movie before we headed off to find a hot dog vendor and have lunch in Union Square Park.
Our favorite line is when C.D., trying to get his company to shape up, says to them, “I have a dream. It's not a big dream, it's just a little dream. My dream - and I hope you don't find this too crazy - is that I would like the people of this community to feel that if, God forbid, there were a fire, calling the fire department would actually be a wise thing to do. You can't have people, if their houses are burning down, saying, ‘Whatever you do, don't call the fire department!’”
When it was near showtime and we headed back to the theater, we passed the firehouse again. The truck had been put away or gone out on a call and the bay door was down. That’s when we noticed them, the six plaques on the facade to the left of the bay door.
Then it dawned on us.
We weren’t that far away.
They’d have gone out on the call.
You don’t need me to tell you what date is on all six plaques.
They're not called New York's Bravest for nothing.
Posted by: Chris the cop | Tuesday, March 22, 2011 at 08:05 AM