I don't remember the month or year exactly, it was a long time ago. January or February because it was damn cold. I think that it was 1970 or 71. No matter, I will never forget that night. I was still living at home and was still in school. I don't remember if it was high school or college. Probably high school.

I do remember sitting at the dinning room table, just after midnight, reading. Some text book. Mom came down the stairs and said something about my needing to go to bed before the sun came up. While she was nag.., er, talking to me, a strange look came over her face. She was looking out the front window and across the street. I don't think that she actually said the word, but I saw her mouth form the word "fire". I turned around to look out the same window. I saw the orange glow and the tongues of flame leaping up the front of a house across the street.

That dining room was twelve by twelve feet with a giant table in the center. At the opposite end of the room was the hallway that led to the kitchen. The phone was in the hallway. I remember turning around and extending my hand. Somehow the phone was in my hand. I don't remember if I went around the table or over it. My training kicked in. This was in the days before 911. I dialed the operator. "This is an emergency. I need the fire dispatcher right away." I gave the dispatcher the address and description of the house. I even knew the station and company number. "Oh, there will be a different voice for the ring back. I'm going to try and evacuate." My dad had been one of the senior telephone installers for the fire department's brand new phone system. I knew that the dispatcher already had my phone number and would be calling back. I told mom, "When the fire department calls back, tell them that I have gone to the scene and that they should expedite the first alarm." I did remember to grab my coat.

The house was not directly across the street but two houses up the block. I was surprised that I did not see any flames or smoke. I saw the couple from up the street coming towards the house. The three of us went to the front door. The woman started knocking on the door, ringing the bell, and calling to the elderly couple that lived In the house. Some sound to my right attracted my attention.

I went around the house to the side porch and found two guys there. They were strangers to me. It looked as if they were trying to break in! The guy at the door said, "We've got to get them out!" I looked at the door. It was identical to the one that led to our own side porch. Wood frame with lots of small glass panes. I had forgotten my house keys on more than one occasion. So many times, in fact, that I had a stash of spare small glass panes, glazing points, and putty for just such instances. I knew how to get in. I pointed to the door. "Break that pane, there. The lock knob is just below the main door knob." It was at that point that I noticed that the panes on the door did not look clear. They were dark gray. All of the panes in all of the downstairs windows were dark gray. It looked as though they had, somehow, all been painted from the inside. I remember how odd it looked.

"Stand back.", the other guy said. The first guy punched his gloved left hand through the pane that I had indicated and pulled his hand right back out. Good thing, too because with a slight whoosh the four by six opening where the pane had been became a rectangular blowtorch. It went out in three seconds. The guy put his hand back in that hell hole, and unlocked the door. He opened it and disappeared inside. I remember the odd impression that smoke was sucked into the door opening as he went in.

I heard the fire truck come out of the station house. We were on west 68^th street around two hundred west and the fire station was on 63^rd street about 500 east. Sound travels well in the cold. I ran to the front of the house. The young neighbor couple was still at the front door. As I passed them I yelled, "The first truck is on its way. They should be here in less than a minute." She looked at me questioningly and said, "How do you know?" "I can hear the sirens now."

I headed for the street. "Thank God", I thought. There was no car parked in front of the house. I stood in the center of the street and waited for the truck. I wished that I had a flashlight but there was no time to go get one.

The driver saw me just after he rounded the corner from the west. I waved my arms over my head twice, turned to face the house, pointed with both hands, and ran three paces toward the house. The driver pulled in right where I thought that he would. I ran around to the right side of the truck and got there right as the engine leader was hitting the pavement. "Hey!", I yelled at him. "The near plug is across the street right there and the next is six down on the near side." "Thanks.", he said as he passed me. I went to sit down on a retaining wall. The pros were on the job.

The quint came in from the east a couple of minutes later. I knew that the fire investigators would want to interview all of the witnesses. Seeing as how I had been third on scene, I figured that I had better stick around. The quint carried five guys, all hoses and no ladders. It also carries the majority of the spare air tanks. The guys bailed out and went into the house. All but the driver. He unloaded four tanks from the back of the truck and just stood around waiting. I went over there to give him a light (hey this was the 70's. Lot's of people still smoked back then, even me.).

It did not seem too long until the first firefighter came out of the house. As he approached the quint, I became aware of this bell ringing. The closer he got the better I was able to determine the source of that sound. .Ring! Ring! Ring! Like some ancient crank phone that no one bothered to answer. It was coming from the fireman's back. The ringing went to dinging. Ding ,ding, ding, ding, ding. Four or five times a second. Dad was a telephone private branch exchange installer and, later, a design engineer. I was a CB nut, and a part time broadcast engineer. We lived by frequencies and intervals.

With each step the fireman took towards us the dinging got a bit slower. I was some air driven, pressure sensitive bell on the valve of the fireman's air tank. The quint driver got a milk carton out of the truck and dropped it on the pavement, open side down. The fireman sat on the carton as the driver unhooked the old tank and replaced it with a fresh one. With the new tank in place, the fireman got up and headed back into the house. The driver got a fist full of red tags out of a box and hung them via the attached wires to grab handle on the back of the truck. One of these tags he wired to the valve handle on the used tank. He laid the tank down on the grass strip between the street and the sidewalk. On the tag in big black capital letters was the word "EMPTY".

