#637 - FDNY Firefighter

Tony Bonfiglio is a retired FDNY firefighter who spent more than 20 years serving the communities of Washington Heights and Queens. Tony joins Theo to share about his first days on Ladder 34, his experiences on 9/11 and why the brotherhood of the firehouse is second to none. Tony Bonfiglio: https://www.instagram.com/tonybonfiglio34/ Tony’s book “Tales from the Tiller”: https://www.amazon.com/Tales-Tiller-STORIES-HEARTBREAK-LUCKIEST/dp/B0FP7XYTXW Tunnel to Towers Foundation: https://t2t.org ------------------------------------------------ Tour Dates! https://theovon.com/tour New Merch: https://www.theovonstore.com ------------------------------------------------- Sponsored By: Celsius: Go to the Celsius Amazon store to check out all of their flavors. #CELSIUSBrandPartner #CELSIUSLiveFit https://amzn.to/3HbAtPJ Prize Picks: Go to https://link.prizepicks.com/LME0/THEO and use code THEO to get $50 in lineups when you play your first $5 lineup! Play Responsibly. Better Help: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Go to http://betterhelp.com/theo for 10% off your first month. Blue Chew: Visit https://BlueChew.com for 10% off your first month of BlueChew Gold with code THEO. ------------------------------------------------- Music: “Shine” by Bishop Gunn Bishop Gunn - Shine ------------------------------------------------ Submit your funny videos, TikToks, questions and topics you'd like to hear on the podcast to: [email protected] Hit the Hotline: 985-664-9503 Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: https://www.theovon.com/fan-upload Send mail to: This Past Weekend 1906 Glen Echo Rd PO Box #159359 Nashville, TN 37215 ------------------------------------------------ Find Theo: Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheoVonClips Shorts Channel: https://bit.ly/3ClUj8z ------------------------------------------------ Producer: Zach https://www.instagram.com/zachdpowers Producer: Trevyn https://www.instagram.com/trevyn.s/ Producer: Nick https://www.instagram.com/realnickdavis/ Producer: Andrew https://www.instagram.com/bleachmediaofficial/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Theo Von?

  You ever realize that you spent your entire morning thinking about lunch? It's 9 a.m. and somehow I'm already in negotiations with myself about how I'm gonna spend $20 on a sandwich at noon. And then I eat it, or you eat it, or somebody eats it, and then an hour later, you're just standing in the kitchen worrying about what you'll do for dinner. And that's one reason why I've been into Huell. The Black Edition Powder is a complete meal you have instead of food, not a shake on top of food. Their powder starts at less than $3 per meal, has 40 grams of protein, and mixes with water or milk in about 30 seconds. I like Huell's shakes because they're clean and it's quick.

• 0:41Theo Von?

  I just want to make sure I have everything I need to keep going the way I want to keep going in a healthy manner. So with Huell, basically, lunch went from a daily logistical problem to a thing I can solve in about 30 seconds. Make healthy eating simple. New customers get an exclusive offer of 15% off online with my code WEEKEND at huell.com/weekend. That's H-U-E-L dot com slash weekend. Thank you to Huell for partnering and supporting our show. We've got new merch. The Year of the Rat hoodies just hit the site. We have them in two colors and they're made from my favorite hoodie template. We also have the winter sale that's happening right now.

• 1:24Theo Von?

  20% off some of your favorites. You can get them before they're gone at theovonstore.com if you get a chance to go there. And if not, that is totally great as well. Thank you guys so much for the support. Today's guest is a retired firefighter and a veteran of the FDNY here in New York City, which is where we filmed. He spent 20 years serving with the fire department in the communities of Washington Heights and Queens and bravely served alongside many others during 9/11. I'm very grateful for his time and his service. He is what I would call a legend. Today's guest is Mr. Tony Bonfiglio.

• 2:23Theo Von?

  Is it too hot in here for you, Tony?

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Nah, I feel comfortable.

• 2:25Theo Von?

  Okay. Yeah, what kind of temperature do you guys operate at?

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Uh, well, sometimes it's so hot, you know, in the summer when we're out there in like 90 degree weather and you're putting a fire out. It's hot. You lose so much body water.

• 2:39Theo Von?

  Yeah?

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like when you take off your turnout coat and your gear, it's like you fell in a pool.

• 2:44Theo Von?

  Have you ever started a fire where you had to pee and then by the end you didn't?

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:48Theo Von?

  That's what I'm talking about.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  And then sometimes you're so thirsty. I mean, there were times I was so thirsty from pulling ceilings and the plaster dust that I actually would, I look up and would take water coming off the drainpipe, just right into my mouth because I can breathe. Yeah, it gets crummy, it gets pretty crummy in there.

• 3:07Theo Von?

  Oh, I bet.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's shitty.

• 3:09Theo Von?

  20 years, you were Tony Bonfiglio?

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Yup.

• 3:12Theo Von?

  And that's Italian?

• 3:13Speaker 01

  That's Italian, man. My whole family's from East Harlem. You know, we're Italian.

• 3:17Theo Von?

  Yeah, it's fun, huh?

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Grew up in New Hyde Park. My father moved us out of the Bronx and when I was about six.

• 3:24Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  And we moved to New Hyde Park. That's like a town on the Queens borderline, on the suburb side.

• 3:29Theo Von?

  Bring it up, New Hyde Park?

• 3:31Speaker 01

  New Hyde Park.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Went to Hericks High School.

• 3:34Theo Von?

  What was it like back then?

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Oh, it was great. It was like all blue collar workers, you know, all the blue collar workers' kids, you know, we had bus drivers, cops, firemen, truck drivers.

• 3:45Theo Von?

  So it's a nice suburb over there, huh?

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Oh, it was great. Right over the city line. Uh, I mean, I had such a great childhood. We were, we had so much fun running around, you know, doing all kinds of crazy shit back then. Hot rods, motorcycles.

• 4:00Theo Von?

  Mischief, huh?

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, mischief, rock and roll, rock clubs, oh, and Long Island rock clubs.

• 4:06Theo Von?

  Listening to some Def Leppard, some ACDC?

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, back then it was Twisted Sister and, you know, we used to go to the clubs and see Twisted Sister, OBI. There was a bunch of good bands back then, house bands, but they would play all the cover songs. You had like Doors, you had Zeppelin.

• 4:22Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was awesome.

• 4:24Theo Von?

  Yeah, that's a beautiful time, dude. I think that's a kind of a time that a lot of people romanticize as well, you know?

• 4:28Speaker 01

  I think so. I always say that when I die, I hope the heavens like the seventies, man, because that was so awesome. Kicked ass.

• 4:36Theo Von?

  And you, and you were on the FDNY for 20 years?

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, 21.

• 4:39Theo Von?

  21 years?

• 4:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:40Theo Von?

  How did you get started? Like, what were you doing before you got into firefighting? Cause things are going well. You're listening to Twisted Sister?

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, hanging out with the boys, getting in trouble. Uh, I did get arrested. I was at Speaks Club once in Lido Beach. And I did get arrested there for, uh, had some weed and a couple of other things on us. Yeah, we were young. We were... So, yeah, we just, and I was going nowhere. I, I went to college for like, uh, maybe three weeks.

• 5:11Theo Von?

  Oh yeah, that's not enough.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  Farmingdale University. I went for food technology. I was gonna be a meat inspector.

• 5:17Theo Von?

  Oh, really?

• 5:18Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Thank God that didn't happen.

• 5:20Theo Von?

  Yeah, hell yeah, dude.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Well, I was working in a meat factory when I was a kid, scraping hangar room floors like Paulie and Rocky, you know? I had the white coat on, I'm freezing, scraping the blood and the fat off these floors all day.

• 5:33Theo Von?

  And what was that like over there? So what kind of meats did they even have going in and out of there?

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Just big sides of beef, big factory, like hanging rooms, big hanging rooms.

• 5:41Theo Von?

  And would you be alone in there?

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Nah, there'd be other people, butchers coming in, grabbing their meat. It was like a big production place, you know, big time. Lots of trucks. They would give all the meat out to all the restaurants and everything. And that was right in Mineola.

• 5:56Theo Von?

  Oh, that's pretty cool. And Mineola, is that here in New York?

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, Mineola's pretty much right by New High Park.

• 6:01Theo Von?

  Got it. So you're over there, you're in there with the meats, you know? You're in there at night just-

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Like Rocky hitting the meat?

• 6:07Theo Von?

  Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure when nobody's looking.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Cause that was right around the time, you know, so.

• 6:11Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, there we go. That's what it looked like.

• 6:15Theo Von?

  Oh, definitely. Everything turned to veal after this came out. No, that was just, bro, you couldn't, you couldn't get something that wasn't tenderized.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Oh, it was funny because we were all kids too and you would, you know, all this meat after the place closed would be, but we never took an ounce of meat, you know, back then.

• 6:31Theo Von?

  You got all this beautiful meat.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  There would be like big tubs of filet mignons, all kinds of.

• 6:36Theo Von?

  You guys are just in there beating it. Yeah.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  And then I had a.

• 6:40Theo Von?

  And so what happens? Yeah. You're in there, you're beating, you guys are punching the meat or whatever. And, uh, was that a common, was that kind of a common future in your area?

• 6:48Speaker 01

  No, it was not at all. I just got a job there. My friends were all working there. The whole crew was working.

• 6:53Theo Von?

  Oh, that's fun.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  And we were the cleanup crew. So once the butchers were all done, we would come in with these high pressure hoses and we would just hose this whole place down.

• 7:00Theo Von?

  Y'all were just partying probably.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then we'd oil it up with vegetable oil. It was a funny job. Yeah.

• 7:07Theo Von?

  But what was that, what was the vegetable oil for?

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Just make everything shiny and clean because we had on, online, the inspectors were there. There was two inspectors every day. And they would inspect everything.

• 7:17Theo Von?

  Oh, so it was pretty.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  And if they didn't get their payola, then they would knock a machine down and then they'd have to rope the whole thing off. And we would have to come in and clean the machine and then they'd inspect it again.

• 7:28Theo Von?

  So it was a little bit of kind of a meat, was there kind of a meat mafia kind of going on a little bit or something?

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Mafia, yeah.

• 7:32Theo Von?

  Was it really?

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:33Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  It was owned by two Jewish brothers, the Coens.

• 7:35Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:36Theo Von?

  So you know something.

• 7:39Theo Von?

  Something was afoot, you know? And so what makes you get out of there? Were your friends kind of graduating? Cause I ended up working and dude, me and like five of my buddies worked over there at, uh, whoa, I think it was called Save a Center or something. It was a grocery or Winn-Dixie, maybe it was called. Dude, one of my buddies would come, clock in, go home. And then he would wake up to, he'd come clock out, dude. He worked there for like, yeah, he worked there for almost 11 months.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 8:05Theo Von?

  Dude, and the rest of us were afraid to do that. So we'd actually be in there working. But we would during like, uh, but it was so much fun as having your friend, bro.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 8:14Theo Von?

  There was nothing better, I think, than that time if you were either like late years of high school or right out of high school and you got to work with like your buddies who hadn't gone all like, nobody kind of figured it out yet.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:26Theo Von?

  You got to work with your friends.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  That's what it was.

• 8:28Theo Von?

  Oh.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Saturday morning, we'd all be banged up, you know, from being out drinking all night. We'd just be getting home.

• 8:33Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  And we had to go in Saturday morning to, to clean, to oil the whole place.

• 8:37Theo Von?

  Oh.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  So those were fun trips.

• 8:39Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  We'd had oil fights. We'd get soaked in oil.

• 8:42Theo Von?

  Oh, God. I think we might, we might pick up a, a new listenership here in this episode.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  We would have some good oil fights.

• 8:49Theo Von?

  Really?

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Because you'd have these big squirt bottles and then we'd have these 55 gallon drums of oil.

• 8:54Theo Von?

  What?

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:56Theo Von?

  And was seed oil?

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was vegetable oil.

• 8:58Theo Von?

  Oh, Lord.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  We would even do the trucks in the vegetable oil. It looks like they got waxed.

• 9:02Theo Von?

  What?

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were all shiny.

• 9:05Theo Von?

  And what vegetables was it coming out of?

• 9:07Speaker 01

  I have no idea.

• 9:08Theo Von?

  Look up vegetable, what, I never even thought about that. What could even have that much oil? Maybe an eggplant?

• 9:15Theo Von?

  What is vegetable made of?

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Vegetables.

• 9:18Theo Von?

  You, you'd think, but what?

• 9:20Speaker 01

  They squish them.

• 9:22Theo Von?

  Vegetable is made from the oils extracted from various plant parts like seeds, fruits, nuts and grains, most commonly soybeans, corn, canola, sunflower and palm. Cause that's kind of the oil that everybody's kind of against nowadays, you know? But I guess you guys were just using it to keep stuff shiny.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Shiny.

• 9:36Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:37Theo Von?

  I didn't even know people use it like that.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, we had these black trucks and they would look all waxed after we were done oiling them all down.

• 9:43Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  And it stunk too, you know, because it was, it was such a big place and there'd be a lot of like the bones and the fat and you'd had to go in the pit sometimes. It was like you would puke. It was so bad smelling.

• 9:56Theo Von?

  What was the pit? It was kind of like below the floor?

• 9:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's where all the water would drain into there.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  And every now and then our boss would have to go in there. I'd see him reaching in. He'd have like fat on his glasses and shit. It was, oh, it was gross.

• 10:11Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah, dude.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I didn't want to stay there.

• 10:14Theo Von?

  God, yeah.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  It was cold.

• 10:16Theo Von?

  It was cold in there too?

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Oh, and there was freezers there and the guys that worked in the freezers. You never saw them. They looked like they were from the Antarctic. They had these hoods and these parkers and they were big boots. And you'd see them now and then. They were kind of scary, you know, you were a kid. You're like, there's the freezer, man. They never came out of the freezer.

• 10:34Theo Von?

  Yeah, dude. Oh, that's fucking wild, yeah. Be living in it, just hiding from your wife and kids probably in there.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 10:41Theo Von?

  That's when family life's bad, when you're like, I don't care how cold it is, I'll stay in there.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's bad. That's the last job you want, working in a freezer.

• 10:48Theo Von?

  Yeah?

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Oh, I think so.

• 10:50Theo Von?

  That was end of the line. And what kind of guys would do it? Was it tough guys? Was it Russians?

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Tough fucking guys, butchers, psychos. They got their own toolbox of knives. You know, big. A couple of times they would pick you up by your shirt, you know? Because we were just the kids, you know, running around.

• 11:08Theo Von?

  And you'll never get arrested for crimes or anything like that? Like, you think, were any of them low-key like Dexters or like kind of that kind of guy?

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. They were low-key, but strange, some of them.

• 11:16Theo Von?

  Yeah, that, dang, that's wild.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  And then you had the women, they were the packers.

• 11:20Theo Von?

  Oh, they were?

• 11:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, they would like pack the chickens and all that and then wrap it and everything, yeah.

• 11:25Theo Von?

  Women do better gift wrapping.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  And they had like tough women too. They were working. It was like the boss of the women was a real tough broad.

• 11:31Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:32Theo Von?

  Some girl would have tattooed a Richard Dano on her.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Smoking, everybody'd be out smoking, yeah, your smoke breaks. And then the guy would come with the, uh, the roach coach and call you out for your coffee and shit.

• 11:42Theo Von?

  He would?

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, the coffee roach, you know, they were, ah, the roach coaches here, everybody would come. You know what a roach coach is?

• 11:48Theo Von?

  Uh-uh.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  It's a coffee truck. Back in the day, they would come to like factories.

• 11:52Theo Von?

  Oh, so it just pulls up and you gotta get your snack?

• 11:54Speaker 01

  And they would be like, alright, the coke guy's here and everybody would be out of break, get their coffee, their lousy donor, whatever he had.

• 11:59Theo Von?

  Little bit of a break, yeah, I like that, man.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:02Theo Von?

  Dude, we used to, when I was a kindergartner, they had, uh, or I don't know what grade I was in, I wasn't even in a grade, but I'm, but they, they, it was nap time or whatever at kindergarten. But they would, uh, I wouldn't sleep, right? I would keep my eyes open because they had this, uh, they'd bring in this other lady to watch us.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:19Theo Von?

  And I was like, kinda curious about her, so I would just kinda lay over there.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  You were eyeballing her.

• 12:24Theo Von?

  Yeah, I was kind of eyeballing her, I guess, you know, because me and my mother were always on the outs, I was shopping around.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 12:29Theo Von?

  So, I, uh, I remember, like, at a certain point, she'd come over and kinda kick me a little bit and she'd let me go outside and watch her smoke.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Ah, that's funny.

• 12:39Theo Von?

  Oh, that was nice, dude. And she had pretty nice hair, she looked a little bit like a man.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:44Theo Von?

  But she was definitely, she probably-

• 12:45Speaker 01

  What year was that?

• 12:47Theo Von?

  Uh, this was probably eighty-four.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Early eighties, early eighties.

• 12:50Theo Von?

  God.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:51Theo Von?

  She looked like a fucking man. But, she's, she's like only the third woman I'd ever seen, you know, so at that point, she was really good looking.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  You don't know, yeah.

• 12:59Theo Von?

  Yeah, she's beautiful to me. You know, she was dying, you know, she was just stunning, dude. But yeah, she'd let me go out there and watch her smoke and she'd complain about stuff.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Oh, that's funny.

• 13:09Theo Von?

  God, that was nice, man. Just getting a little break, you know? So that was like, it felt like it was my break from kindergarten, like, oh, we're on break.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Oh, I remember kindergarten well.

• 13:17Theo Von?

  Really?

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, nap time, that was the best. Snack and nap. And then out to the sandbox and dig a hole to China.

• 13:24Theo Von?

  Yeah. Dig a hole down to a fucking butcher shop.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, they would always put like a cone in the sand, they'd be like, oh, you're almost in China, you know, be like, yeah, let's keep digging.

• 13:33Theo Von?

  Yeah, yeah, dude, and then some kid would get sand in his eyes and he would look like he was Chinese.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:39Theo Von?

  Yeah, that's what I got, good, dude. Um, so yeah, so take me out, how do you get out of the meat area into the, into the fire? Like, take me out of the freezer into the fire, man.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Well, I, I went, I went, after that, I went to a plastic mold injection factory job.

• 13:56Theo Von?

  Did you?

• 13:57Speaker 01

  Unemployment sent me to-

• 13:58Theo Von?

  Oh, they did? Were they, they were making body parts or like?

• 14:01Speaker 01

  No, no, we were making- And there was a game called Othello back then. It was like a black and white.

