Friday, October 25, 2013

Flashback Friday - Black Smoke

This Hurley TravJerry Hurley at Indianapolis Fire Station #22 in 1969.els post flashes back over 40 years in Jerry’s life.  I haven’t had the chance to talk about his days with the Indianapolis Fire Department.  Those years are long before I was in his life, but he shares some of the experiences with me occasionally.  After our 14 years of history together,  I’m learning the lingo and I think I might even understand the lifestyle to some degree.  So, now that I have this unique opportunity, this is one episode I just have to include in this journey on Hurley Travels.
There’s a story that Jerry told me (Nancy) a while ago about a video of his crew at the 22s (Indianapolis fire station #22) that aired way back when on a local Indianapolis TV station.  He explained that the man from the TV station who was involved with creating this video was interested in the dynamics of firefighting and the men who chose to do that. (No women at that time.)  Jerry never knew  of anyone who had a copy of that video.  Or if there was a way that it coulJerry on top, with some of his fellow firemen.d be obtained from the archives of the TV station.  We talked about it a few times, but then life just went on. 
Well, lo and behold,  the other day this video appeared on the Facebook page of the Indianapolis Fire Department Museum. The young man singing is a new fireman at the time, a “sub.” His name is Bob "Footsie" Arthur.  He wrote the song that describes the smoke, the 22s crew and other aspects of “rolling on.”
If you are watching for Jerry, here are a couple of the places you’ll see him:  he steps into the smoke through a window at about 1:36 and another place he’s coming up the sidewalk onto a front porch at about 2:06 of the video.   As far as we can determine, this production was in 1972.  Just 41 years ago!
I want to thank the folks at the IFD Museum who are continually posting interesting documentation on the Facebook page.  Thanks to them, Jerry was able to find this piece of his past.
If you’d like to view the “Black Smoke” video, click here:
http://youtu.be/X7AhEL3OZTc

Thanks for visiting Hurley Travels.  Stay safe.


1 comment:

  1. This is totally awesome! It is a real treasure. Very cool Uncle Jerry.

    ReplyDelete

Hi: Thanks for your thoughts.