I watched this process a few more times. I began to notice a pattern. As the firefighters came out each man's bell was ringing a little less rapidly than the guy before him. Apparently the quint driver noticed the pattern as well. Without a word, he put on his coat and helmet, grabbed a mask and tank, and headed into the violently smoking house. I stood by the quint watching the freezing water come down the driveway, alone.

I was looking up at the trees at the front of the house. They had sprayed the trees and the roofs of the houses with the two inch lines. Icicles hung from everything. You could hear the sound that they made as they fell to the ground. Like breaking glass. Occasionally you could hear the sound of real glass and other things in the house being broken.

It was the sound that first caught my attention. I brought my gaze out of the trees. There was a firefighter walking toward me. Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! I caught my breath. "Two a second, single dings", I said to myself. I felt helpless. That turned to horror as the dinging stopped altogether while he was still several steps from the truck. He made it to the back of the truck and sat down hard on the milk carton. He ripped off the mask and gasped for air. After a couple of seconds he started to look around bewildered. It was the wee small hours of the morning and dawn was way too far off. Unless you were looking into the light you could not see very far. "Change me!", he yelled into the darkness. "For God's sake, somebody change me!" There was no one there to be "somebody". Just me.

I had seen the procedure done before my eyes just a minute ago. Valve off. Release the hose connection. Loosen the hasps on the retaining straps. Don't open the hasps. Leave that wire over the hasp end. Grab the valve at the tank bottom with you right hand and the tank top with your left. Shove that empty up through the straps. Wrap your left arm around the tank top and jerk it clear. Toss the empty into the back of the tuck, for now. Pick up a fresh tank and hoist it up on you left shoulder wrapping it with your left arm. Take aim and bend over. Feed the new tank down through the straps guiding with the right hand. Close the hasps. Use both hands so you get them both at the same time. Connect the hose. Valve on. When the hissing stops, give the guy two soft taps on the helmet.

"Thanks", he said as he got up and went back into that house.

I picked up the empty, tagged it, and laid it to rest next to the others. I don't know why, but I slipped an EMPTY tag between that one and the last tank that the driver had changed out. As the minutes stretched into hours I kept at it. When the row of fresh tanks was depleted, I climbed into that quint and got more out of the rack. Somewhere along here somebody brought me a paper cup of black coffee. Just holding it helped my numb fingers. In a slack moment, I looked east into the slightly brightening sky. Morning. This won't be so bad during the daylight, I thought. I noticed a car with flashing lights parked next to the fire plug six houses down the block. Behind me, from the direction of the house, I heard that sound again.

During this change-out I became aware of someone walking up the sidewalk with a flashlight. A man in a blue uniform. He was wearing a hat rather than a helmet. During that era, our police wore kaki green uniforms and the firefighters wore blue. As he came under the street light, I caught sight of the bars on his collar. I launched the firefighter seated in front of me on his way and called out to the newcomer.

"Hey cap! We're getting a might low on tanks here." I had only three left. "There should be six in the ladder truck.", he said. I looked at still dense plumes of smoke coming out of every window. "That won't last long." He looked at the house. "We are largely contained.", he said. He looked down at the row of empties and then back at the house. He shook his head. "Anybody down?", he asked. "No.", I replied. "But I did see a couple of guys stop by the ambulance for a whiff of oh-two on the way back in."

"OK", he said. "I'll have somebody bring the rest of the spares from the station." He started to walk towards the house. "Hey cap. Are you going to have somebody bring me the six from ladder or will you tell them that it's OK for me to go get them?"

He stopped dead in his tracks. He turned and walked right up to me. It was just becoming a little light. He shined his flashlight in my face and then used it to scan me up and down. That's when it hit him that I wasn't one. I was not just out of uniform. I wasn't. Then he asked me the question that I have been asked repeatedly over these last decades. "Who are you?" "I live across the street.", I answered. "What? Didn't I just see you change a tank?" That reminded me that I still needed to tag the last one. I started to do just that. "Yes sir.", I said. "Been doing just that all morning." "All morning? Just how many have you changed out yourself?" I put the last empty down next to all the rest and started counting. "Including that one, fourteen."

"Get the hell away from my trucks!", he yelled. He pointed at a nearby yard. "Just stand right there until I get back." Before he even got a step away he turned back to me. "What in the name of Heaven made you think that you could change out air tanks?" "There wasn't anybody else around, cap. These guys came out and were calling for air. I could see that they can't change there own. Gee, cap, what was I supposed to do? I couldn't leave them like that. These guys are out here bustin' onions. If I didn't step up and help how could I ever sleep nights, cap?" "Stop calling me cap!" He shined his light on a spot of grass. "You stand right there and don't you move!" "Yes sir."

I watched him storm up the street like he was on fire. A about a minute later two firefighters came from the other truck with a tank each. They put their two next to the three fresh ones. Both men looked down at the long line of empty tanks and counted. One guy looked up at me and said, "Fourteen?" "Looks like it." They shook their heads and headed back to the ladder truck. They came back with two more tanks. While they were going for the last pair, I heard that sound again.