• 14:05Theo Von?

  Yeah, I remember that game.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  And we were making the chips and we made the colored beads. So it was all like these plastic mold injectors.

• 14:12Theo Von?

  The colored beads for like a Mardi Gras or something?

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, my idea. Well, people just buy them for their crafts and stuff like that. All they're like a hundred different colors.

• 14:20Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  And I could never remember the color after I boxed boxed it up. I get ready to send it. I'd be like, oh, hamster, uh, brown, green, or I'd put something down and then the guy would come back. You can't be, you can't be yelling at me. You can't send these out. And I'm laughing. He's like, what are you laughing about? I mean, I'm making three dollars an hour.

• 14:40Theo Von?

  Dude, I remember one time I ate a bunch of mushrooms or whatever after school. And I worked at this mail center, right? My job was to mail out these insurance forms to these different companies around the country. While I'm in the mail room, dude, I'm not doing real good.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  Oh, I could imagine.

• 14:56Theo Von?

  Yeah, well, my body had gotten really hot, so I took all my clothes off. And, uh, I mailed my, put all my clothes into a box, mailed, mailed, mailed them to some place.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 15:07Theo Von?

  Dude, my first girlfriend, her mom got me that job. Her, her dad, uh, shout out Mr. Earl. He was a fire chief, actually.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 15:15Theo Von?

  Yep. And, uh, but anyway, I got laid off. Um, and yeah, the mother had to come. Thank God it was a day. It was raining because she let me borrow a raincoat. She had so I could go get in my car.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, wow.

• 15:26Theo Von?

  So anyway, we made some tough choices over the years. But, uh, but I did have a, have a good time. They were state, they, they had a firehouse down there on Chappahtulus in New Orleans. And it would be great because the Mardi Gras parades were down there. So we'd go down there and the firehouse would be open on days like that and all the.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  Must have been an old firehouse too.

• 15:43Theo Von?

  It was beautiful. Yeah. I think Bring It Right Up, it's right down there off of Chappahtulus over there. And, um, that was it right there to, uh.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Oh, I see it. Yeah, it looks like they made it into something.

• 15:52Theo Von?

  Yeah, they made it into something.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 15:54Theo Von?

  But yeah, anyway, it was a great time, man. It was a great time. We'd go over there. Everybody's cooking hot dogs.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:59Theo Von?

  And just, you know, just having a great time, you know, that was a beautiful time.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Oh, the Cajun.

• 16:03Theo Von?

  Yeah, we had so much fun, man.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  I'll bet.

• 16:05Theo Von?

  So how do you get into there, man? How do you get out? So you're, you're, you're over there making jewelry and stuff?

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Well, the funny part is they sent me to this. Place called Stonewell Plastics in Mineola. And I go in and I got this little Mexican guy, he's doing the interview with me. He's got, he's like middle aged little guy, he's got a little pencil mustache, you know? So I'm sitting there, I'm eighteen, you know, and he goes, so what's your name? And I said, Tony Bonfiglio, he writes it down. He says, and how old are you, Tony? I said, I'm eighteen, writes it down. He goes, and Tony, were you born here? And I said, no, I was born in New Jersey. He starts laughing, oh, oh, you'll do, you'll do.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  And when I went back there, I realized I was the only American in the place. Everybody else was foreign.

• 16:51Theo Von?

  Oh damn. So you're in there learning Spanish, huh?

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, Spanish.

• 16:56Theo Von?

  What languages were they, yeah, who was that?

• 16:58Speaker 01

  It was mostly Spanish.

• 16:59Theo Von?

  Yeah?

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was some black people, but even them, I didn't understand because some of them from Brooklyn. I had one friend, he would drive me home, I would say, yeah, I'd shake his head, he'd shake his head. We didn't know what the hell he was saying.

• 17:11Theo Von?

  Dude, I still can't understand.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  Right, he'd be like, hey, man, so I just do my damn part, so I'm there, I'll be like, yeah, yeah.

• 17:18Theo Von?

  Yeah, dude, I mean, look, bro.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  I don't know what he said.

• 17:20Theo Von?

  It's forty years later, something's never changed, and maybe it's for the best, you know?

• 17:23Speaker 01

  Could be, yeah.

• 17:24Theo Von?

  Um, so you, so you're in here, are you just like dissing for me? Or how do the winds, how do the winds blow you over to the fire world?

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Well, then I went, my father got me into the printing union, the Amalgamated Lithographers of America Local One.

• 17:38Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  And I did that for about four years, but I took the fire department test when I was eighteen. I was nineteen, like seventy-eight.

• 17:46Theo Von?

  And was that part of school you had to take it?

• 17:47Speaker 01

  No, my neighbor came over and he came in our back door with an application, Johnny La Lima. Thank God Johnny saved my life, gives me the application. He says, you'll never get rich on this job, but it'll put a roof over your head and food on your table. So I'm sitting at my kitchen table, I'm like, okay, Johnny, thanks, you know? I had no idea it was gonna be the biggest career move of my life.

• 18:09Theo Von?

  Dude, what, yeah, what made him even come over there and do that, I wonder?

• 18:11Speaker 01

  I guess he knew I was going nowhere because he was my neighbor and they saw us all hanging out all the time, you know?

• 18:16Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  I figured this kid'd be a fireman, it'd be all right, you know?

• 18:20Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  So thank God, I mean, he saved me because, yeah, I was going, the, the printing union was going south, you know? Computers were coming in.

• 18:27Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  And, you know, they weren't printing anymore on these big printing presses, so. So I got that and then about a year later, I took a physical test after the written test. The written test we took in a high school somewhere in Queens.

• 18:42Theo Von?

  And was there a lot of people taking those tests at the time?

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Forty thousand.

• 18:46Theo Von?

  Forty thousand people wanted to be firemen?

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:48Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:50Theo Von?

  Cause the, the job, I think in, in a lot of ways, it's a very family, like it's a, like, it's a lineage job. It's like a lot of families do it.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 18:58Theo Von?

  And there's a lot of esteem with it, you know? Especially at that time, what was it like? Like, was it a very revered position? Did you even think you could get it?

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Get the job?

• 19:07Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I, you know, cause I was nineteen, I was in great shape and the physical test is really where they separate everybody. The written test was a joke. I mean, it was like a third grade questions, you know?

• 19:19Theo Von?

  Yeah? Remember any of them or no?

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Uh, well, I, you know, I saw the, the sanitation guy, he was saying about the dirt and the shovel. That's exactly what it was like. What would you use? A garbage truck, a plow or a shovel and brew? It'd be ridiculous. If you got your name right, you know, that was it. So I got a ninety-eight on the written test. Probably the highest I ever got in any test in my life.

• 19:39Theo Von?

  But what was the physical part like? Like, take me through that.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  My father took me to East New York to an armory in this real shit neighborhood. And he parked, we parked his Buick Regal. It was like the nicest car my dad ever had. And I bought him these spoke rims for it, for his birthday.

• 19:55Theo Von?

  Oh, those are nice.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  So we get there and he says, here, you take the keys. I'm running for the subway and you take the car home. I'm like, yeah, you sure dad? You wanna, yeah, don't worry about it. I mean, he's an East Harlem guy, so I wasn't too worried about him. So he took off. I go in this armory. It's like, when you get in there, it's the size of a football field. And there's a hundred guys that day that are gonna take the test. And they break you up into like ten, ten men groups and you go around all these different stations. And you take different, uh, different tests. You had to run. One was a mile. Uh, one was an eight foot wall. You had to jump over the eight foot wall. That was like the separator. Like if you didn't get over the eight foot wall, you went to the police department. Sorry, guys.

• 20:39Theo Von?

  Hey.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  That's what separated them.

• 20:41Theo Von?

  That's what, hey, that's what it is, man. Sometimes you gotta separate the beef from the pork, you know?

• 20:46Speaker 01

  Well, the funny part is I got a zero on one of them. And if you get a zero on one of those stations, you're done. You're not gonna get, you're not gonna get hired.

• 20:55Theo Von?

  Yeah, for sure. Which one was you?

• 20:56Speaker 01

  I had this thing called a ledge walk. You had to put on a turnout coat, a helmet. You had to put boots on. You had to put a mask on. And you went up on a balance beam next to a wall. And you had to slide along the wall like you were shimmying along a ledge. It was called a ledge walk.

• 21:12Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  I'm shimmying along this thing. I'm like, why the fuck would I be on a ledge? I mean, is this job that crazy? What am I, Batman? You know, I'm gonna be out on the ledge. I went all the way down. I touched the line. I came all the way back. And the woman scoring me says, you didn't touch the line down there.

• 21:28Theo Von?

  Uh-uh. What?

• 21:30Speaker 01

  I raced all the way back, touched the line. I come back, she says, you ran out of time. I got a zero. I was like, ah, that's it. Everything was down the drain, so.

• 21:40Theo Von?

  Come on, you think she just didn't do it correctly?

• 21:42Speaker 01

  I think, yeah, I do. I don't, I think she was there to knock some of the white guys out because there was too many white guys on the job, which they were complaining about. They wanted women, they wanted minorities. I think they were told, if I stepped on the line, she wasn't even anywhere near the line.

• 21:57Theo Von?

  No.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  But, you know, it's like, everything happens for a reason, you know? I mean.

• 22:02Theo Von?

  Right, and so you, you, you get the zero.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Pissed.

• 22:06Theo Von?

  And so, but, and there's 10 stations, you, you do fine on the rest of them. You get out of there. And are you then waiting for your grade? Like, do you even like?

• 22:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, so now, now after you get all that done, everybody says their half-assed goodbyes. You know, I, I went back out. Thank God my father's regal was still there.

• 22:20Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  Found a, found, I, I got in the regal. I found I had a joint in my, my workout bag. I lit that sucker up.

• 22:28Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  And now I'm driving home. We had no directions back then, so I'm looking for signs for the LIE. And boom, I get home, my dad was there. How'd you do? I said, I think I did all right. So now it's the girls have a lawsuit because forty girls took the test, the first forty girls ever.

• 22:45Theo Von?

  Mm hmm.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  And they didn't pass with forty thousand applicants, you know.

• 22:49Theo Von?

  None of them passed?

• 22:50Speaker 01

  None of them passed.

• 22:51Theo Von?

  Were some of the women in there on that day, you were there with that one hundred people?

• 22:54Speaker 01

  No, I didn't see any women.

• 22:55Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  That that day. But we had a couple in my battalion when I got there, but so anyway, they had a lawsuit and this lawsuit went on for six years. So from that time I took the test, I didn't get a notice that I was hired for six years.

• 23:10Theo Von?

  Because it was?

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Because of the women, because the lawsuit took so long, they usually hire about twenty five hundred people off the list. Now they had to go deep into the list and because of that zero, I was like forty three hundred on the list.

• 23:22Theo Von?

  Oh, sorry.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  So the women saved me.

• 23:24Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  Thank you, thank you, girls. I appreciate it.

• 23:27Theo Von?

  Yeah, because rarely does a complaining woman save you.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  Oh, she saved, they saved me that day.

• 23:32Theo Von?

  Brenda Berkman, right there.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Brenda Berkman, everybody knows Brenda.

• 23:35Theo Von?

  Pioneering female firefighter, she was the sole named class plaintiff.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, she was a lawyer.

• 23:39Theo Von?

  In the federal sex discrimination lawsuit that opened the fire departments in New York to women firefighters. After she won the lawsuit in eighty two, she and forty other women became FDNY firefighters. Was that a, was that a time where like, were people like supportive of the women, were they against the women? What did that feel like? Did it feel like they were?

• 23:58Speaker 01

  Totally against the women.

• 23:59Theo Von?

  They were.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  Oh, it was an all male place, you know?

• 24:03Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  And, you know, I guess a lot of guys, they don't feel like they didn't mind the women that really passed the test. But to just get on because you're a woman, that was not, you know, today, now they have girls, you know, there's so much into athletics and stuff, they could pass these tests now, but back then, you know, it wasn't like that.

• 24:21Theo Von?

  So some of it, they were just kind of stacking the deck, like we're just gonna put some extra girls in, because some of that's just a liability.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  That's it, they went, well, yeah, life and death, you know?

• 24:29Theo Von?

  And a liability for their own life.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  That too, yeah, but I mean, if your kid is trapped in a fire, you know, you want the best person going to get that kid, not, you know, somebody that didn't make it.

• 24:38Theo Von?

  Yeah, for sure, a hundred percent. I agree with that.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  But they saved me and I'm the luckiest guy for that.

• 24:43Theo Von?

  So you're in, huh?

• 24:44Speaker 01

  I'm in.

• 24:45Theo Von?

  You made it in?

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:46Theo Von?

  And do you remember like, like when you, do you get a letter that's like, yeah, I'm in, you got it? And does it have flames on the?

• 24:52Speaker 01

  My wife, my wife came, I come pulling up in the parking lot from the, working at Mastercraft Litho. And I had a little Chevette. We both shared this little Chevette car that my wife bought on her own when we were kids. And I see her coming across the parking lot with a wave in the. I said, what is it? She goes, the fire department watch, six years. Fire department watcher, they're gonna hire you. I said, holy shit. I looked at it. Yeah, Tony Bonfiglio, New York City fireman. Report to Randall's Island, eight twenty-three, something eighty-four. I was like, I'll be there.

• 25:25Theo Von?

  That's pretty cool, huh?

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, my God. I was so happy.

• 25:28Theo Von?

  Oh, well, she was happy.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  She was happy. I was happy.

• 25:32Theo Von?

  Where did you and where did you where did you meet your wife Christine? I I met her. I know she's here with us today. Where did you meet your wife at?

• 25:38Speaker 01

  Well, I on my block, I was walking up my block in our neighborhood and she her and her sister just moved in from the Bronx. They they were in the Marble Hill Projects. They were like the last ones out of these projects. And so I'm going up the block. I'm like fourteen years old.

• 25:54Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  And they she they're coming down with one of my friends and he's like, hey, these two girls just moved in from the Bronx, you know, Chris and Bernie. And I'm like, hey, hey, first of all, I was like, thought he was pulling my leg, but. So that was like why we met. And then, you know, we went through school. We didn't really date until we were like eighteen.

• 26:09Theo Von?

  Mm hmm. Hey, there you go.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  That's a great shot. Yeah. Yeah, I was like size thirty-two waist back then.

• 26:18Theo Von?

  Hey, uh, look, I'm looking at Christine, okay?

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, she looking good.

• 26:22Theo Von?

  Yeah, yeah. You can say what I'm not looking at your waist, buddy.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were. We were, you know, we were like twenty-four years old there. I I was just getting out of the academy. That's graduation day. I graduated from there after six weeks of training.

• 26:35Theo Von?

  Oh, that's nice, huh?

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:37Theo Von?

  Yeah, dude, you got you look pretty pleased.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  So the funny part is they give us our your assignment, you know, so I get this thing thirty-four truck. Now, like a hundred and fifty firemen, only ten are gonna go to trucks. The other hundred and forty are gonna go to engine companies. There's an engine company. They're the water. They got the hoses.

• 26:54Theo Von?

  Mm hmm.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  And then there's the truck. That's the ladders and the, you know, they they they break down the doors.

• 26:59Theo Von?

  The ledge walkers.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  The ledge walkers. So I didn't want to go to a truck. I was like real. I didn't like the heights. I didn't like the ropes.

• 27:07Theo Von?

  Yeah, that's what I'm sure. Look, I got a zero.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  On the ledge walk.

• 27:11Theo Von?

  Yeah, you got the wrong guy. So, uh, so and why did they choose you for that then?

• 27:16Speaker 01

  I have no idea. My father said they saw how good I was at breaking things, that they said they send him to the truck. So now I see a truck in Manhattan. I'm like, oh, man. All right. So I tell her, I says, I got, I'm going to a thirty four truck. They gave me a truck. She's like, they gave me a truck. I'm like, yeah, because most guys are in the engine for like maybe five, 10 years before they get to a truck.

• 27:39Theo Von?

  And so in the engine means they're in the actual fire engine?

• 27:42Speaker 01

  They're in the engine and they're a separate company. You know, their engine eight four and we were at a three four. It was a big hundred year old firehouse.

• 27:50Theo Von?

  And so a ladder, they do different stuff than the engine does?

• 27:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, the engine puts the fire out.

• 27:55Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  The ladder opens up, opens up the door, breaks the doors down, opens, cuts the roofs open, makes all the rescues and the searches. It's a lot more intimidating because you don't have the hose line. You're actually in there crawling around.

• 28:09Theo Von?

  With no water?

• 28:10Speaker 01

  No water. Maybe a can on your back.

• 28:12Theo Von?

  Oh, what?

• 28:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was a can man for quite a while.

• 28:15Theo Von?

  And that's heating up quick, probably?

• 28:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:17Theo Von?

  So you get in a ladder and where's the ladder at? What's that like?

• 28:20Speaker 01

  Hundred and sixty first street in Manhattan and on, off of Amsterdam Avenue, a place called Washington Heights.

• 28:26Theo Von?

  Washington Heights?

• 28:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:27Theo Von?

  Yeah, a lot of Dominicans up there.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. When I got there, they were just coming in.

• 28:31Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  And they took over with blood, man. They, they killed everybody.

• 28:36Theo Von?

  Really?

• 28:36Speaker 01

  Oh, they took over the drug business because that was the hub. You had the GW bridge right there. You had all the parkways to head out to Brooklyn, out to Long Island. So everybody would come in and buy their crack and their cocaine.

• 28:49Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  So it was, it was badass. I mean, they would be shooting all day long.

• 28:52Theo Von?

  Was it exciting?

• 28:53Speaker 01

  It was.

• 28:54Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. And the place was so crowded. It was like full of people with these old broken down tenement buildings. Brownstones tenements, all broken down, hundred years old. The firehouse was a hundred years old.

• 29:08Theo Von?

  Did you, was it exciting to go work there? Did it feel scary? Like, what did it kind of become for you?

• 29:12Speaker 01

  Funny part I was gonna say is that I went with my wife from the graduation. I said, we gotta go. It's on eighty fourth street, I told her. I didn't realize that was eighty four engine when I read the thing. So I take her into Manhattan and I take her down eighty fourth street. And there's no firehouse. I go all the way back up to the west side. I come all the way down. There's no fire. And we're saying, wow, this is nice. Look at this. It's all money, brownstones, high end stores. Finally, I go around 85th Street and I find a firehouse and I got my uniform on and they tell you to not always knock on the door and say proberry probationary firefighter Bonfiglio. This old guy answered the door. What can I do for you, Probie? He knew right away I was a

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Probie just by looking at me with the stuff on. I said, I'm looking for my firehouse 34 truck. They said it's on 84th Street. He's like, wow, let me look at that. He's like, dude, you're in with 84 engine and you're on 161st Street. I was like, what? Holy shit. I had to get in the car and tell my wife, we gotta go up to 100. And now we left the glitz and now we're in this freaking rundown neighborhood. It was like, holy shit.

