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Saratoga Stereopticon Fire story turned into career of a lifetimeBY WILLYS PECK
'When the big siren atop Saratoga Garage sets up its ear-splitting wail, it's the signal for much activity around this ordinarily placid town.
"A plumber sets down his tools and leaves whatever job he happens to be on, a grocer doffs his apron and runs from his store, a real estate agent shucks off his coat, excuses himself from his client and hurries out to join the others.
"Lumber yard clerk, painter, rancher, truck driver--all forget their particular calling for the time to become firemen."
These were the lead paragraphs of a feature story I wrote almost 50 years ago when I was getting my foot in the door at the San Jose Mercury Herald --now the Mercury News--as a stringer. Stringers were correspondents who wrote news items about people and events in their home towns and, at the end of the month, would paste the published work into a string. The pay in this case was 15 cents an inch. At that rate, my opus on the Saratoga Volunteer Fire Department netted me just under $4.50. Modesty should forbid, but I think that piece, which involved a fair amount of interviewing and research, was easily worth twice that amount.
I suppose the payoff, though, was the fact that, 10 days after the Aug. 21, 1949, publication of the article, I started working full time at the Mercury Herald. I have managed a few departures since, including retirement 10 years ago, but I still average one night a week there as a copy editor. Some habits are hard to break.
But, back to the Saratoga Fire Department. We're going to be hearing a lot from this outfit in the near future as they gear up for a bond election to finance construction of a new firehouse, and it's worthwhile to look back at some department history, which goes back more than a century. When I wrote that article, one of the interviewees was Pasquale "Pete" Albini, who joined the volunteer department in 1898. He told of how, a few months after joining, he had taken a hose up to the second floor of the burning Chinese laundry when the floor gave way beneath him. He was saved by having a good grip on the hose.
Those were the days when mobile equipment consisted of a man-pulled hose cart, useful within range of the four hydrants along Lumber Street, now Big Basin Way. Firefighting beyond those limits was a matter of organizing a bucket brigade on the spot.
Until the early 1920s, fire protection was an all-volunteer service. In 1924, the Saratoga Fire District was formed, still depending on volunteer manpower but conferring taxation power on the three elected commissioners. That was the year the district acquired its first motorized equipment, a Ford Model T truck that carried hose, chemical tanks and ladders. This was augmented in 1928 by a Ford Model A truck, which is still preserved and brought out for parades.
One of the critical elements in any fire-protection scheme is the matter of communication. How do you spread the alarm and bring out the volunteers? If you have a crew already in the firehouse, fine. But if they have to come from all over, some far- reaching means of notification is essential, and the louder the better. In the hose-cart days, the far-reaching means consisted of a bell hung in a 60-foot steel tower next to the town jail on Fourth Street. That bell has been preserved in an appropriate mounting outside Firemen's Hall on Oak Street.
When the district acquired its Model T fire truck, the really far-reaching means was a large siren on the roof of the Saratoga Garage, the building that is now the fire station. A blast from that siren could rattle tooth fillings within a hundred yards.
At the time of the 1949 article, the system had been refined to the point where a phoned-in alarm rang four telephones, one at the garage and the others in the homes of the chief, assistant chief and a fire commissioner. Of these, one always was available by prearrangement. Whoever got the alarm could also activate the siren, and the first fireman reporting to the garage called in to get the location, wrote the information on a blackboard that was then placed in the window, and started off in one of the trucks, others following in their cars.
It's a whole different ball game now, with overtones of high-tech. These ramifications will be discussed in a future column.
Early photographic equipment, for both still and motion pictures, will be shown at the Monday, March 15, meeting of the Saratoga Historical Foundation at 7:30 p.m. in the Saratoga Community Library Program chairman Willys Peck, assisted by David Welch, will show and describe glass-plate cameras, an early Kodak Brownie and other vintage box and folding cameras. Movie equipment, both 16 millimeter and 35 millimeter will be shown.
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Saratoga, California Since 1975