A firefighter came from the house dinging all the way. I just stood there. The firefighter dropped down onto the milk carton, pulled off his mask, and looked at me. "Well?" "I've been ordered off.", I said. The two guys came trotting up from the other truck. That's not an easy thing to do with an air tank on your shoulder. While one of them changed out the air tank the other guy must have been telling the story to the seated firefighter. That firefighter looked stunned. He said to the other two, "But he's the one that changed me out three times today."

As it turned out, they did not press charges. That captain kept bringing people up near enough to see me but not close enough for me to hear. They would point to me and talk to the captain. I could tell that he was growing less angry and more frustrated. I recognized all of the people that the captain brought to look at me. The neighbors, the firefighters, and the two guys in black leather jackets that I had met on the side porch trying to break into a burning house. Oh, yes. Those two mystery men.

Turns out that they were two off duty police officer buddies who were coming home from a prolonged night of drinking. They had been driving on that freezing night with the windows down to improve their "sobriety". They smelled the smoke and had driven around for over fifteen minutes trying to find the burning house. They told me their end of the story later that morning. "Wait a minute.", I said. "How is it that two, off duty, tired, drunk cops have such a good nose for house fires?" They looked at each other and broke out laughing. Seems that before joining the police force, they were both three year veteran firefighters.

Good news and bad news. First, the bad news. The elderly couple finally was brought out of the house. But in those nasty black bags. In any fatal fire, the arson unit always investigates. The old couple must have realized what was going on. The investigation showed that they were trying to get dressed and had become overcome with smoke. They found her on the bed mostly dressed. She just had to put on the left sock and shoe. The found him on the bathroom at the top of the stairs. He did not have on a shirt but did have on everything else. Looks as though he was trying to get out and stopped in the bath room to get a wet towel. They found two wet towels near where he fell. He fell just inside the bathroom door, his body closing and blocking the door.

The good news is all the odd news.

Nobody but me and my mom ever saw flames come out of that house. The two cops said that one of the reasons that it took them so long to find the house was that they could not see flame or smoke. They said that they had even driven past the house at least once before they decided that it was the one. By smell alone. The only flame that any other witnesses saw was when the cop put his hand through the side porch door glass. Mom and I both recalled seeing flames from the basement to the roof on the front of that house. That sight is what made me go for the phone like that. That sight is what made my mom even look out the window in the first place. The arson investigator said flatly that that sight could never have existed. The flowers and shrubs on the front of the house were not even singed. The fire fighters stated that there was not even any soot above the windows and doors on the front of the house until after the front door was opened from the inside. That brings me to ….

"Damn nylon carpet kills more people." I think that it was the arson investigator who said that. The whole first floor had been covered with it. It had all burned. The furniture was all smoldering and smoking when the cop broke in. He said that he went in to the center of the house and started up the stairs. He said that he felt that is was "too hot" and that he felt that he should not continue up. He came back down the four steps that he had climbed and was coming back to the side door. As he reached the side door, he could see his buddy outside. He did not come out because he heard something. The sirens. He turned back into the house, crossed to the center of the house for the second time, unfastened the chain, unlocked the dead bolt, unlocked main latch, and opened the front door. He then, and no one knows why, returned to the side door of the house and came out that way. I remember that after telling the guys on the truck where the fire plugs were that I saw someone open the front door to the house from the inside. At the time, I thought that it was one of the people who lived there.

By all witness accounts, that cop was in the house almost a full minute. Not possible the investigator said. With the conditions in that house with fumes from the carpet and all, that cop should not have been able to have remained on his feet for a dozen heartbeats, let alone cross the distance of the twelve foot living room, not once but three times. "Not without breathing gear, no sir." What I had not seen was that there had been firefighters down. Two had gone in and while looking around for the fire had loosened their masks to talk to each other. Both were just about bowled right over by the acrid fumes. They came out immediately, went straight to the ambulance and sucked oh-two for about fifteen minutes before they could go back in. How was this drunk cop able to stand it for the time that he was in there?

The two cops had to take all morning to find their car. They remember parking it right in front of the house. There was no car there when I showed up. Further, no one that morning remembers moving their cars, yet people found their cars either in the driveway or several houses away with no account of how they got there.

The fire started as an electrical fire in the range in the kitchen and spread to the carpet. The fumes that built up were not only very toxic but were explosive. They think that the house was very near flashing when we arrived. If it had flashed it would have likely involved the houses to either side. Any delay could have made it much worse.

Most fires are reported by more than one person. They checked the logs and the audio tapes. My call, that phone call that I should have had no reason to make because the flames that I saw that caused me to grab for the phone could not have existed, was the only one.

I learned a lot of things that night. Most importantly I learned to have a deep respect for firefighters. Because it is the firefighters, police officers, and EMT's that put in on the line every day to drag our sorry behinds out of the jams that we get ourselves into.

I still have that respect for firefighters. And that goes for cops too, whether they used to be firefighters or not.