• 30:18Theo Von?

  The music's a little bit better.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Oh, you got a lot of salsa blasting in the streets.

• 30:24Theo Von?

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• 31:09Theo Von?

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• 31:41Theo Von?

  Here's who I'm going with on Sunday. Pete, my picks, prize picks, code Theo, play responsibly. Prize picks offers DFS and free to play $50 provided as prize picks DFS lineups. Must spend $5 of real money on prize picks before receiving bonus lineups. Prize picks predict is a registered FCM offering, team picks and culture picks as event contracts. Both involve significant risk, not for all. Must be 18 and over and for event contracts be a US resident. Restrictions apply, void where prohibited. Use responsibly for all, call 1-800-426-2537 or visit www.ncpgambling.org. So you're in there, you're in the ladder.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  Truck company, yeah, ladder company.

• 32:17Theo Von?

  You're in the truck company. You guys are the ones that go in. So you have more of an axe and you do a hose.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  We got a forcible entry team.

• 32:24Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  A roof man and another guy that's called the OV. He vents out the outside, he goes up the fire escapes.

• 32:31Theo Von?

  Oh yeah, peeping Tom probably.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're the guy, the first guy in to break in the window in.

• 32:35Theo Von?

  Yeah, or just sitting there by it, you know, I won't say nothing. So you, do you guys get there before the, uh, the, like an engine gets there? Or is it just, does that matter?

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Try to get there at the same time. You never know. I mean, if we're leaving quarters together, you know, we always let the engine take off first. Hopefully they go and find a hydrant.

• 32:55Theo Von?

  Okay, got it.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  And we try to get in front of the building with the ladder.

• 32:58Theo Von?

  Okay, okay, got it. So, so take me on, on your first fire.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  My first fire. Well, I've been that like car fires, rubbish fires. We had water leaks, so many water leaks because it was such an old neighborhood. You know, when we go to a water leak, we got to find out where it's leaking. Sometimes we got to break into the apartment, gas leaks. We did everything, all the utilities up there. So I do it for about three weeks and I'm still wondering, oh my God, what's going to happen? With a job, am I going to, what's it going to be like? I still have no idea, you know, I'm, I'm a can man. The probie gets the can.

• 33:30Theo Von?

  Okay, and the can means what?

• 33:32Speaker 01

  I got a fire extinguisher with a strap on my back and I got a hook. And I'm going to be the guy that if I can put out whatever fire I can with the can.

• 33:40Theo Von?

  Oh. Is it actually helpful? Is the can helpful?

• 33:45Speaker 01

  It'll put out, if a good can man could maybe put out a room of fire.

• 33:48Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, you get your finger over that thing, you spread it around.

• 33:52Theo Von?

  So it's real?

• 33:53Speaker 01

  It's real, yeah.

• 33:54Theo Von?

  Okay, got it. Do you remember the day that you get your first fire?

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like three weeks in and I'm doing my first 12 by watch. So you have a house watch, you know, and you gotta man, somebody's gotta man it. It's got a computer in there that comes on and tells you what your alarms are. And you acknowledge them, you hit all the lights, you send the companies out. So I gotta do my first 12 by. So I've, I never done a watch alone yet. So the 12 by was like, you know, it was a little scary at first.

• 34:20Theo Von?

  And that's 12 hours?

• 34:21Speaker 01

  No, 12 to 3, you do three hour watch.

• 34:24Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  So 12 o'clock came, I went in, I took the book over, it's midnight and I'm sitting there. And it's like 1 o'clock in the morning and all of a sudden, like 1:30, I start falling asleep. And I'm like, sleeping.

• 34:39Theo Von?

  Look, I've had a job before. I know how it is.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  I'm sacked out. And all of a sudden, the alarm goes off, the computer goes, it starts ticking out this alarm. I'm like, oh my God, I was so scared. I got up, I hit the house watch light. I'm looking at the ticket, it says engine A4, ladder 34, first two, fire on an eighth floor. So now I gotta hit all the bunk room lights. I gotta hit the intercom, say, everybody goes. I gotta hit the three bells and then I gotta acknowledge on the computer, both companies 10-4. And then I gotta take the tickets and put them on the truck side and the engine side. And then I put my gear on and out the door we go.

• 35:15Theo Von?

  Let's go, Tony. I'm hampered.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  Oh, man. So now we get there, it's 3:30, quarter to 4 in the morning. And it's like a projects building, about 11 stories. It was a pretty decent building, it was on Amsterdam Avenue. And so we're the forceful entry team, me, my lieutenant, who was this salty guy from the Bronx. Spinelli, he was like a real, I mean, he was the war days, you know, back in the 60s and the 70s.

• 35:40Theo Von?

  How salty?

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Salty means, you know, like, yeah.

• 35:43Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  Yes, he was salty. Burly mustache, unruly hair.

• 35:48Theo Von?

  Gout in his smile, huh?

• 35:49Speaker 01

  It's all bent and burnt, you know?

• 35:51Theo Von?

  Yeah, dude, definitely.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  Great guy, though.

• 35:53Theo Von?

  Yeah, it's like he was raising an ashtray.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Oh, this guy, yeah. So we're, the forceful entry team's a can man, an orange man. He's got an axe and a halogen and the boss. And we're the three guys. So now we go into the lobby door. And we hit all the buzzers. Three thirty in the morning.

• 36:10Theo Von?

  And there's people in there sleeping.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, they're in there. So all of a sudden, they start, who is it? Who is it? You're like, fire department, open the door, open the door, fire department. So they buzz you in. Now go in the lobby. Nothing's showing, nobody's bailing out, you know? So I'm like, I don't know, so it might not be it. Take an elevator to the seventh floor because the fire was on the eighth floor. So we get to the seventh floor and you never take the fire, the elevator to the fire floor for obvious reasons. So we take it and we take the stairs to the eighth floor. And we get in this hallway and now it's like a big projects hallway. I don't know if you ever seen one of them, but they're painted green and they got like fluorescent lights and it's long. So we go to all the doors and we stick our noses in the jams trying to smell smoke. We don't smell nothing.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  So the boss says to my friend Jimmy, the Duke, he says, go up to the next floor and check it out. Calls down the battalion and says, yeah, we got nothing showing on the eighth floor. We're going to check out the ninth floor. So with that, now we go into the hallway and my friend is on the top of the stairs and he says, Lou, I think we got something. So I'm like, oh shit, this is it. I'm in this project hallway, quarter to four in the morning. I'm running up the steps with my hook and everything and there I, and I said, the boss says, what do we have? And the Duke opens this door. And I was like, oh my God, if there was a gate to hell, this was it, okay? Black shimmering smoke that looked like satin curtains just going in all different directions.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  And my first thought was no way we're fucking going in there, right? I see these guys.

• 37:42Theo Von?

  Hey, look, let me see a two bedroom.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:45Theo Von?

  This won't work for us.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're pulling their boots up and they're putting their air, they're turning air bottles on and everything. I'm like, oh shit, this is it. So now we're getting down on our hands and knees and the Duke tells me, you, you hold my coat, okay? And I'm like, yeah, sure, I'm holding your coat.

• 38:02Theo Von?

  So you're behind him crawling?

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Behind the Duke, the boss goes in first, like this black abyss we just crawl into on the floor.

• 38:09Theo Von?

  What are you all looking for?

• 38:10Speaker 01

  The fire apartment. We gotta find it.

• 38:13Theo Von?

  Oh, so you, this is just the hallway?

• 38:14Speaker 01

  The hallway.

• 38:15Theo Von?

  Oh, I thought.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Somebody left their door open.

• 38:17Theo Von?

  Pull up that hallway you had, Nick, is that? The one from the actual building? Oh, this is a general one. Yeah, I think I know what you're talking about, though. It's narrow hallways.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  Narrow hallways, long, green. Yeah, look at that color, yellowish green. It looked just like that.

• 38:30Theo Von?

  Oh, God.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  So now we're on our hands and knees and I'm I'm got his coat. I got the can on my back. I got my mask on. And we're in total blackness. And I'm crawling down like a hundred feet. And I'm saying in my mask, I'm saying, what the fuck am I doing here? This is fucking crazy. I'm never gonna do this again. I felt so helpless. And what am I gonna do? It's pitch black. We're crawling in a hallway we've never been before.

• 38:56Theo Von?

  Yeah, dude. Oh, yeah.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  So we crawl up and then all of a sudden we the Duke stops and he says, we're at the fire door. And I'm like, oh, okay. Can't see nothing.

• 39:06Theo Von?

  Yeah, it almost seems like some kind of sex traffic and something, you know. Whatever's good. Anyway, whatever's going on in town is kind of out of sorts, you know?

• 39:13Speaker 01

  It's out of sorts.

• 39:14Theo Von?

  Anyway, so carry on. Sorry.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  So it's something that I'd never I'm like, I'm not do I'm quitting in the morning. I swear to God, I was quitting. I was like, what are we gonna do in here?

• 39:22Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  We don't can't see. I'm on the ground.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  So finally, we crawl in and I crawl in and I hear the boss. He's up ahead of us in the apartment already. He says, bring the can in here. So now I crawl past the Duke. I'm on my hands and knees. And about 10 feet up, I see the boss on his knees with a glow of the fire. He goes, you see the fire? It's to the left. And I look and there's a room on fire. It looks like cotton candy. The flames are like all over the place.

• 39:54Theo Von?

  And how much is it protecting you? How much is your suit protecting you at that point?

• 39:57Speaker 01

  Nah, nothing.

• 39:59Theo Von?

  Dude, didn't take it off, bro.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, they're no, they're just coats, you know, to keep you warm, basically. They got your leather helmet on.

• 40:08Theo Von?

  Keep you warm. But and and at that point, does it kind of take on like, do you start to feel a little bit more empowered? Kind of a song?

• 40:15Speaker 01

  No, I felt scared shit. I just wanted to get out of there and get this fire over with. So now I I see him and he says, do you see the fire? And I looked to the left and I said, yeah, I see the fire. I'm in this mask, you know? And he says, hit it with the can. I got the can and I'm on my knees and I I I go to hit it and nothing comes out. I hit it again. Nothing comes out. I didn't have air in the can. It's like a total fuck up for a

• 40:40Theo Von?

  You should have put it in there?

• 40:41Speaker 01

  That's my fuck up. Oh, my first job. So I said to the boss, I got no air in the can.

• 40:47Theo Von?

  Oh, I've used that excuse a lot of times. A lot of times over the years, buddy. I'll tell you that. And I want to apologize to a lot of those women out there. But yeah, that was my excuse. I got no air in the can.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  That's a good analogy.

• 41:02Theo Von?

  I got a ladder issue. But go on.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  Fully extended.

• 41:06Theo Von?

  Fuck, you must have been embarrassed, huh?

• 41:07Speaker 01

  I wasn't embarrassed, but yeah, I felt like, oh, man, I'm going to catch some shit for this.

• 41:12Theo Von?

  Did you even pretend? Did you like just make a sound like that area? Like

• 41:16Speaker 01

  I didn't make no sounds. And I couldn't believe it because, I mean, you always check the can, you know, you got to pressurize it, put a little water. So he says, all right, back out to the doorway. So I now the fire is coming out over our heads in the hallway. And I get to the door we came in crawling. And the elevator was right across from the apartment, fire apartment, and the door opens. And there's eighty four engine without a mask on or anything. They got they took the elevator to the fire floor. And they got stuck. And they're going down on their knees and they're trying to put their masks on and I'm in the I'm yelling in my mask. I'm like, get the fucking line in here and put the fucking fire. I'm screaming. I'm like out of my mind now.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  So finally, they get in the line. Now it's black again.

• 42:02Theo Von?

  And the line is the is the hose?

• 42:03Speaker 01

  The hose.

• 42:04Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  And it's all asses and elbows now in this hallway, you know, that's what we call organized confusion. And everybody sort of bringing the line past me. I see him get up to the the the apart the the uh the room. And the boss says, there's the fire to the left. Crack, I hear the line crack, you know, get the water comes up, he cracks it. And now he hits it, you know, and he starts pushing the fire in. And I squeezed past them because I got to search the apartment, that's my job.

• 42:32Theo Von?

  And you're searching for to see if there's anybody in there.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  Bodies, yeah.

• 42:34Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  So now I'm searching along the wall and still can't see. And I'd get to a window and I'd smash it out with my hook. And I would stick my head out the window because this is the first time I could see again since we left that stairwell, you know.

• 42:48Theo Von?

  Oh yeah, you gotta get some fresh air.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Fresh air and some view of something.

• 42:51Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  So then I go around and then all of a sudden they knocked it down fast. And I run into the Duke, the Irons man, he's like, yo, Probie, you broke your cherry, man, congratulations. And I was like, wow, I took my mask off. It was kind of like still gray smoke and steamy, but it was better than the mask, you know, because that was so confined. So I said, yeah, Jimmy, I said my first fire, but I, this might be my last fire. So I don't know if I'm doing this again. And there we were, we overhauled the apartment and we threw the mattress out the window. We took everything out. Threw the street down into the street.

• 43:26Theo Von?

  And who's down there catching that? He's hitting whoever, that's free.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  Back then, like nobody.

• 43:30Theo Von?

  Who gives a shit, yeah.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Just hopefully nobody's down there. You yell out, look out! And then you throw the burning mattress out the window.

• 43:37Theo Von?

  Aw shit, I'll throw my ex-wife out that bitch, you know? Don't, let's take that out, let's take that out.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  And then I'm looking out this window and it's encrusted with all these embers and shit, you know, like gold and amber and everything. And it was like 5:30 in the morning and the Manhattan skyline was turning purple. So I had all this beautiful thing I was learning. I was like, wow, this is some sight, you know?

• 43:58Theo Von?

  Excuse me?

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:59Theo Von?

  I'll kiss the sky.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was definitely rock and roll, man. I was like, yeah. So now I had to get back and I, I put the air in the can when I got back, changed all the masks and everything. Now I had to go up and see the boss, you know, and take my medicine. So I walk up to the truck office and I knock on the door, it's open. And he says, yeah, come in. And he's wiping his face down with a towel. He just came out of the bathroom. I said, I may like puppy eyes, I said, Lou, I'm sorry about not having air in the can. And he's like wiping his face. He goes, yeah, don't worry about it, kid, shit happens. And I was like, oh, oh, wow, thank you. I was 23 years old, you know, so now I'm walking out and he goes, hey, kid. And I turn around, he goes, you did a good job. And I was like, oh, wow.

• 44:43Theo Von?

  That's awesome.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then I'm driving home saying, am I quitting this fucking job? Because it was like, it was like nothing I've ever experienced. And I, I, growing up, I did a lot of crazy things, but this was the scariest thing I ever did. But yeah, it was so exciting and thrilling. I mean, I got home and, and the grass was so greener. The sky was so blue and the air that I was breathing was so appreciated.

• 45:06Theo Von?

  You were alive.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  I was alive, man. It made me, I was like, wow, that was something.

• 45:10Theo Von?

  Damn.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  Of course, that wasn't my last job. I went 21 years more after that, so.

• 45:15Theo Von?

  What kind of like made you decide, you just have to go back to work? And it just kept being like that or like?

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, like, you know, yeah, damn, you know, we were a busy truck back then because we had a lot of fires, a lot of occupied fires, which are really, they're a lot more intense than a vacant fire or, you know, something like that. You know, you got a lot of people bailing out and they're, sometimes they're trapped and, you know, you gotta get to them, the truck, that's their job.

• 45:38Theo Von?

  You know what's almost, hearing you say this and like, thanks so much for your time, Tony, too. I appreciate it, man.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  Thank you for the, this is like an honor.

• 45:44Theo Von?

  Oh, thanks, bro.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  Kidding me?

• 45:46Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  You guys are pioneers, you know, you're, you're the millennial pioneers with entertainment these days. I think you changed the whole scene.

• 45:54Theo Von?

  Oh, well, I just, I think it's like people, just we gotta find more humans that have the best stories, you know?

• 46:00Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 46:00Theo Von?

  It was so crazy, we're just, like, we're coming to New York and we just get an email from you the other day that you had seen that we put out a thing about, uh, about looking for somebody that works in, in, in a fire department. And, uh, my producer Zach forwards it to me, he's like, can you believe we just, this guy, we're gonna be there? I was like, wow, seems really interesting, so.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  I think it was meant to be.

• 46:20Theo Von?

  Hey, I think so too. And I think, I was about to say, I think it was meant to be that your first fire didn't have any, nobody was in it.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:27Theo Von?

  Because that would have, that could have been super scary, huh?

• 46:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, oh, yeah.

• 46:31Theo Von?

  Take me through like some of the times where there was somebody in there, like, how much of a different scenario is that? Is the energy different when you get there? Who lets you know if somebody's in there or do you even know? Like, take me through that process of like, right when you get there? And then take me into one of like, a, a, a fire where it was, um, inhabited.

• 46:49Speaker 01

  Well, one, well, this one fire where I, uh, we, we lost this little. Girl and that that one really hurt me a lot because we got to the apartment. And my my lieutenant, he was a little Irish guy, the bravest guy I've ever met, Lieutenant Maloney. And I would chase him up to the fire at the door, the caller, and he would knock on the door with his little crowbar. Fire department, open the door, you know, it'd sound like some cartoon, you know, the Irish bro. So these people open the doors and we walk in and there's a the card table sitting there and about eight people playing cards. They're eating. We're standing in the kitchen, the three of us. And we're like, my lieutenant says, what the hell did you call the fire department?

• 47:33Speaker 01

  So they're looking up, they're like, yeah, I think something's burning in the back. It was a big apartment. So we're like looking at each other, something burning in the back. What the hell is this? So now we go down the hallway. My lieutenant's cursing under his breath, you know, he's saying all these motherfuckers sucking fucking shit.

• 47:49Theo Von?

  Still playing cards. Cards is fun though. Cards can be fun.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  They were, but we get into the living room and there's like these French doors. I don't know if you know the French doors probably from.

• 48:00Theo Von?

  Is it like that?

• 48:00Speaker 01

  They're glass paneled and they they're like two doors you open to a room.

