Turning a Model A into a Chicago Fire Chief’s Car (column)

As often happens, life gets in the way of your intentions and a lot of time passed, but eventually I saw an ad in Oneida, which wasn’t far away – so goodbye, my long-suffering lifelong best friend Mike Harmon and I headed out to Oneida to check it out. I liked it because it was exactly as I remembered my uncle’s Ford except for the color. His was dove gray and black while this one was maroon and black, but both had vermilion wheels. I decided to buy it and also decided I didn’t want to drive to Oneida again, so we headed to Weedsport with a great running old Ford that was only missing license plates and insurance. We stopped in Wampsville, filled up the tank, and headed home straight through Syracuse on Route 5 with no problems. When I retired as curator of the American Museum of Firefighting, I missed having nearly 100 pieces of firefighting equipment to drive and play with, so I decided to convert the Ford that I had driven for many years up to that point into an old-fashioned boss’s car.

Over the course of a few years, I put together the pieces necessary to make this happen. Early on I decided to model it after a Chicago chief’s vehicle for several reasons. I had several friends in the Chicago Fire Department and admired many of their traditions – for example, their apparatus was always painted black over red, known in the industry as “Chicago paint.” This was a remnant of the horse-drawn carriage era, when the red paint peeled off the black Naughahyde roofs and they remained black. In the early 1900s, when motorized firefighting equipment was first put into practice, there was a fire commissioner, a retired Great Lakes Navy captain, who believed that navigation lights would look good on this new motorized firefighting equipment, and accordingly today On this day, the Chicago Fire Department runs a red light on the port side and a green light on the starboard for all of its equipment and also for its firehouses.

I managed to paint the Ford red where it had been maroon, and it already had the black top, so I was home free there. I managed to find a pair of Dietz Fire King lanterns (made in Syracuse) with mounting brackets. Fire Kings were made specifically for the fire department, had a larger font than usual and were windproof. I also purchased a small 6 volt siren similar to the driver’s side horn. Other devices included a 10-inch chime on the officer’s door and the oldest moving red light I have ever seen. The Chicago FD was very helpful in this remodel, and the gold Chicago Fire Department crest on the doors came from their stores, along with a hat! People ask me why I had the label “Deputy Chief” instead of “Chief” and there is a simple answer: I couldn’t be Chief because there were coupes, and since I had the four-door sedan for many years, I was permanently demoted to deputy chief and had no chance of advancement. Assistant chiefs were assigned four doors so they could transfer staff when necessary.

Maybe another time I’ll write again about some of the interesting cars I’ve owned, some of which were more interesting than practical.