Fires but also fun for Hose Co.

SALISBURY — The Lakeville Hose Company is an all-volunteer firefighting department that protects Salisbury and environs. It began when the center of Salisbury burned in 1903. 

Former Town Clerk Lila Nash once related a story her mother told her. 

“My parents lived in a cottage across from the drugstore in the year of the Great Fire. It was April of 1903 (I was born that December). The fire started in a tailor’s shop, and it took everything from St. John’s Church down to the Academy. The fire was so hot and so great that the windowpanes in the buildings across the street were hot. ”

Myrtle Kimble remembers that fire and some of the early equipment. 

“My dad was a fireman, and they had a two-wheeled jig, I called it, with a hose twisted around it. They had to pull it by hand. The fire siren blew. It was about 2:30 in the morning. 

“Dr. Bissell lived right next door, and his daughter May called over and wanted to know if I wanted to go and see the fire. We walked up and that whole side of the street where the post office is, and the drugstore, and the building next to it were just burned right out. I remember that. 

“We stayed until just about time for school to open; we had to come back to Lakeville for school. Dad happened to see that I was there yet, so he told me I had better start right back for school. I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay there and see what was going on. But we had to come back.”

It wasn’t all work and no play for the firefighters, though, in spite of massive blazes such as that one. Walter Fenn recalled the parties that the firemen put on.

“You talk about town parties. The firemen used to put on a clambake every year, and that was a lot of fun. I don’t know if you know Porter Street; it goes up there where the old ore bed is. The firemen used to put on their clambake up there in what they called McCue’s Grove, McCue’s Glen, and everybody would be outside. They’d cook all the stuff there on an open fire.”

Jean McMillen is the historian for the town of Salisbury.