• 48:04Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. You think there's gonna be somebody French in there, but there ain't.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, no French people.

• 48:09Theo Von?

  It never is, dude. There never is. Typical French. You'll send the doors, we'll be there. They're not. Typical French.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  So anyway, I I opened the French door and the room is on fire. Like, holy shit. Close the door. We get down on our knees, start putting our masks on. And we're calling 1075. That means we got a working fire. He's telling the battalion, you know, the engine now they're coming up with the line. So right before they they got the line, I says, all right, guys, it's right here. I put my mask on. I said, showtime. And I went to open the the French doors and I get a call over the handy talkie. There's a kid in the room. My friend, the O V is with the mother out in the street. So now we bust into these doors. They're hitting. Thank God we had the water. Hitting and I'm frantically looking for this kid in the darn black smoke.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  I'm on the bed. I'm feeling all over the bed. I want I gotta find this kid.

• 49:05Theo Von?

  And is it mostly feeling? How far can you see?

• 49:08Speaker 01

  I don't see anything. I put tape over your eyes. It's nothing.

• 49:11Theo Von?

  And you're feeling with gloves on too?

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, sometimes gloves. Sometimes you forget your gloves, but yeah.

• 49:17Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, you know, back then, we were like, let, less you, less equipment, better. You want to get in, you want to get in, you want to get out quick, too.

• 49:26Theo Von?

  No, that sounds like a guy who forgot his equipment.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  Ah, yeah.

• 49:29Theo Von?

  That's, that's always.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  Put air in the can.

• 49:31Theo Von?

  Yeah, put some air in your can, Tony. That's always that guy's excuse, you know? But that's a great attitude to take, like, nah, guys, if there's air in this can, we're going to be here all afternoon.

• 49:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:41Theo Von?

  We're running out of this joint.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  I could have probably put that, maybe put it out with the can, but anyway, so the engine, I'm in there, I'm going around, and finally, I'm going around the wall, I could feel, I'm, oops, sorry, I'm under the bed feeling around, trying to find this kid. And I get to a window, I break the window out, and I look out the window, and I see my Irons man that was with me. He's in the street with the kid, a limp, limp kid, you know, and they're taking the kid. They open the battalion car door, he throw, they go in there and they rushed off the Columbia Presbyterian.

• 50:09Theo Von?

  How'd the kid get out?

• 50:11Speaker 01

  No, he carried, she was unconscious.

• 50:12Theo Von?

  Oh, he found her.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  She didn't make it, she, she didn't, the kid was dead, unfortunately, he was burnt. They tried to revive her at the hospital, but it, it didn't work. So I'm, I'm overhauling now, and I see my lieutenant, and I said, I just saw Jeff in the street with the kid. He's like, ah, Anthony, the kid was right there behind the door. And I was like, oh, I was crushed, man, I shut that door, I felt like I killed that kid, you know? So, uh, we go to Presbyterian, oh, so before we leave, now the deputy shows up, because now we got a 1045, which is a body. And he's like, uh, what happened here? We're in this apartment, the people are still playing cards.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  So my lieutenant says, well, we came up to the apartment, and I said, I'll tell you what happened. And now the deputy looks at me, you know, I go, you see these motherfuckers over here? I said, they didn't bother to fucking tell us there might be a, a kid in that back room. And I'm throwing F bombs at them, and the deputy says, Lieutenant, you better control your man. So the boss puts his arm around my shoulder, he says, come on, come on, Anthony, he called me Anthony, that's Anthony, and a brogue. Anthony, let's go down to the street, you know, and we went down to the street, and we went and we picked up my friend Jeff at the hospital. I said, how'd they make out with the kid? He said, they were trying to revive her, they were bringing her to the burn center. So that was the last we heard of her, but I.

• 51:33Theo Von?

  But you, there's no way you could have known that, right? Cause you go in and the kid was hiding behind the door.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  You think somebody would tell us there could be a kid back there?

• 51:40Theo Von?

  Oh, it's heartbreaking.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 51:42Theo Von?

  Did you ever find out why they wouldn't let you know what was going on there?

• 51:44Speaker 01

  I guess there was like an SRO bit or something. They were renting out that little back room to this woman and a child, you know? So it was pretty bad. And I had a few of those. I mean, right after I got over, was getting over with that one. I got another one where we showed up without our masks on because it was the middle of the day.

• 52:04Theo Von?

  Yeah, no, I get it.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  There was nothing showing. We get out and the guy says, eh, they're working on the oil burner all day. And we had a lot of oil burners, you know, they would, they would, they would smoke up. So we're like, eh, ten twenty says on the box, which means all the other companies, take your time. Don't blow the red lights and shit. So now we're heading up to the stairs to the caller's apartment. It's, you know, forcible entry team, me, Lieutenant Clipper and this guy Jimmy Lynch. And we get to the door and the woman opens the door and we go in the apartment and it's like a slight smoke condition in there, but slight. So we're like, what's, what, what do we have here? So my boss says he was a smart fireman. He was from Rescue Two. He said, I think we're, uh, we got something above us. Usually it's below us, you know? But this, I guess, cause the light, the smoke was so light.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  So now we get up, we don't have no masks or nothing. We get to the, I see smoke coming out of the doorway, you know, the, the locked door in the hallway. So I turn around, I donkey kick the door open like three kicks. It kicks open and we got a black wall of smoke. We're like, holy shit. Now we got, after the ten twenty, we gotta give a ten seventy-five, which means now we have a fire.

• 53:12Theo Von?

  Oh.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  So now we're crawling in.

• 53:14Theo Von?

  No masks.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  No masks, we're on our bellies.

• 53:17Theo Von?

  Was it better or worse without a mask in this?

• 53:19Speaker 01

  Worse.

• 53:19Theo Von?

  It was worse.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:20Theo Von?

  Cause you could feel the heat?

• 53:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, back in the day when they didn't wear masks, like in the sixties and the fifties, everything was wooden cotton. Then once the sixties and seventies and everything's vinyl and plastic and it's a whole different smoke, you know? It's poisonous, so it gets you quick.

• 53:35Theo Von?

  That's a great point, right?

• 53:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, back then you could suck the cotton and the, and the wood, you know?

• 53:39Theo Von?

  Yeah, it's like, yeah, you're probably, yeah, you were smoking.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  Like smoking a pack of cigarettes or.

• 53:42Theo Von?

  You're like, hell, shit, I wish somebody, I wish somebody had a couple tobacco plants in here. I'd crawl around for another two minutes in here.

• 53:48Speaker 01

  Exactly, that's what it was like.

• 53:49Theo Von?

  And things would burn slower back then too, wouldn't they?

• 53:52Speaker 01

  Well, back then, yeah, but plastics will take off a lot faster.

• 53:56Theo Von?

  God.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  So anyway, he crawls in and we're like, oh shit, we gotta go in. Jimmy goes in ahead of him and I'm the last guy in. We're like almost on our bellies crawling in. And I hear the horrible words, "We got bodies." I'm like, "Oh my God, now we gotta give ten forty-fives." So we had ten twenty, that means don't come, take it easy getting there. Now we went ten seventy-five, now we got two ten forty-fives, two bodies. So with that, I get a body, a little girl come, they pass it back to me. And I cry, like shimmy out of the apartment.

• 54:29Theo Von?

  Cause you don't know if she, do you?

• 54:30Speaker 01

  I don't know any, I can't see nothing yet. I still can't see nothing till I get to the stairwell. I knew I had a kid in my arms. I see it's a little girl, you know, face is all darkened. So now I'm like, "Oh shit, I'm gonna run her down to the EMS is gonna take her in the street." And I go running down to the street and there's nobody there. And all the people are screaming, you know, they're yelling and screaming and I'm holding this kid. And I'm looking around because we gave the ten twenty.

• 54:56Theo Von?

  Hey, take your time.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  There was nobody there yet.

• 54:58Theo Von?

  Yeah, they're at the malt shop.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  I put the kid down, I do CPR on, on this little girl and I, you know, I put it down, I cup her head. And I pretty much, all I knew was like a fifteen and two, you know, you get two breaths into her. And then you give a fifteen, and this went on for like ten minutes before I got relieved and the sound that she was making when the air would come out, they call it machine gun breath, cause it's like

• 55:22Speaker 01

  and the smell, because I had to smell the burnt lips. Ah, so finally, somebody came over and they started taking over and then the EMS came. After ten minutes, they let me go. So now I'm like, I'm walking around the sidewalk. All these Dominicans are very emotional, they're all screaming and yelling and crying and everything.

• 55:41Theo Von?

  Praying, some of them probably.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  Praying everything.

• 55:43Theo Von?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  I figure, let me go back up to the floor because my, the other two guys were working on the mother. And when I got there, the EMS already were, were took over and I was like, "Holy shit." And it was like the first fire we had where the windows didn't break open. They were the new windows that the Gambino crime family put in in all of Manhattan. And they didn't break like the old windows, so it never got air. So it smoldered and they died from the, the smoke. And that stayed with me for years. I would like, sometimes I would smell and taste the burnt lips and everything and oh, it was horrible.

• 56:22Theo Von?

  That's heartbreaking. Like, who do you even talk to about that kind of stuff? Do you guys go to some of the services? What is some of that like?

• 56:29Speaker 01

  I got back in the firehouse. The guys were listening up. They knew. I took my turnout coat off and I just went in. I took a shower. We all took showers. And then the boss says, into the office, you know, let's talk about it. So he says, you know, we did everything we could. There really wasn't nothing else we could do. I mean, not having the mask didn't hamper us at all because we still got the bodies. And so then I went home. My wife heard about it already on the news. And so when I got home, they all greeted me and that was pretty much, you know, all I got was some nice hugs and some tears at home. Yeah. Yeah, you get over it. It takes a while though. I mean, I had a couple of things.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  I had this, this junkie that we kept called three times. We got called to the sixth floor. He kept lighting fires to stay warm in the winter.

• 57:19Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 57:19Speaker 01

  And he was a young black kid, you know, and so we would have to climb up these vacant stairs. I had to pop a hole in the, in the cinder block walls to get in vacant building.

• 57:30Theo Von?

  And a couple of times it's happened.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, well, it's the first one. We go up, sixth floor, dark, cold, it's icy. It's about 30 degrees out.

• 57:39Theo Von?

  And nice kid?

• 57:40Speaker 01

  I have no idea. I got to the back with my, and I see my Irish lieutenant yelling at him. He's like, what the fuck you doing? You can't light a fucking fire, blah, blah, blah. And he was sitting there and he was in the corner and I, I came in and I put my flashlight on him. And he was looking at me with these eyes, you know, and I was like, God, he had like tombstones in his eyes, you know? And he was only about 16, 17. So we put the fire out. We leave. Two hours later, we get called back again. Go up, oh, gotta climb these stairs. Six floors, no steps, just risers. And no lights, it's dark. So now we climb all the way up again. We go through the thing. He lit it up again. Boss is yelling, you can't fucking do this. He's yelling at him and shit.

• 58:24Speaker 01

  I got the light on him and and the funny part was we just had we just broke into an Entenmann's cake at the firehouse with the vanilla icing that we would keep in the fridge, get it nice and stiff. So as my friend Jeff in the dark, he's putting the fire out, I put the light on him and he's still got the vanilla icing on his mustache.

• 58:45Theo Von?

  Somebody took a piece for the road, Jeff, huh?

• 58:48Speaker 01

  The boss is yelling at him.

• 58:49Theo Von?

  That's why he was pissed. This guy interrupted his dessert, huh?

• 58:52Speaker 01

  Three companies and a battalion are responding every time. And we got chains on, it's snowing, it's not like no.

• 58:59Theo Von?

  Right, so you get a lot to get out there.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  So the third time, I hear, we just, we just got back from something, we went in our bunks, and we get in the bunks and we're like, a little pillow talk before everybody was sleeping. And then before you know it, beam boom, same box, here we go again. I hear the boss yelling, fuck, shit, I'll kill that motherfucker.

• 59:20Theo Von?

  Let him cook at this point.

• 59:22Speaker 01

  We're sliding down the pole.

• 59:24Theo Von?

  This guy's trying to get to heaven and you guys keep.

• 59:26Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 59:26Theo Von?

  You guys keep coming in and ruining his trip.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  Third time, so we're in the rig and I said to my friend Jeff, I says, let's tell the boss, stay on the, don't even come up the stairs, we'll take care of it. And surprisingly, he agreed. So when we got to the door, I says, Lou, we'll take care of it, you stay down here. So me and Jeff go up, my light, my diehard battery died on me. So I had like no light left. I'm trying to follow Jeff's light and we're going up just on the rises and then there's no platform. So you gotta like lean over your step to get on. And when you get to the fifth or sixth floor, you're looking down at this skeleton staircase.

• 1:00:01Theo Von?

  What?

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, so now we go in, go through the dark apartment again, he's in there again. Now he's got candles burning because we broke his bucket up. We smashed it all up. So we're like, holy shit. So now Jeff is like leaning into him and he says, listen, you can't fucking do this anymore. And Jeff's like the good cop, you know? I'm the bad cop. So I lean into him, I look at him, I says, we come back here again, I'm throwing you out that fucking window. And he just looked at me, you know? And that was it. That was the last time we went back, we left there, we took his candles. But years later, I would see that kid's face looking at me and it made me feel so bad, a wasted

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  life like that, you know? Heroin, he had the works, everything.

• 1:00:49Theo Von?

  That's scary. And the fact that he kept going back to do it, it's just that power of addiction, you know?

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  It was cold.

• 1:00:56Theo Von?

  Oh, I guess it'd keep you warm.

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was in a vacant, yeah.

• 1:00:59Theo Von?

  Oh.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. A lot of shit like that. Vacants were disgusting.

• 1:01:05Theo Von?

  Cause it's just, anybody could be in there doing anything, huh?

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  Squatters. Yeah, they're shitting on the floor, they're drugs, needles, and you're crawling around in there because you still have to save them.

• 1:01:16Theo Von?

  Oh.

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, vacant fires.

• 1:01:20Theo Von?

  Yeah, do you start to develop a certain like, uh, attitudes towards humanity or drug users or society?

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Call them skells. They're all skells.

• 1:01:30Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  To us back then, you know, and uh, matter of fact, on my block, we had a tight block, 161st Street.

• 1:01:39Theo Von?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  And we had a bodega, a gypsy cab dispatcher, a whorehouse, and a bunch of drug apartments.

• 1:01:47Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:48Speaker 01

  And it was a busy block. And we had two guys on the block that were almost there the whole time I was there, and they were the lookouts. And one guy was bald and we called him Eightball, and the other guy always had a hat and we called him The Hat, so. And the funny part was, they would watch our cars for us, so nobody would break into the cars and shit, but. You know, I mean, I would see every agency there is come down and raid our block through the years I was there. ATF, Manhattan Tactical North, uh, CIA, I mean, everything. I tell you who was the worst ones was the FBI.

• 1:02:25Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  They come down with machine guns and I've never seen anybody that, and then they clear the street. They hit all the apartments. It's amazing.

• 1:02:34Theo Von?

  I bet they were all just visiting that whorehouse.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  Ah, the whorehouse. I would inspect it now and then. I'd go in there with my hat and they'd all be looking at me, you know, be like, where the fuck you want? You know, like, I gotta inspect this place, you know?

• 1:02:48Theo Von?

  What was it like in some of those joints? Was it interesting in there? Was it just women trying to just survive?

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was just some middle-aged, young, not too young, Dominican women. I guess they took care of the cab drivers and stuff. And they had the different rooms, you know, everybody had their little bed in there.

• 1:03:04Theo Von?

  Just trying to sit down.

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  And I would inspect it, you know, I got you, you got condoms? The condoms are here.

• 1:03:11Theo Von?

  Making sure the alarm works ladies.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, they would be like, come on, some of them were the prostitutes would be like, get the fuck out of here, man. You know, they'd be up all night. They didn't want nothing to do with me.

• 1:03:21Theo Von?

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• 1:04:05Theo Von?

  Bam, Papa got that board on him. That means you can get it on quicker and stay in the game longer. Elevation without hesitation. Make life easier by getting harder and discover your options at bluechew.com. And we got a special deal for our listeners. Get 10% off your first month of BlueChew Gold with code Theo. That's promo code Theo. Visit bluechew.com for more details and important safety information. And we thank BlueChew for sponsoring the podcast. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

• 1:04:45Theo Von?

  You know, sometimes it can feel like everyone else has it all together in their love life. Whether they're married or dating or single. The truth is that most of us are still figuring it out and we're finding our way. Sometimes I'll think back like, oh, these people got married right out of high school. They did it perfect. Or these, this person moved to another country and they found a love and they did it perfect. No matter where you are in your romantic journey, therapy might be able to help you find your way. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over 6 million people globally and it works.

• 1:05:29Theo Von?

  With an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session, based on over 1.7 million client reviews. Bam, that's a lot. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com/ Theo. That's better H E L P dot com slash T H E O. That would be the wildest thing for me would just be like the access you get to see dude. I remember one time I'm in Kansas City, right? And I guess somebody started a fire, right? And I'd like as a comedian, you go to different hotels. You're always in hotels over the years and I got to the point where every now, like, you know, every seven weeks, somebody'd start a fire pulling an alarm.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:06:09Theo Von?

  And so in the middle of the night, you gotta go downstairs and be outside. So I finally decided for myself, I'm gonna wait.

• 1:06:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not going out there.

• 1:06:15Theo Von?

  There was never, it was never a good fire.

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:06:17Theo Von?

  So I was like, I'm waiting out there for 45 minutes or whatever, while they see if there's a fire or not. So I finally said, I'm staying in the room until I smell smoke or whatever. So one time I'm in there, I just made this big sandwich, dude. It was really good. It was one of the better ones I've probably ever made in my life. And a guy, I remember this big fireman with an axe comes in or just opens my door and the alarm had been going off for a while. And he's looking, he's looking for me and I was like, is there a fire?

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  Did I miss something?

• 1:06:51Theo Von?

  Yeah, he's like, you gotta get out of here. I was like, bro, I every week they doing this shit. I'm not going.

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  Right, I need it all the time. But that's the cry wolf thing too, though, you know?

• 1:07:00Theo Von?

  Oh, for sure. I knew it was on me. I did, yo, hey, if it's bad, come back, you know? And I think he's like, fuck you, you know? I don't blame him.

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's a fireman attitude.

• 1:07:09Theo Von?

  Yeah, and it should, it should be. Hey, come back if I'm gonna burn, you know?

• 1:07:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:07:15Theo Von?

