Page:History of West Hoboken NJ.djvu/75

 The same year an engine was purchased for Eagle Hose Co., and the company changed its name from "Hose" to "Engine" Company.

In those days the fire department had to relierely [sic] on wells and cisterns for its water supply, and upon reaching the scene of the fire the first thing done by the firemen would be to get their engine to work. To do this a well would have to be located, and many times the yard of the burning building would not boast of such a luxury as a well. In that case the nearest neighbor would suffer.

As the well could not be brought to the engine, the engine must be brought to the well. Now, wells as a rule are placed in the rear of the yard, and to get a ponderous hand engine near enough to the well to work it, a part of the fence would come down, and woe to the householder if his well was surrounded by a garden (which was generally the case.) When the well was pumped dry it was "dollars to doughnuts" that the garden would have vanished. If the fire was a bad one it would necessarily take a large amount of water to subdue it, and while the engines would be doing good work, the cry would go up that the well was dry, which would mean the moving of the engine to another well, and in nine cases out of ten when the engines could again be worked the fire would be beyond control.

Another drawback to that primitive mode of fire fighting was that the men were compelled to draw these heavy engines to a fire, and after reaching it, would have to set to work to man the pumps, and to let any other engine throw a better stream would mean disgrace to the company that was beaten. The present generation of firemen who do the work to-day know very little of the hardships gone through by their fathers in the old fire department.

In the majority of cases to-day, when the volunteers return from a fire, they do so to enter well-heated and up-to-date houses; but not so with the old times. Their fire houses generally consisted of an old barn or an unused shed; and still with all those draw-backs, nobody can say that the old timers did not do good work, and they seldom let a fire get such headway that it resulted very seriously.

The town in those days also had several large cisterns for the use of the firemen, one of which was situated on Ann street, near the gate of the public school, and another in the extreme lower end of the town. It is not recorded that these cisterns were of any material benefit to the department, because unless a fire happened near them they could not be used on account of