  Yeah, there's just a lot of pressure. Yeah, like immediately I was putting all the pressure on this guy. But yeah, what, what were some of the environments you went into? Like, did you ever just walk into an environment like, oh, well, this is crazy. You're like, um, like a drug den or like a, um?

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  Oh, plenty of drug dens. I mean, every building had a drug apartment where they would sell drugs.

• 1:07:34Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, but this one fire that I went to, it was, it was in the middle of the day. It was like the second floor, we pull up, fire's blowing out four windows. I mean, it was going good. And so we run out. Now we're second due, which means we go to the floor above the fire. So the first due truck has the fire floor. Second due goes to the floor above, which the floor above is really shitty because

• 1:07:58Theo Von?

  Cause that's where the heat's going up.

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  That's where everything's going, you know? So now we get up the staircase and it's starting to bank down and get dark. And I see a guy runs past me, no shirt on, no shoes. He's got like a three-year-old kid under his arm and a hefty bag.

• 1:08:12Theo Von?

  Oh yeah, so a politician probably.

• 1:08:16Speaker 01

  So he slips by us, you know, so now we're going to take the door in the hallway above the fire apartment. And it's getting smoky and my boss puts his mask on, but we have to take the door, so I wanted to see a little bit. So I'm hitting the, you know, the guy's got the halogen and the door jamb and I'm smashing it with an axe. And he's trying to get a bite on the jamb to bust the door open. So finally we get it, we bust the door open, we put our masks on. And we go in and we crawling around and the engine company did a good job. They knocked the fire down pretty fast, you know? So as we're crawling around, it's starting to, the, the black smoke's starting to go away and it's getting lighter. And I'm, I'm, I'm on the floor and I'm, I bump into a dresser.

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  I'm like, oh, now I can start to see a little bit. I put my light on the dresser. All the drawers are open. Stacks of hundreds of fifty-dollar bills, every drawer, I mean. No twenties, no, it was all coke money.

• 1:09:09Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  And I'm like, oh my God, you know, I'm, I'm still like a, I'm like my one year there, so I'm,

• 1:09:16Theo Von?

  Oh yeah.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  I'm a, I'm a junior man.

• 1:09:19Theo Von?

  Like I gotta get something for Christine.

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  Well, that's it, you know, I got an angel and a devil on my shoulders and they're fighting it out, you know? I'm looking at, we're in smoke, so I mean, it ain't like a setup. Nobody's ever gonna know.

• 1:09:32Speaker 01

  So I'm thinking, oh my God, I could buy myself a new Harley with that money, you know? And then I was like, the angel be like, oh, you buy the new Harley and you're gonna crash and you'll get paralyzed. And I'm like, oh shit, that could happen. So now I told the senior man, I said, Eddie, come here, look in this drawers.

• 1:09:47Theo Von?

  Yeah, bring another guy in now.

• 1:09:48Speaker 01

  Senior man, you know, and he's like, holy shit, Tony. He's like, what are we gonna do here?

• 1:09:53Theo Von?

  Oh, Eddie's setting you up again.

• 1:09:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm like, you're the senior man, you tell me what to do.

• 1:09:58Theo Von?

  This is dirty Tennessee guys are playing.

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  I could have been stacking thousands in my pocket.

• 1:10:02Theo Von?

  If Eddie would have been like, hey, let's take a little, you have to, huh?

• 1:10:05Speaker 01

  I would, yeah.

• 1:10:06Theo Von?

  Yeah, you got to. I think, just to even make sure that it is what it is, get it back home.

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  Right. I, you know, I was young, I had this, oh, it's dirty money, it'll bring me bad juju.

• 1:10:16Theo Von?

  It could have.

• 1:10:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, you never know.

• 1:10:18Theo Von?

  I think that the karma, who knows? Yeah, you don't know.

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  So the boss walks in, you know, the lieutenant, and he's like, what do you got? And I was like, we got all this drawer full of money, dresser full of money. He's like, oh, I don't see nothing. He was like, I don't know if you ever see Schultz on Hogan's Heroes? He's like, I see nothing. He turns around, he walks away, you know, so now we're like, so now we go out and it's still a little smoky, but we could see, we don't have our masks on, and there's another room with a padlock on the door. So he's like, take the door. So he puts the ads into the halligan and I whack it with the axe.

• 1:10:52Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  The door busted open and Theo, I'm telling you, there was like half the coke in Manhattan was in there. Bricks all the way to the ceiling on all sides of the walls. A pile of cocaine about 18 inches high on the table. We were like, holy shit. So the boss gets on, tell the battalion, we got a drug apartment, send the PD up. So now we're like waiting for the PD to come. We wanted them to come before the drug dealers got back. So finally, two NYPD guys show up and they're like, yeah, guys, what do you got? I said, well, go in that room and go in that room. I said, that's the money room. That's the coke room. So they both go in and at the same time they go, holy shit.

• 1:11:34Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  They call a backup, you know? So now we're like, my boss is like, ah, we're out of here, you know? We, we, we don't want me nothing part of this whole show here.

• 1:11:43Theo Von?

  I'd have stuck around, man, you know? Like Joey Diaz says, every now and then, every now and then you bump into a Colombian, you know?

• 1:11:50Speaker 01

  I love Joey Diaz.

• 1:11:51Theo Von?

  Oh, he's the best.

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  Oh my, he was a fireman in Colorado or some shit. Denver.

• 1:11:56Theo Von?

  Was he a fireman?

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, but he was selling blow. He said, all they had was a pickup truck. I don't know if you ever saw it. I think it was on Rogan, baby.

• 1:12:03Theo Von?

  Yeah, I don't, it's not like, bro.

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, he said, I was just selling. It was an easy way to sell coke. He said, I'll go around.

• 1:12:09Theo Von?

  People call the fire department.

• 1:12:10Speaker 01

  Sorry, Joey, but you did tell that story.

• 1:12:12Theo Von?

  No, people call the fire department, he shows up in a pickup truck selling coke?

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  Well, he says it was a ski lodge place. There was never any fire.

• 1:12:18Theo Von?

  Oh, that's a great idea, actually, dude.

• 1:12:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, the ski lodge was like perfect for him.

• 1:12:23Theo Von?

  Yes, Joey Diaz has talked many times about having been a volunteer firefighter, which is really a drug dealer.

• 1:12:31Theo Von?

  In Aspen, Colorado, in the 1980s.

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  Can you imagine him doing that?

• 1:12:36Theo Von?

  I bet if you were anywhere with Joey in the 1980s, every place was Aspen, Colorado, dude.

• 1:12:40Speaker 01

  I go to a restaurant he recommended in, in Jersey, a Chinese restaurant.

• 1:12:44Theo Von?

  Was it a good spot?

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  King's, oh, he says, oh dude, this is the real deal. This is the Chinese food. You know how he talks, right? So I go there and the guy's name is Freddie, the Chinese guy. I'm like, Freddie, Joey Diaz sent me here. He's like, oh yeah, Joey Diaz, huh? He said, he popular? I say, yeah, he's pretty fucking popular. He's like, oh, I didn't know. Food was excellent. Thank you, Joey. I love that food.

• 1:13:07Theo Von?

  Joey has, it's like, bro, I'd be like, dude, my friend died last week in Buffalo, New York. He's like, oh, next time you're in Buffalo. It doesn't, yeah, it doesn't matter your friend died. It matters. You gotta walk 11 blocks to get this prosciutto, right?

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  Prosciutto.

• 1:13:23Theo Von?

  He's like, the only way you get there is by foot, right? I'm like, it sounds very alarming. But dude, he's always got the best food recommendations.

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:13:31Theo Von?

  He just loves life, man. He just always has a connection to life.

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  Oh, man. What stories. He's so funny.

• 1:13:36Theo Von?

  He's one of the best.

• 1:13:37Speaker 01

  I love him.

• 1:13:38Theo Von?

  Yeah, I don't know anybody like him. But I bet in your line of work, you probably met a lot of guys not like him, but with similar energies like him.

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  Oh, crazy people.

• 1:13:45Theo Von?

  Yes.

• 1:13:46Speaker 01

  When I got on in eighty-three, we still had Vietnam vets that were in the firearm, you know?

• 1:13:50Theo Von?

  Really?

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  Today, it's more college kids, you know? They came out of college and they get, they take the test.

• 1:13:55Theo Von?

  Yeah, a lot of guys that want to be in the calendar or whatever now.

• 1:13:58Speaker 01

  It's a whole different thing, you know? Nothing to, the new guys, you know, they're all great and everything, but it was a di- different atmosphere with the vets guys. And plus, back then, you know, they didn't have computers. And, you know, there was no cameras. It was B C, so you got away with a lot of shit.

• 1:14:11Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:12Speaker 01

  Today, you're on ca- you go on YouTube, they see you fighting the fire, the O V, the roof man.

• 1:14:17Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:17Speaker 01

  If you fuck up, a million people are seeing it right there.

• 1:14:20Theo Von?

  People in the chat are like, get rid of this guy.

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  Like, what's he waiting for? Why doesn't he go in? Where's the hose line? What's taking him so long?

• 1:14:27Theo Von?

  Yeah, yeah, dude, that's a work.

• 1:14:29Speaker 01

  All the comments.

• 1:14:29Theo Von?

  Yeah, like Caruso's a pussy, you know? Like, like dude, he just his first day on the job.

• 1:14:34Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:14:36Theo Von?

  Dude, that is crazy that that's how it's gonna be. Everything's gonna be streamed and people will be able to comment at the moment.

• 1:14:41Speaker 01

  So that's a whole bit. And the other day, I was watching the chief had like a, some kind of iPad thing or something. And they had a drone in the air.

• 1:14:50Theo Von?

  No.

• 1:14:50Speaker 01

  And the thing was showing them all the, the roof, the holes, the fire, the back. It was like a three D thing. It was like, and everything changes, you know?

• 1:14:58Theo Von?

  Yeah, there's already a real estate agent there.

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:01Theo Von?

  Everything's changed.

• 1:15:02Speaker 01

  Changes. So, you know, when I got on, the, the guys from the sixties and seventies, they were tough motherfuckers.

• 1:15:07Theo Von?

  Cause, so someone may come from like, come from war, actually, and

• 1:15:11Speaker 01

  Big time.

• 1:15:11Theo Von?

  And this was just another place where they at least had like camaraderie, they had a brotherhood.

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  Exactly. Cause it was a paramilitary organization, so, you know, you had your lieutenants and your captains and your chiefs.

• 1:15:22Theo Von?

  Did the stress of the job ever affect guys too much? Was there scenarios like that that kind of happened or not really?

• 1:15:28Speaker 01

  Nah, I think most guys loved the job.

• 1:15:30Theo Von?

  What made you end up kind of loving it? Like what made, like what kind of changed for you? Like when you look back?

• 1:15:35Speaker 01

  Brotherhood.

• 1:15:35Theo Von?

  Really?

• 1:15:36Speaker 01

  Oh my God, like family.

• 1:15:38Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's why, you know, I did 15 years in 34 truck from a probie. I did 15 years, I think I left there in 98. But yeah, I mean, I had a lot of friends that I'm still today. You know, we're all together, the wives, the kids, the kids are on the job. Some of them are already captains.

• 1:15:56Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:58Theo Von?

  Yeah, I guess that's something that's so nice is just that, that's one thing that's harder. I even noticed about life, even just like as you get out of times in your life where you're either in, in school, we have like teams that you're on or like your buddies are always around or in the college, you don't really find a lot of places where there's that much camaraderie anymore. You just don't find it.

• 1:16:16Speaker 01

  No, that was it. That was it there, big time. We'd make the meals.

• 1:16:20Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:21Speaker 01

  See, this is a, uh, the two probies are coming off their probation. So when you come off probation, you throw a big party in the firehouse and they, they all got lobsters and filet mignons and, and they have a big celebration. It's a lot, I remember my, my probie meal was, it was a lot of fun. I came off with another guy, Richie, who we both came out of the academy together.

• 1:16:44Theo Von?

  Oh, that's nice.

• 1:16:45Speaker 01

  But yeah, I know all these guys like family. A lot of them aren't, aren't even here with us anymore.

• 1:16:50Theo Von?

  Really?

• 1:16:50Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. And that pick, that's old.

• 1:16:54Theo Von?

  A lot of them has gotten older, passed away even?

• 1:16:55Speaker 01

  Passed away, yeah. Some of them, uh, I don't know, some of them might even passed away on 9/11.

• 1:17:02Theo Von?

  Oh yeah.

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a great shot.

• 1:17:06Theo Von?

  That's awesome, dude.

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:08Theo Von?

  Yeah, I mean, you could just feel so much excitement there.

• 1:17:11Speaker 01

  The fun we would have and the meals that I would make were incredible.

• 1:17:15Theo Von?

  That's why they kept you around, huh?

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  Oh, I was a good cook.

• 1:17:17Theo Von?

  Were you?

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. The first meal I brought in, my mother made meatballs and, and sausage and a whole Sunday gravy and I brought Gavadil and I brought it all in with the bread and everything and the guys loved it. You know, the Irish guys call it red lead. That was what they call tomato sauce. I make red lead tonight. Yeah, red lead. They loved it. They were like, man, that was so good and everything. But you know what, kid? You gotta make it here next time. So I was like, ah, I get it. You gotta make the meal in the firehouse.

• 1:17:47Theo Von?

  Oh, that's part of it.

• 1:17:48Speaker 01

  Everybody comes together. You know, because it could be all over the firehouse, but that's where everybody who's chopping this, who's cooking that, who's sauteing things.

• 1:17:57Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:58Speaker 01

  Who's doing the entertainment.

• 1:17:59Theo Von?

  The camaraderie.

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  I would put my Louis Primer on the stereo and we would just be going, you know, Jump Jiving Well and, uh, yeah, I'm just a gigolo and place would be hopping.

• 1:18:10Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:10Speaker 01

  Oh, it was fun.

• 1:18:11Theo Von?

  Oh, that's nice.

• 1:18:12Speaker 01

  And great meals. About eleven guys would eat at the same, you know, we'd all eat at the same time.

• 1:18:16Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:17Speaker 01

  And then everybody chips in at the end of the meal because, you know, city doesn't pay for anything. We pay for everything.

• 1:18:22Theo Von?

  That's crazy.

• 1:18:23Speaker 01

  All our TV, all they get paid for is the firehouse. Everything else we have to buy.

• 1:18:27Theo Von?

  Really?

• 1:18:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:28Theo Von?

  Is it still that way?

• 1:18:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, still that way.

• 1:18:30Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  Well, when I was on the job, you you bought your own turnout coat and you had a helmet. I brought some helmets here too. And the helmet fit perfectly to your head. They made it a mold to your head. You didn't need a chin strap. It just stayed on there. And then, uh, when Giuliani came in as mayor and we had a couple of fires where guys got killed and everything, and he couldn't believe how shabby we looked. Because we had, nobody fixed their gear. It was, you, you, you, nobody gave you new gear. So you you went years with this gear and it looked

• 1:19:03Theo Von?

  Like the

• 1:19:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, the coats were all ripped up and they, you know, it looked, I loved the way it looked.

• 1:19:08Theo Von?

  Like the Blaze News Bears, huh?

• 1:19:10Speaker 01

  And all the other fire departments around the country and they already had bunker pants and bunker coats. And they had hoods. You gotta wear these. I I hated all of that. I hated the bunker pants. I hated the hoods. And, uh, so that that changed right there from the uniforms. And then they gave us a new helmet. Three sizes, small, medium, large.

• 1:19:29Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 1:19:30Speaker 01

  And they had to have a damn chin strap to hold it on. It was a lot heavier.

• 1:19:33Theo Von?

  Oh.

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  I hated it.

• 1:19:34Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:35Speaker 01

  But you get charges if you didn't wear it. You know, if you took your old helmet and you got caught with it, or you got caught without your bunker pants on. Because it was like the the takeover, you know, it takes a few years before the All time is really give into all the changes.

• 1:19:49Theo Von?

  Everything takes a few years to kind of seep in.

• 1:19:51Speaker 01

  Oh, especially in the fire departments, all tradition.

• 1:19:53Theo Von?

  Yeah. Yeah, dude, that was one of the nice things, even like whenever I would go with my, it was my first girlfriend, her dad. Whenever I'd go over there, it would just be nice to see the guys all spending time together, you know?

• 1:20:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:05Theo Von?

  And they would know other fire departments around the city. It was just like, there was like definitely a, um. It was like this kind of secret society that was a little bit, it was a little hidden kind of, because you don't really think about the fire department all the time, you know?

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  I didn't.

• 1:20:17Theo Von?

  But yeah, but they're right there, dude.

• 1:20:19Speaker 01

  Yep, yep.

• 1:20:20Theo Von?

  And they're, and they're the first ones, they have to get involved when things get bad.

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:24Theo Von?

  You know? Um, yeah, if it's okay to talk about what, what were, what were things like during nine eleven? Like what was? I mean, I know kind of like what some things were like, but when you look back on it, like I.

• 1:20:36Speaker 01

  Well, I got there, I got off work that morning. I did a 24 hour tour on the 10th. And I just got home and I had a power washing, painting business on the side.

• 1:20:45Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:20:46Speaker 01

  And I had my Dominican helper waiting for me at home, you know? So I got home, I, we came in, I'm making coffee. And my wife calls me, she's at work and she says, you see what happened? They flew a plane into the towers. Like, you're kidding me. I put a little TV on that I had in the kitchen and I'm like, holy shit. I'm like, what happened? Did the guy have a heart attack? That, you know, I thought it was like a single plane that the guy just flew in by accident.

• 1:21:10Theo Von?

  Yeah, some guy fucking just couldn't get a radium down or something.

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  You didn't know it was terrorists. So then I take you, we get to the paint store and the guys are all around the counter with a TV and I come in and the guy, Tony turns around the, he says, why the fuck is they? Fucking terrorists flew planes into the fucking towers? And I'm like, holy shit. Now I see both towers going. Now I know. You know, it was an attack. So I says, all right, we gotta get out of here. I got, I had to paint a rabbi's house in, in Woodmere. So I got this painting truck with ladders, Tony's power washing and paint. I raced them. On the way there, I hear the first tower collapses. So I'm like. I'm cursing. I'm like, motherfuckers. My Dominican guy don't speak English. He doesn't really hear, but he knows something bad. He knows the towers. So now I get another 20 minutes, 10 minutes later, whatever, and I hear the second tower

• 1:21:58Speaker 01

  come down and I was out of light. I put my foot on the brake and I just started crying. I was on the steering wheel because I knew how many guys just got killed, you know, from this whole deal.

• 1:22:08Theo Von?

  Oh.

• 1:22:09Speaker 01

  Oh, I was crushed.

• 1:22:10Theo Von?

  So you, like, yeah, at that point, did you know because you were privy to the information of, or you just knew how it worked?

• 1:22:17Speaker 01

  You just knew the way it works, you know, they called in everything once those planes hit, you know.

• 1:22:21Theo Von?

  Could you have gone back in or you weren't even allowed to go in?

• 1:22:24Speaker 01

  When?

• 1:22:25Theo Von?

  Like at that moment, since you had just gotten off of a shift?

• 1:22:27Speaker 01

  No, well, now I'm, I raced to the rabbi's house. I throw the ladders, the paint. I knock on the rabbi's door. I says, listen, Rabbi, I'm a fireman from New York City. I gotta go to the Trade Center. I knew he knew it because I could hear the TV on inside. So he's like, okay. I said, Roberto's gonna take care of everything. I told Roberto, listen, I don't know when I'm gonna see you again. But he's like, no worry, no problem. My boss, I take care. He was such a great guy. So now I'm racing with my van and I'm going in and out of the L, out on the elevated train and I'm got my hand on the horn and I'm pedal to the metal and everybody's probably looking like, what the fuck is with that painter?

• 1:23:07Speaker 01

  I'm in on the wrong side of traffic. I'm just like, eh, like the French Connection. I'm in and out of fucking cars. I get to the firehouse and it's chaotic. Everybody's running in. What are we gonna do? Who's going? How are we gonna get there? One guy said he was taking a boat because my firehouse in Howard Beach was on a canal. Yeah, so I, my friend Whipper comes in. He's got a Suburban. And my friend Bobby comes and he was like, I'm going in with my Suburban. Whoever wants to go, I'm leaving now.

• 1:23:34Theo Von?

  And were there some guys that did not want to go, did not want to be involved?

• 1:23:37Speaker 01

  No, everybody went.

• 1:23:38Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:23:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we grabbed our gear. A lot of guys went to a staging area. They made that mistake because they got stuck at the staging area. We took the, we took my friend's Suburban right to the pile, right there. I mean, we, we, we were heading down Woodhaven Boulevard. And I'm like-

• 1:23:54Theo Von?

  And there was no traffic?

• 1:23:56Speaker 01

  It was traffic. I mean, the shit hit the fan already. So, the Whip is driving crazy, my friend the Whipper. And I'm like Whip, don't get anybody killed. There are enough people already, you know, slow down a little. So we get to the LIE and the cops have it shut off, the entrance to the Long Island Expressway. So I stick my turnout coat out the window and they move the cop cars and they wave us in, you know.

• 1:24:20Theo Von?

  That had to feel crazy. Was there some, I mean, obviously there's excitement, probably a ton of adrenaline.

• 1:24:25Speaker 01

  Fucking adrenaline. What are we gonna do when we get there?

• 1:24:29Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:24:29Speaker 01

  We said, we're gonna be in ambulance. We're gonna take bodies and we're gonna rush them to the hospital. That's what we figured. So now, we're racing down there and we get to the Midtown Tunnel and my friend Whip is the driver, man. He's the best. We're doing a hundred. And we're going through the Midtown Tunnel and it's like a time warp with the lights and the yellow bricks. We're doing a hundred miles an hour. We come out, we head downtown, you know, by the Midtown Tunnel, we head down. He takes us right to the rubble. And we get out of the car and now it's dark, like an eclipse. And all the stuff is coming down on us, all the paper and the ash. It was dark, the walls were standing still.

• 1:25:08Theo Von?

  Did it look something like this or it looked different?

• 1:25:10Speaker 01

  Just like that, only that's a few days, week later or whatever, maybe. But it was dark and when we got out of the car, we couldn't breathe. So we had to rip up t-shirts and we put them around our faces to breathe. And then I noticed there was an old hardware store right across the street with like a glass door. So I grabbed the tire iron, I went over, I smashed the door open. And we all went in, we grabbed ropes and masks and sledgehammers, whatever. Cops came in behind us, everybody was grabbing shit. So now we start to climb, you know, and it was like the top of the trade center was only about six stories high now, you know? And we were climbing and there was nobody around. It was quiet, dark, eerie.

• 1:25:54Speaker 01

  And we heard all the pass alarms going off that when firemen aren't moving, makes a screechy noise. And you could hear that all around, you know? And there was maybe one or two other firemen. We were the only ones there. And we were going in and out of voids, in and out of voids, going, anybody hear us banging on shit? And waiting to see if that happens and nobody, nobody. Finally, we worked our all the way up to the roof of the Trade Center, which was Astroturf. And now you could see, and it looked like it went off for a mile, you know, it was like a movie set. It was so crazy. And on the one side was the E A B bank and it was on fire. And they had, excuse me, they had mesh, like the black mesh covering it.

• 1:26:36Speaker 01

  And all you saw was the black mesh and the flames coming out. It was like satanic. Oh, it was so creepy. And so when I were climbing all, all around, inside and out of voids and we did this for like, maybe to about one o'clock, we got there at eleven thirty. And my friend Bobby says, Tony, I'm, my throat's closing up. We gotta get water. So I said, Whip, we gotta get water, we gotta head to the street. Now we're now, now it's like it's one o'clock, people are coming in from everywhere. Firemen, cops, firemen, National Guard was coming in. So we worked our way to the street and then we needed water.

• 1:27:16Speaker 01

  And there was a guy, a Wall Street guy with expensive suit on covered in cement dust. And he had a bottle of water, you know, like.

• 1:27:26Theo Von?

  Those big bottles?

• 1:27:27Speaker 01

  The big bottle and he was going around giving everybody water and, you know, trying to wash their eyes out and shit. And we were just waiting our turn to get some of that water. And as we were doing that, these four women, they come out of nowhere. They set up two barrels, a piece of plywood, they had won the bread and peanut butter and jelly, and they started making sandwiches out of nowhere. Ah, it humbled. And I got a little emotional because it was like, you know, to see all these people coming together, right at this time, no matter what your race, creed, color, working together. So we passed the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, we had the water and we went back.

• 1:28:07Speaker 01

  But before we got up, a deputy gets up on a, on a car and he yells to whoever can hear, you know, and it was like. Six truck, we just got a call, they're trapped, they're in a shaft and we're gonna find them.

• 1:28:22Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 1:28:23Speaker 01

  We were like, this is the first time we're hearing anybody's alive. We're like, yeah, yeah. So we were, everybody starts running for get gear and there's a rescue truck that was crushed. And we ran over to the rescue truck and we started opening up compartments. I grabbed a jackhammer. We grabbed some big ass jackhammer, bits, bottles for air and now we start heading out to look for them.

• 1:28:46Theo Von?

  So you at least had a mission.

• 1:28:48Speaker 01

  Oh, we were on a mission now, you know, now we're looking for it. So now another two hours climbing up and down these kinds. But meanwhile, building seven, which is the big building everybody talks about, was on fire from the moment we got there. Every floor.

• 1:29:01Theo Von?

  Really?

• 1:29:01Speaker 01

  Burned every floor.

• 1:29:02Theo Von?

  And what caused that fire?

• 1:29:04Speaker 01

  Just the collapse, you know, they had the two trades centers.

• 1:29:07Theo Von?

  Oh, the collapse of the other?

• 1:29:08Speaker 01

  Right in front of them, yeah. Yeah, there was a lot of buildings on fire. So, uh, so now we, uh, we're working up and down and I take a fall. I fall into a void and I fall on my right shoulder and my Bobby comes running over. He's like, kiddo, you all right? I said, yeah, I fucking hurt my shoulder. He helps me up. I take the jackhammer. I throw it into a void. I'm like, fuck this shit. We had no radios. We didn't know if they found anybody or anything. Oh, excuse me, my pin.

• 1:29:35Theo Von?

  It was almost impossible.

• 1:29:36Speaker 01

  It was impossible. Finally we threw all this shit down because it was a couple of hours already climbing again. And when you're climbing up these big jagged pieces of concrete.

• 1:29:43Theo Von?

  Sure, scary.

• 1:29:43Speaker 01

  In and out, in and out. And we made our way into a, uh, a store, like a high end store that was maybe three stories up. And we went in through the window because.

• 1:29:52Theo Von?

  Three stories up what?

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

  High because the rubble was that high. So we crawled into their window and it was a high end women's store. And it's dusty and dark and, and we're crawling around. I'm looking under all the clothes to see if there's any, anything. We're yelling, anybody here, anybody here? Nobody there, so we worked our way back out. And now we went to the Marriott, which was a hotel right there. And we came in one of these big, broken windows.

• 1:30:18Theo Von?

  It was right there at Ground Zero, huh?

• 1:30:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we climbed down the debris into the lobby of the hotel. We're the only ones there, you know? So we're like, holy shit, look at this place, you know? We're looking around.

• 1:30:31Theo Von?

  And it was kind of kept okay?

• 1:30:33Speaker 01

  It was a big lobby, you know, there was ash and broken glass and shit, but it wasn't collapsed.

• 1:30:39Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:30:39Speaker 01

  So I said, look over there, I see a fireman sitting at one of those little desks in the lobby. We're like, holy shit. So we go running over, first fireman we're seeing, you know? And he's covered in shit, you know, no helmet, he's like pale white, he's in shock. And he's sitting there and we're like, holy shit buddy, you okay, okay? And he turns and he looks at me and it's one of the young guys that got on rotation. He just left our house and they sent him to Manhattan. We called the monkey man.

• 1:31:08Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:31:08Speaker 01

  I'm like, holy shit, monkey, what the fuck? And he just, he looked up at me and he, and he said, all my guys are dead, they're all dead. And we were like, oh shit. And I'm like kind of rubbing his shoulder, my other guys are like, monkey, monkey, you all right? You all right? And he, he was in shock, you know? So we're like, look monkey, we gotta go, man, you know, you're okay, we're gonna leave you here. And it was funny because the phone was on the table with the little messenger light blinking. It was the weirdest sight, you know? And we left him, we climbed back out, out the window, back onto the debris. It's a long day. Yeah, we were there till like nine thirty at night from eleven thirty in the morning. So we were going along, we found a hose line, believe it or not, a hose line all the way from the Hudson.

• 1:31:52Speaker 01

  And there was a big opening with a, like a void that had black smoke was pouring out of it. So we had the line and for about an hour and a half, we just sat there. We're building seven about a hundred yards away from us burning. And we sat there and one guy would go around through the voids and the other two guys would just hold the hose line, pouring it into this hole from hell. I mean, it was like, it was horrible. So all of a sudden we're doing that and we see this chief and he says, he starts yelling at us. He's between us and building seven and he says, drop that line, get out of here. This building's gonna come down. So we were like, holy shit, okay. We cracked it open a little, wedged it into some rocks so the water would keep going down the hole.

• 1:32:33Speaker 01

  And we took off and we were like, hey, it was like five o'clock. We're like, we're hungry, we're thirsty, we're tired, we're covered in shit. Let's go back to the rig, his suburban, and we'll go uptown and we'll get something to eat and then we'll come back. So we, we get off the pile, like, where's the car? I think it's a few blocks this way. So now we heading down and there's nobody around still. I mean, as far as, you know, besides firemen coming in. So I don't know if you ever heard of Penny Crone, but she was like a popular reporter on Fox News. She was a real tough girl. She was, yeah, Penny Crone. And I don't know if she was Fox, but there she is. It's very well-known New York reporter.

• 1:33:15Theo Von?

  She was out there on the street?

• 1:33:16Speaker 01

  She was in the street when we were walking and she had a microphone and a cameraman. And she came running up to us. She's like, guys, guys, can you give me some information what's like down there? So the three of us are standing there and she puts this big microphone in front of me and she goes, can you tell me? I said, oh, it's bad, really bad. She put it in front of my other friend Bobby. Bad, he says, horrible. My other friend says the same thing. She's getting nothing out of it. She's like, she pulls back, you know, to ask us another question and I'm like, holy shit, look over there. And there's this Asian woman covered in dirt, bleeding from her head, and she's got a suitcase in her hand. So like, we run over to her. We're like, man, man, are you okay?

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  She was in shock or whatever and she just kept like looking and my friend went to take the suitcase. She yanked it back, you know, and then she just walked away and we were like, holy shit, that was weird. What do you think's in that suitcase? My friend said, money. The way she had that grip on that day, it was full of money.

• 1:34:13Theo Von?

  Batch of yen in there, I bet.

• 1:34:16Speaker 01

  A lot of yen.

• 1:34:17Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:34:18Speaker 01

  Some egg rolls, I don't know. But we we got to the suburban and it was covered. Now it was it was green. It was now gray. So we go get in and it was like, Theo, the seats, the leather seats were like, oh, we're squishing our backs in, you know, we were getting comfortable. I was almost forty at that time.

• 1:34:36Theo Von?

  I can't even imagine. And the fact is, you're alive. Like, you've been through the, I can't even imagine, like, what your body's going through.

• 1:34:42Speaker 01

  Oh, we were beat, we were covered in shit. And so it's funny because he put the, uh, he put the car on and he started up and he put the air conditioner on and it blew smoke, it blew dust out. It's like Lily Munster's vacuum cleaner. Thing was, I'm like, oh, everybody's getting to a choke into things, blowing smoke out all the the dust. Like, thanks, we needed that. Now we're heading uptown, even with the windows open, the dust is flying off the rig. And we go up to sixteen truck, up in midtown somewhere, and, uh, we take a break. I go in, we get a drink of water. I I call my wife.

• 1:35:18Theo Von?

  What has she been thinking?

• 1:35:19Speaker 01

  I don't know. It's like, you know, five thirty, six. Oh, I forgot to say, before we got to the car, building seven collapsed.

• 1:35:26Theo Von?

  Oh.

• 1:35:26Speaker 01

  We just missed it. We heard a roar. My friend said seven just came down. So we were like, holy shit, we ju- we just missed it.

• 1:35:34Theo Von?

  But you've been near that all day down there.

• 1:35:36Speaker 01

  All day, it was burning.

• 1:35:37Theo Von?

  Because there's a lot of speculation about building seven over the years.

• 1:35:39Speaker 01

  I think it's all bullshit.

• 1:35:40Theo Von?

  You do?

• 1:35:41Speaker 01

  Because I was there, yeah. I mean, it's it's kind of gets me a little, uh, because I I can, I I don't know what really happened that day. No, you know, who knows, you know, who was involved, whatever. I I have no idea.

• 1:35:51Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:35:52Speaker 01

  But all I know is building seven was burning all day long, from first floor to the top floor, every window. So, you know, people were saying there was explosions and this and that.

• 1:36:01Theo Von?

  But you saw firsthand that it had been kind of cooking all day.

• 1:36:03Speaker 01

  And all the firemen that I ever talked to that were there that day, no one, everybody says there was no fucking explosions, but. And they have all these things, like, the other day, I thought I saw an AI bullshit thing about guys saying, uh, they heard explosions, like, they're putting that out on the internet. And it looks real. You think they're really firemen. You gotta be careful today. You never know what's real.

• 1:36:22Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah, I agree with that. You can't tell.

• 1:36:24Speaker 01

  You can almost tell a little bit today, but imagine a few years from now with the AI, you'll never be able to tell.

• 1:36:29Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:29Speaker 01

  You'll need like an AI detection kit.

• 1:36:31Theo Von?

  They probably will have that.

• 1:36:33Speaker 01

  Maybe we can get in on that. We could come up with it first.

• 1:36:35Theo Von?

  Yeah, okay, sure. I mean, if that's what we met for today, to be able to start that and like keep that out of the world.

• 1:36:43Speaker 01

  That could have saved the world.

• 1:36:43Theo Von?

  What about over time with nine eleven, there's been a lot of conspiracy theories and stuff like that. Has any of that grown in the world of the of the fire department culture or anything like that? Or is it person by person or because you guys were one of the most affected groups, you know?

• 1:36:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, three hundred and forty three men we lost that day. It's hard to even get over that number.

• 1:37:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a lot and we knew it was a lot. When we got, we left sixteen truck, we stopped at a Genevieve drugstore and somewhere in Manhattan. And we went in and we got a couple of bottles of water, about four giant Milky Ways and some batteries for our flashlights. So now we're covered in shit, you know, we're up at the counter and the young girl's ringing us up and she goes, you guys come from the Trade Center? So my friend Bobby says, what gives you that idea? So she just like looked and grinned. She's like, no charge for you guys. So we took off, we ate our Milky Ways, we had our water and then we went back to the pile.

• 1:37:40Theo Von?

  Is there a picture from that day, Nick? Do you have it where we, you know? If you have it, just pull it up. Don't even wait for me to see that.

• 1:37:45Speaker 01

  That's my two buddies. That was like a couple of weeks later.

• 1:37:48Theo Von?

  That's Whip and the other guy?

• 1:37:50Speaker 01

  That's my friend Andrew and Marty. That's back, you know, you would have to go down and work at the Trade Center.

• 1:37:56Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:57Speaker 01

  And it was very unhealthy. A lot of guys got cancer. A lot of guys died after the Trade Center.

• 1:38:03Theo Von?

  We just had a breathing expert in the other day, this guy, James Nestor. And he has a New York Times bestseller, a book called Breath. And he talks about, is it ground z- glass?

• 1:38:13Speaker 01

  Ground zero.

• 1:38:14Theo Von?

  Ground zero lung? Ground glass lung.

• 1:38:16Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 1:38:17Theo Von?

  He talks about ground glass lung.

• 1:38:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, the glass.

• 1:38:20Theo Von?

  It's a condition that that happened to a lot of people who were first responders at ground zero. Have you heard about this?

• 1:38:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I never heard about the ground glass, but of course the breathing, everybody was in, you know. You, if you were there for like a month or two, some guys were there two, three, four months. My friend Bobby was there the whole time, you know, he just got his nephew on the job. It was his nephew's first job and he was in the trouble. He was there every day looking for his body, day and night.

• 1:38:52Theo Von?

  Looking for his nephew?

• 1:38:53Speaker 01

  Nephew, yeah, for his sister. Yeah, it was.

• 1:38:57Theo Von?

  God, that's heartbreaking, huh?

• 1:38:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's a good guy. He's a great guy, too.

• 1:39:01Theo Von?

  Who, his nephew?

• 1:39:02Speaker 01

  No, my friend Bobby, this is his, he's the boxing, he runs the fire department boxing.

• 1:39:08Theo Von?

  He is? Bring him out, let's get a picture of him.

• 1:39:10Speaker 01

  Bobby, you see him on there, Bobby McGuire, FDNY Boxing, he's a Golden Glove champ.

• 1:39:17Theo Von?

  Is he a pretty interesting guy?

• 1:39:18Speaker 01

  Oh, you wouldn't, I don't know if you know the Knicks, but his uncles are Dicky McGuire and Al McGuire and Marquette and...

• 1:39:26Theo Von?

  They're Knicks?

• 1:39:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:27Theo Von?

  Oh, there he is.

• 1:39:28Speaker 01

  His father was John McGuire and he was like a big guy in New York. Jimmy Breslin actually called him the king of Queens because he opened the first gay bar in Queens back in the day.

• 1:39:42Theo Von?

  Oh, that's incredible, man. Oh.

• 1:39:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:45Theo Von?

  He sounds like an interesting guy. I'd love to get to meet him sometime.

• 1:39:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:49Theo Von?

  I bet he's got some great stories too, just from the boxing history of it. You know Joey Diaz, um, used to, uh, he used to shovel ice out of James J. Braddock's driveway over in Jersey.

• 1:40:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I heard him say that.

• 1:40:02Theo Von?

  That's pretty wild.

• 1:40:03Speaker 01

  He'd give him like a couple of bucks.

• 1:40:05Theo Von?

  Yeah, give him a couple of bucks. And Joey would be like, "This guy's been punched in the head so many times, he thought he'd give me a five, he gave me a 10." But that's just a wild story right there.

• 1:40:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:40:17Theo Von?

  Oh, go back and show the guys, that's Marty right there?

• 1:40:19Speaker 01

  That's Bobby, Bobby McGuire.

• 1:40:21Theo Von?

  Bobby McGuire, and what was his nephew's name, do you remember?

• 1:40:24Speaker 01

  Um, no, I don't remember. My wife might, but I don't.

• 1:40:29Theo Von?

  Alan.

• 1:40:29Speaker 01

  Right. Alan. He was a lifeguard in Rockaway, the kid.

• 1:40:34Theo Von?

  His last name was Alan and he just started on the, uh...

• 1:40:37Speaker 01

  He just started, it was like his first job. And Bobby was there and now his breathing is, you know, he's had a lot of breathing problems, once you're there too long. So anyway, they're having a fight in Madison Square Garden in March, we fight the cops every year.

• 1:40:51Theo Von?

  Yeah?

• 1:40:52Speaker 01

  It's called the Battle of the Badges.

• 1:40:53Theo Von?

  Who's won over time, over the years, who's won the most, you think?

• 1:40:56Speaker 01

  Well, you know, the cops are double the amount of pool that they can get, they're twice as big an organization as us. You know, we're like, we're like 30,000, they're like 60,000. But we still, we get some good fighters and we beat them quite a few times. We fight, they fight everywhere, they fight in England, they fight in Ireland.

• 1:41:16Theo Von?

  Oh, really?

• 1:41:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, they'll fight any fire department, any cops.

• 1:41:19Theo Von?

  So Bobby and his gang, they kind of, this is like a thing they do all year?

• 1:41:22Speaker 01

  All year, yeah. Oh, he's so busy.

• 1:41:24Theo Von?

  So he runs this, the FDNY Boxing Club?

• 1:41:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:27Theo Von?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:41:27Speaker 01

  They raise like hundreds of thousands for Tunnels to Towers every year.

• 1:41:32Theo Von?

  And what is Tunnels to Towers?

• 1:41:33Speaker 01

  Uh, that's with the, uh, the, uh, like World Trade Center, uh, Foundation where, uh, the guy's brother ran through, from Staten Island, he ran through the tunnel to get to the Trade Center.

• 1:41:45Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 1:41:46Speaker 01

  And he passed away. And, uh, so they started this organization. It's, it's huge.

• 1:41:52Theo Von?

  Oh, that's beautiful, man. We'll make a donation to them.

• 1:41:55Speaker 01

  Oh, that'd be great.

• 1:41:56Theo Von?

  Yeah, right here. Born from the tragedy in 11, the Tunnels to Towers Foundation carries out its mission to do good by providing mortgage-free homes to Gold Star and fallen first responder families with young children and building specially adapted smart homes for catastrophically injured veterans and first responders. Wow.

• 1:42:13Speaker 01

  They ran through the tunnel with their gear on to get to Manhattan.

• 1:42:16Theo Von?

  Oh. Oh, the FDNY Boxing Club is comprised of active duty members FDNY and EMS who train on their own time established in 1982. FDNY Boxing has spent 40 years raising funds for worthwhile charities.

• 1:42:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're very good at it.

• 1:42:31Theo Von?

  Through spirited competition. Yeah, man, we'll make a, we'll make a donation to them.

• 1:42:35Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, I'm going.

• 1:42:36Theo Von?

  bravest boxing team will defend the Big Apple in the second international battle of the badges, huh?

• 1:42:41Speaker 01

  The funny thing is the best fights are in the crowd, the cops and the firemen going at it. Holy shit, the brawls. One time I was there and, uh, this, this girl cop, you know, she was bad mouthing some fireman and she threw a soda at the guy. And the one fireman says, hey, you know, I don't hit firemen. The other fireman said, I do. And he clocked her.

• 1:43:02Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:43:02Speaker 01

  Boom, she went flying over the thing. The whole fight broke out. It was crazy.

• 1:43:06Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:43:07Speaker 01

  I mean, once you throw a soda at you.

• 1:43:09Theo Von?

  Yeah, and with all the, people getting sex changes now, you don't know who's got what on them.

• 1:43:14Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:43:14Theo Von?

  You know, I'm not frisking your first to find out.

• 1:43:16Speaker 01

  What are you packing?

• 1:43:17Theo Von?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, how is the, how has the department changed since you got involved in now?

• 1:43:23Speaker 01

  Well, from when I was got on and then in like in, uh, The early, uh, late nineties, mid nineties, computers came in. And that changed a lot. Computers and now, uh, digital things. We had fax machines and computers. And that changed a lot of things. Before it was just writing in a book, you know, now more things are more digital. So they had a little more, uh, eyes on you, you know, you couldn't get away with as much.

• 1:43:49Theo Von?

  Right, a little more technology, stuff like that.

• 1:43:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, cause back in the day, you know, the, the bosses ran the firehouse. There was nobody else that knew what was going on. Whatever they put in the book is what, what it was.

• 1:43:57Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:59Speaker 01

  In fact, when I bought my house, it was a funny story. I was twenty four. And I told my boss, I said, I told the bank, yeah, this is where I work if you want to check on my employment. And I gave him the number to the truck office.

• 1:44:11Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:12Speaker 01

  So I said, now this is what I make, you know, and it was like twice what I was making. He's like, ah, you can't say that. I said, just tell the bank, don't worry about it. And it worked.

• 1:44:21Theo Von?

  What, um, yeah, what did Christine say when you called her that? That must've been crazy, huh?

• 1:44:25Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, well, her, her sister answered the phone, Bernie, and I was like, Bernie, and she's like, Tony, how the fuck are you? What's going on? I said, oh, my God, we just got, uh, firehouse, we're taking a break, uh, and we're all okay. And, uh, and I'll talk to my wife, tell her, you know, I love her and I'll see her in a bit, I'll call her later. So hung up and we went back to the, we went back to the pile. So now we get back on the pile. It's like, what do we want? We, first we're walking along and guys are like seeing other guys that you know, you're hugging. So my friend Bobby sees a guy that's hugging and I'm standing there like on a plateau. And this guy hits me in the fireman, he goes, buddy, you're standing on somebody. And I was like, oh shit. And I looked down and this guy in this three-piece suit, he's like part of the ground.

• 1:45:10Speaker 01

  He's looking up at me and I'm like, oh my God. That was the first body I saw all day.

• 1:45:15Theo Von?

  Ah.

• 1:45:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, so now we're like, okay, so now we're moving along. What do you want to do? They started a bucket brigade. I don't know, we must have had a thousand Home Depot buckets. And you would pass a bucket and take a bucket.

• 1:45:28Theo Von?

  Just moving water along.

• 1:45:29Speaker 01

  For like hours, we were doing that, you know, and it was starting. Yeah, it was getting dark out, you know, the day was getting, it was like around seven thirty, eight o'clock. And so now we're doing this for hours, my back is killing me. And all of a sudden, we hear all this yelling and everybody's yelling and cheering. It's nine thirty at night, you know, and nine o'clock. We're like, what is that? What is that? My friend Bobby goes, look, look over there down there. We looked down and here comes a parade of ironworkers with heavy machinery, cranes. They got their hard hats on, cutoff shirts. Everybody's got their fists in the air, they're all hanging off the machines. Everybody's cheering like we won the Super Bowl. It was like, it was a drop in the bucket, but they got right to work, started taking off all the heavy shit.

• 1:46:14Speaker 01

  You know, I mean, it had months, almost a year to go, but it was just the start.

• 1:46:20Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:20Speaker 01

  And it just felt so good.

• 1:46:22Theo Von?

  Like we had a chance.

• 1:46:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then finally we were like, you know, let's start heading home, you know? And I had met a few guys heading home. And I was thinking in the back of my mind, all the guys, you know, that that got killed. We had no idea how many yet.

• 1:46:35Theo Von?

  Can't even imagine.

• 1:46:35Speaker 01

  And I run into a friend of mine and he was off in a rescue company. And I said, hey, John, Tony, how you doing? He goes, you know, Tony, Jerry was working and Jerry was like one of my best friends. And I was like, oh, God, I just like stepped back as I knew he was, he was in Rescue, Rescue One. I was devastated. My friend Whip saw it and he put his arm around me. He said, come on, who knew, let's go, let's leave. And I was like, oh, I was, I'm still emotional over it.

• 1:47:07Theo Von?

  It's heartbreaking. What was his name, Jerry what?

• 1:47:10Speaker 01

  Jerry Nevins.

• 1:47:11Theo Von?

  Jerry Nevins, let's see a picture of him, huh?

• 1:47:14Speaker 01

  Funny story, when he told me he was gonna leave to go to rescue, I was like, you motherfucker, are you fucking kidding me? It was like, cause everybody was leaving, you know, I was there 15 years, I was losing guys left and right, they were getting made lieutenant. He wanted to go to a rescue company, we used to bash rescue all the time. Rescue's like a special company, you know, when a, when a truckie or a fireman gets in trouble, they send a rescue guy to get them, they're like expertise.

• 1:47:38Theo Von?

  They're like the Marines or whatever, kind of, or no?

• 1:47:40Speaker 01

  Well, the Marines, but they're like specialists.

• 1:47:42Theo Von?

  Is that Jerry?

• 1:47:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's Jerry.

• 1:47:44Theo Von?

  Oh, there he is.

• 1:47:45Speaker 01

  And they were on 42nd Street, Rescue One. So they're right in the middle of Times Square.

• 1:47:49Theo Von?

  Oh, they were there.

• 1:47:50Speaker 01

  Oh, he made so many rescues, it was amazing.

• 1:47:53Theo Von?

  Wow, so he enjoyed it once he got over there?

• 1:47:55Speaker 01

  Oh, I used to go to some medal days and, and he'd be there and, you know, two, three medals, you know, hanging off of buildings, scaffoldings. He say, you know, there was a lot of times in midtown, the scaffoldings would break and they'd have to go over ropes and get these guys. And, uh, yeah, he was just a great fire, but when he told me he was going to rescue, I was crushed. I was like, you gotta be kidding me, he told me in the middle of a box, we were checking out a building. So now I get back in the rig and we're going down the, uh, St. Nicholas Avenue and I turned the ladder all the way out, so now it looks like a square, you know? And I'm like this way looking at him, he's looking, he's like, what the fuck? And I'm like, fuck you.

• 1:48:36Speaker 01

  And, and I, we, we straighten it out, now we're crossing over Amsterdam Avenue and I seen him put the lights on, like, okay, we're getting a run. I see the boss on the phone, you know, and he's, he's taking down the information, puts his arm out, like, we gotta run, it sounds like a job. Numerous calls. Numerous calls means you're going to work. That means people are calling, you know, I see a fire, I see a fire, I see a fire.

• 1:48:58Theo Von?

  Right, it's not just some weirdo with a, with a Ouija board, yeah.

• 1:49:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, no Ouija boards, no fake alarms. You hear numerous calls, you know you're going to work. So now we go around Broadway and I see we come up and it's a second floor. It's blowing out like four windows and there's an awning with off the fire escape on the second floor. And it's still not fire out. I gotta get in there. I'm the O V. That's my job. So now I'm getting a ladder out. I'm putting the ladder up. The Dominican guys in the street, they're helping me. Place the ladder into the thing. I climb up the ladder. I smash the window out. I put my mask on and I drop in. Now it's blowing all the other rooms. This room is getting ready to blow, you know, it gets hot.

• 1:49:39Speaker 01

  So now I'm in there and I'm searching around and I I I I get lost. I get a little, I get pumped into a bureau on my knees. And I get disorientated and I and I'm gotten getting scared because my ears are starting to burn. I know it's gonna light up.

• 1:49:56Speaker 01

  So, which is crazy. I got caught in a closet. You never think, how'd you get caught in a closet, right? But I'm crawling in thinking it's an opening and I turned in there and I'm in this closet. Now I can't get out of the closet. I'm I'm going around in a circle. My ears are burning and all of a sudden I hear Jerry. He came in behind me and Jerry had a bite bar, which was like totally illegal. Instead of having a mask with a a net on, it was like you had a little bite bar in the mask. So you didn't need that. You just held it with your teeth, which was totally outlawed, but it made it easier to take it on and off. So I hear him say, Tony. And I'm like, Jerry. He's like, you gotta get out of here. It's it's gonna light up.

• 1:50:36Speaker 01

  I'm like, I can't find my way out. I was like taking my mask off, calling for my mother. I thought I thought I was I was a dead man.

• 1:50:42Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:50:43Speaker 01

  And then all of a sudden, I heard the engine at the door and I heard this guy McCarthy yelling, kick its ass, kick its ass, hit it, hit it. I heard the water coming in and I was like, oh, it was music to my ears. I was gonna live again. And then after that, when I was in the street, I was like a zombie, you know, and Jerry was like, yo, what what the fuck's wrong with you? I said, dude, I was fucking close. He just laughed, you know, but that was it. He went to rescue the next day. I never even thanked him for coming in after me that day.

• 1:51:12Theo Von?

  Oh.

• 1:51:14Theo Von?

  Man, yeah, I mean, it's just even the stories are so like exhilarating. I can imagine like, I can't even imagine what it's like, really.

• 1:51:22Speaker 01

  We were putting a fire out and I made a cover of a magazine. I think you could bring it up. It was called Fire Command. I, I, I didn't know what it was, you know, it was like one of these buff magazines. Yeah, that's me in the middle.

• 1:51:33Theo Von?

  In a neck brace?

• 1:51:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I look like an Italian organ grinder, monkey man.

• 1:51:38Theo Von?

  Right, I thought you were gonna show me that you made the calendar.

• 1:51:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got the little ringlets in my hair. I got the bow ties on. And a friend next to me, Kenny, he was a probie. So funny story, we had to take it, this line up the fire escape because we got called in as an extra engine. It was a lot of fire. People were trapped. They were having a hard time putting the fire out from the inside. So we're taking the line up the fire. Now I'm in the engine. I'm detailed. I'm never hardly in the engine, so, but when they need a guy and you got an extra guy, you go across the floor. So now I'm in the engine and we're taking this line up the fire escape to the fifth floor. And the boss is yelling, this boss, but there's Joe McLaughlin, he's yelling, Richie, get in there, hit it, hit it. Finally, we get, they charge the line. We tie it off to the fire escape. I mean, it's a lot of water going up that high.

• 1:52:25Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:25Speaker 01

  He's hitting the water, the guy right here, Richie, that's squinting his eyes. And he's hitting the water and we're pushing our way in. We made it up to the fire floor escape. We pushed the fire in and now we're crawling in, we're climbing in through the window. The boss is yelling, they're looking at us, Richie, they're looking at us because we're outside on the fire escape. We get in, the ceiling comes down on our heads, all this hot plaster and shit's fucking burned my neck. So now we're getting in, we get to like, the, the engine on the other side is coming and they're making a good push. They're putting the fire out. We're putting the fire out. So now we're at this like wall with a window and I'm, I'm on top of something, me and another guy. We're like kneeling. I thought it was a pillow from, uh, the couch.

• 1:53:08Speaker 01

  So the boss tells the probie, take the line and shoot the water out the window. And it'll take a lot of smoke so we could start to see what's going on here. And as they're doing that, you could start to see a little, the boss takes his mask off and he goes, holy shit, look what you're kneeling on. I looked down and we're kneeling on a corpse with no head, no legs and no arms. And he's all like a crispy burnt. We're like, ah, we all jump off. We're like, holy shit. I thought it was a couch piece, you know, and it was this, that's what happened. They killed this guy. They cut him up and then they lit him on, they lit the place on fire. That's why there's so much fire. You get a lot of fire in the middle of the day. It's usually arson. Somebody poured gasoline or something.

• 1:53:48Theo Von?

  Yeah. So that was a murder, huh?

• 1:53:50Speaker 01

  It was a murder. So anyway, before that, Kenny's a probie. He's probably about 21 years old. And he was in softball and he hurt his legs sliding into second base. So we were on inspection. I said, Kenny, what happened to your leg? He said, oh, I cut it on softball. I said, oh, that looks fucking terrible. Then we got that run to the fire. So now we're leaving the fire. We're going down the steps. I said, we're all going sick. We're tapping out, right? So I saw, we're gonna go with our necks from the ceiling coming down. I said, Kenny, take that bandage off and tell him you got burnt on your leg.

• 1:54:21Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:23Speaker 01

  So we get in the street. The street's busy. It's all fire department cops. There's reporters in the street and everything. And the fire department doctor comes running over to us. And I said, yeah, we, the ceiling came down on our heads. And he's like, oh, and I says, and this guy got burned on his leg. And he looks, he goes, Kenny's leg up, he looks at the softball injury and he goes, third degree burns, patch this man right up. So I look at Kenny because he didn't know, you know, it was his first take. So now we, they take us, we're on the wall, like on Malcolm X Boulevard. And they take us to, we said, where's the boss? We don't know where Joe McLaughlin is. So we see a bunch of people like standing around. Somebody's on the ground. They're taking pictures. I go, we go over there where we see the boss.

• 1:55:07Speaker 01

  He's on a stretcher, getting his head taped down. And they're all taking pictures of him. We're like, Lou, Lou, you okay? You okay? And he looks up, he goes, get the fuck out of my pictures, he says. We're like, ah, he's okay. So they put us in the bus. There he is. Ah, the best, Joe McLaughlin, CPO Joe. He was, you know, he was in the seventeen truck in the Bronx in the war years. So he was like, he was a well-rounded fireman, a tough as nails.

• 1:55:35Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:55:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. So he says, get the fuck out of my pictures. So we're laughing. Everybody's taking pictures of him. So now, uh, they take us to the hospital, you know? So we're in the emergency room in Columbia Press, and the young nurses are patching up on, and they're laughing with us, you know? And it's a busy emergency room. And Kenny's got his thing on. And so all of a sudden, this like middle-aged head nurse comes in, you know? Good-looking woman, probably forty or so. And so she goes to Kenny's leg and she moves the bandage. She makes a face, you know? And she's like, when did this happen? And the kitty's sitting there, you know? He's like, oh, we're all looking at him laughing, you know? And she just like patches it up. She goes, you're lucky we love you guys. And we're like, oh, we love you too, you know?

• 1:56:20Speaker 01

  Busted. So about a week or two, a couple of weeks later, I come into the firehouse and this guy says, hey, here's one of the, the superstars. I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, you made the cover of a magazine. So I'm like, holy shit, you're kidding. So now I go in the kitchen and everybody's clapping and everything. They already have the picture in a frame, right? But they changed it from report on firefighters' injuries. They put report on firefighters faking injuries.

• 1:56:47Theo Von?

  I was gonna say, huh?

• 1:56:48Speaker 01

  So, so they put captions on everybody. So you see the woman with her arms crossed and the bandana? Her caption said, I know those motherfuckers are faking.

• 1:57:00Speaker 01

  And then there's a cop like walking here and he goes, yeah, chief, I got those fakers right here. And then this salty Harlem fireman is looking at us and his thing says, you guys disgust me.

• 1:57:13Speaker 01

  Look at that sad face. Oh my God. That ringlet hair.

• 1:57:17Theo Von?

  I love how you guys already have your neck braces on too.

• 1:57:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, you got the braces on.

• 1:57:21Theo Von?

  Oh yeah, I kept that in my back pocket.

• 1:57:23Speaker 01

  Well, we had a prop, prop closet at home, you know, cans and braces.

• 1:57:28Theo Von?

  Oh, that's hilarious.

• 1:57:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's, that was how we made that the cover. I still have that hanging today.

• 1:57:35Theo Von?

  Oh, it's just, just you had to go down to some memory lane, man, just to think about different things. And just to hear about the camaraderie of what like the lifestyle was like. Bring up the part about the ground glass lung, you know what it's called? I just wanted to make sure that we, that I mention it on here so that people know about it. Let me see, ground glass lungs refers to a radiological finding on CT scans showing hazy opacities in the lungs, often linked to inflammation or fibrosis from inhaling toxic dust at ground zero.

• 1:58:05Speaker 01

  Pulverized.

• 1:58:05Theo Von?

  After the nine 11 attacks. The dust cloud contained over 2,500 contaminants, 50% construction debris, 40% glass fibers, 9% cellulose. Inhaling the dust led to World Trade Center lung injury, which firefight, with firefighters losing up to 12 years of lung function. 70% of workers showed respiratory decline.

• 1:58:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, the longer you worked down there, the worse it was.

• 1:58:29Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:30Speaker 01

  Because the dust really never settled for you for months.

• 1:58:33Theo Von?

  Yeah, it's just, it's, it's so crazy to think that it created a new disease.

• 1:58:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:39Theo Von?

  You know?

• 1:58:39Speaker 01

  Probably. Well, you know, think about all those offices, all those fluorescent lights, all those computers. They just got pulverized to a dust. That's why everybody was covered in, between that and the cement.

• 1:58:52Theo Von?

  It's a lot. Tony, yeah, I, there's so many more things I want to talk to you about. Maybe we could have you come back sometime?

• 1:58:58Speaker 01

  Anytime.

• 1:58:59Theo Von?

  And, and talk about other stuff, you know?

• 1:59:01Speaker 01

  Maybe I'll bring Bobby Maguire with me.

• 1:59:03Theo Von?

  Dude.

• 1:59:03Speaker 01

  Very interesting man.

• 1:59:04Theo Von?

  Is he?

• 1:59:05Speaker 01

  Oh my God.

• 1:59:06Theo Von?

  Uh, no, he seems very interesting and I want to get a picture up too. Is this, is this, uh, Richard Allen?

• 1:59:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's his nephew.

• 1:59:12Theo Von?

  That's his nephew right there.

• 1:59:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, sister's son.

• 1:59:15Theo Von?

  Of Richie Allen.

• 1:59:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:17Theo Von?

  That, that's awesome, man. We'd love to maybe.

• 1:59:19Speaker 01

  Every year they acknowledge him in Rockaway. They have a big thing with the lifeguards and everybody.

• 1:59:23Theo Von?

  Oh, they do?

• 1:59:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, surfer. He was a big surfer.

• 1:59:25Theo Von?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:59:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I got plenty more stories there. What was the, oh, the murder. That was a good story.

• 1:59:33Theo Von?

  Well, you know what? I think I want to save it because there's even some basic, there's like basic questions like, uh, like is our can't, like somebody leaving a candle on? Is that like the number one cause of a house fire?

• 1:59:46Speaker 01

  Maybe house fires, uh, probably, uh, bad electrical work and a lot of off fires arson.

• 1:59:54Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:54Speaker 01

  Big time.

• 1:59:57Theo Von?

  Those space heaters.

• 1:59:58Speaker 01

  Space heaters. I don't know if you ever heard of the Happy Land Social Club?

• 2:00:03Theo Von?

  I don't know. It depends on which one you're talking about.

• 2:00:06Speaker 01

  It was in the Bronx. Yeah, it wasn't that kind of happy.

• 2:00:09Theo Von?

  There's a lot of different versions.

• 2:00:11Speaker 01

  Well, uh, sad story, but, uh, I think like, uh, I'm not sure the number, but eight, about, you could look it up. Eighty seven people died from a gallon of gas and a match. Yeah, it was horrible.

• 2:00:22Theo Von?

  You had to respond to that?

• 2:00:23Speaker 01

  I didn't respond, but my friend Sully did. He was detailed out to the Bronx and they were one of the first trucks there. And when they got in, they were crawling up the stairs and they didn't know what they were crawling over. And then when they finally found out it was all bodies. It was like crazy. Yeah, the Happy Lands.

• 2:00:40Theo Von?

  And so a lot of times you don't know what's going on, or it used to be, you didn't know what's going on until you got in there.

• 2:00:45Speaker 01

  No, probably not. You don't know who, who, who said it. You're just, you're just, the adrenaline is running, man. Oh my God, your hearts are pumping. And thought you'd never get, it never gets like old, you know?

• 2:00:58Theo Von?

  Oh, my bad.

• 2:01:00Speaker 01

  How many years like they would say, we'd get there and be a top floor fire. Now you gotta carry that mask, all your gear, everything. By the time you get to that sixth floor and you gotta put a mask on, you're sucking air. You're like, and now you gotta put this little man in the basket is like the man breathing. So you only get air.

• 2:01:20Speaker 01

  And I'd be in my mask like, I'm getting out of this fucking city. I'm going to Queens. I thought Queens would be an easier job for me.

• 2:01:28Theo Von?

  Westchester, send me to Westchester.

• 2:01:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, anywhere. You know, I'm getting out of this fucking ghetto.

• 2:01:32Theo Von?

  Wow. Well, yeah, Tony, thanks so much for your service, man. Yeah, I would love to just have you come back sometime and just be able to just go down like, there's some other roads I want to go down and learn more about it.

• 2:01:42Speaker 01

  Oh, that'd be great.

• 2:01:43Theo Von?

  And just, uh, but yeah, I think today we just got a really good idea of just kind of the brotherhood of, um, yeah, just what your, your journey has been like, kind of getting involved with fire departmenting? Oh, what did your wife end up getting a job in?

• 2:01:57Speaker 01

  My wife?

• 2:01:57Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:58Speaker 01

  She was, uh, worked for a printer and then she worked for a dentist.

• 2:02:01Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:02:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:02Theo Von?

  Dentalist, like dental assistant and kind of stuff?

• 2:02:04Speaker 01

  No, she was, she ran the whole, like, you know, yeah, took the phone calls.

• 2:02:07Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:02:08Speaker 01

  And all the billing.

• 2:02:08Theo Von?

  Keeping everything organized?

• 2:02:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, she ran it.

• 2:02:10Theo Von?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:02:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, my wife was a hard worker.

• 2:02:14Theo Von?

  Yeah, that's nice.

• 2:02:15Speaker 01

  Like I said, she bought her first car when, you know, we were seventeen with her own money, four grand. She bought a Chevette.

• 2:02:21Theo Von?

  Oof.

• 2:02:21Speaker 01

  Red Chevette.

• 2:02:22Theo Von?

  Oh, dude, if I saw a girl with a car, yeah, I'm going with her.

• 2:02:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was like, wow, this girl's got her own car. On her own money, no, mom didn't buy it, you know?

• 2:02:31Theo Von?

  That's my, I think the number one thing I'm looking for in a, in a spouse is, uh, hardworking.

• 2:02:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:37Theo Von?

  Cause life's hard work.

• 2:02:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can't try, you can't do the door lock anymore, right? Cause now they're all electric. Right? You always used to say, if that girl don't open, gets in the car and don't open your door, she's out, you know? So there's all these little tests, but yes, my wife was a hard worker and a great mother.

• 2:02:53Theo Von?

  Yeah, it's a nice thing too.

• 2:02:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. It was funny, cause she knows, all them years of being in the fire department, I'd come home sometimes and say, oh my God, I had a fire. Top floor was burning, it's in the, I'm telling them all this stuff and then she'd be like, did you remember that we have to go to the school tomorrow? And I'd be like, I just told you this whole story. It seemed like it went right over your head.

• 2:03:15Theo Von?

  You're like, blah, blah, blah, we get it.

• 2:03:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, every fire you've been to, yeah.

• 2:03:19Theo Von?

  Matches.

• 2:03:20Speaker 01

  Go spit that black tar in the sink again like you always do.

• 2:03:26Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah, behind every good fireman, huh?

• 2:03:29Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, the wives. I got some pictures of the fire department wives and...

• 2:03:34Theo Von?

  Well, look, you can show me that. As long as they're appropriate, you can show me.

• 2:03:37Speaker 01

  Oh, they're appropriate. Yeah, they're good girls. While, you know, a lot of them are Bronx girls.

• 2:03:41Theo Von?

  Well, look, these days, uh, oh, yeah, tough women over there.

• 2:03:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:03:46Theo Von?

  That's what you need in the world. You need a good, strong lady. This is your book right here, Tales From The Tiller.

• 2:03:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:03:52Theo Von?

  I didn't even know you had written this.

• 2:03:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wrote this, uh, it just came out in September, last September. Yeah, great book.

• 2:03:58Theo Von?

  Dude, congratulations.

• 2:04:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. A lot of good stories in there and I got recipes in there. A lot of good meals. Clam Sauce Casino, I think you might like that.

• 2:04:09Theo Von?

  Bro, I'll tell you this. I took a gal out the other night, went to a place that had clams and white wine sauce.

• 2:04:14Speaker 01

  That's kind of like, oh, you would love Clam Sauce Casino.

• 2:04:18Theo Von?

  Really?

• 2:04:18Speaker 01

  Well, you know Clam's Casino? You know, they put the peppers and the onions and a little bacon on it and then they bake them.

• 2:04:24Theo Von?

  No, I've never had that.

• 2:04:25Speaker 01

  Louisiana didn't have clam sauce casinos?

• 2:04:28Theo Von?

  They might have had it. We had macaroni.

• 2:04:30Speaker 01

  There it is.

• 2:04:32Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah, that looks good.

• 2:04:33Speaker 01

  So I make it, this guy that got in trouble and was sent to our firehouse and it was one of his meals and I took it from him. And we make it with the spaghetti. So we put it over with the peppers, the bacon, the onions, God, I want that. breadcrumb and the clams.

• 2:04:48Theo Von?

  Oh, I want that. I'm a clam guy. Have you seen that kid that says that?

• 2:04:52Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:04:53Theo Von?

  Bring up that clam kid. I love this kid. But of course, that a fireman's book would have fires with recipes thrown in.

• 2:05:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's funny because some of the stories are like tragedy and then it goes right into the recipe. It's like, it's a little weird, but...

• 2:05:09Theo Von?

  No, no.

• 2:05:09Speaker 01

  Oh, that kid that does the Italian words.

• 2:05:12Theo Von?

  No, no, I'm looking for the kid. Yeah, this kid's hilarious, but the, um, what did I just ask you for, Nick? Clam guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a clam guy. Kid, have you seen this little kid?

• 2:05:21Speaker 01

  Oh, I'd see it.

• 2:05:23Theo Von?

  This kid, they interviewed him. We'll finish on him.

• 2:05:26Speaker 01

  All right.

• 2:05:28Speaker 02

  I'm a guy who only basically likes clams, really. I'm a clam guy.

• 2:05:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like that kid.

• 2:05:35Speaker 02

  It's all I do.

• 2:05:36Speaker 01

  All he eats, he looks like it.

• 2:05:38Theo Von?

  Clams are off. This is crazy.

• 2:05:41Speaker 02

  I hated oysters.

• 2:05:42Speaker 01

  Oysters.

• 2:05:44Theo Von?

  Kids getting a little bit weird, but yeah, that guy's a clam guy, you know?

• 2:05:46Speaker 01

  He's getting a little weird.

• 2:05:48Theo Von?

  But I could see you guys, just like you guys show up at a fire, but you also brought like, but you also brought our dinner that has to be preheated, that has to be heated up. So you're like taking it up to the fire with you, leaving it on the ledge.

• 2:05:58Speaker 01

  As soon as you, as soon as you sit down to eat, the tone alarm goes off.

• 2:06:02Theo Von?

  Oh, every time, huh?

• 2:06:03Speaker 01

  Uh, and what happens is they, we have a big thing of foil paper and one guy just starts cutting the foil papers off. And the other guys start wrapping.

• 2:06:10Theo Von?

  Taking it to go?

• 2:06:11Speaker 01

  Otherwise the cockroaches walk away. We had so many cockroaches in the firehouse. Oh my God, you can never get rid of them.

• 2:06:17Theo Von?

  Oh God, dude. We'll have to hear about it next time. You have a book, Tales From the Tiller, the true stories of hair.

• 2:06:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:24Theo Von?

  True stories of heroism, heartbreak and humor, the luckiest guy alive and his journey in the FDNY. That's awesome.

• 2:06:29Speaker 01

  Starts with some of my jobs before that and then right through the academy and right up to retirement.

• 2:06:33Theo Von?

  Who helped you put it together?

• 2:06:34Speaker 01

  Just me and my son.

• 2:06:35Theo Von?

  Oh yeah?

• 2:06:35Speaker 01

  And my wife, yeah.

• 2:06:37Theo Von?

  Oh, that's excellent.

• 2:06:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was all in-house and my brother-in-law who was in Utah, in Seattle, he, he worked for Microsoft. And he did all the proofreading.

• 2:06:45Theo Von?

  Did he?

• 2:06:46Speaker 01

  Funny story is it, you know, he, he threw his shoulder out, working the mouse, doing all my corrections because every, every chapter had like a thousand corrections on it, so.

• 2:06:56Theo Von?

  Well, that sounds like an insurance scam.

• 2:06:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:59Theo Von?

  But, uh, that'll be the next book, you know, uh, but no, this is awesome.

• 2:07:03Speaker 01

  People are already telling me, when are you going to write another book? I'm like, well, I'm just trying to get this one out now. You know, it's hard. I go on the Instagram, that helps.

• 2:07:10Theo Von?

  And some, there's always some asshole, you write one book, he's like, when's your next book coming out? That guy, he hadn't even, he can't even read. It's always people that can't read.

• 2:07:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, then what's my next one going to be? Like more Tales From the Tiller?

• 2:07:20Theo Von?

  There you go.

• 2:07:20Speaker 01

  Hey, hey, if it sells.

• 2:07:22Theo Von?

  You never know, man. Well, I've enjoyed your time today, man. Thanks for thinking with us and just kind of taking us on a little bit of a journey. Um, yeah, I, I, we have, we had so many questions for today, so I'd love to be able to get to more, to more of them.

• 2:07:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can't believe how fast it went.

• 2:07:34Theo Von?

  Another time. I know.

• 2:07:35Speaker 01

  When you're having fun.

• 2:07:36Theo Von?

  Hey.

• 2:07:38Speaker 01

  You're the man.

• 2:07:38Theo Von?

  I'm just clouder than on fire in here today, man. I really am, dude.

• 2:07:41Speaker 01

  Checking this lobby out over here too. It's about a thousand years old over here.

• 2:07:45Theo Von?

  I know, this place is pretty cool, man.

• 2:07:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's cool.

• 2:07:48Theo Von?

  Have you, if you get to go to, there's like a bar over there and a restaurant just at each end.

• 2:07:51Speaker 01

  I, I went and I looked at them, yeah.

• 2:07:53Theo Von?

  Yeah, it's just cool.

• 2:07:53Speaker 01

  It's funny, cause I've been in like big hotels in Manhattan before and the, the lobbies are like tremendous. You know, I mean, there's stores and restaurants. So I thought it was gonna be, I've never been to the Chelsea.

• 2:08:04Theo Von?

  Yeah, this is a nice place to come if you just come for a meal or something like, um, they went to the bar last night. It's nice in there, huh?

• 2:08:10Speaker 01

  And this is the suite.

• 2:08:11Theo Von?

  Yeah, this is one of the suites and it's, but yeah, it's, it just feels like, I don't know. To me, it just feels like a lot more chill here.

• 2:08:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely.

• 2:08:18Theo Von?

  And relaxed, but thank you for your service. I want to say that, thank you for coming today and helping us share, uh, memories of, of some of your comrades that have fallen over the years and that have all also served. And, uh, we appreciate it and we appreciate your wife and, uh, son Dominic. We'll have to put a picture of all, all of them together at the end of the episode and, uh, and thanks again, man.

• 2:08:36Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:08:37Theo Von?

  Yep, we had a good time.

• 2:08:38Speaker 01

  It was a pleasure, man, and an honor.

• 2:08:39Theo Von?

  Well, I appreciate it, Tony. Thank you very much.

• 2:08:40Speaker 01

  Thank you.