I have a memory from when I was a small boy, relating to chain drive trucks and Belgian Block paving. We were visiting an aunt and uncle, and as kids will do, I got bored rather quickly. I walked to the corner of the side-street they lived on and heard a new sound approaching. In a few moments, a "transit mix" concrete truck hove into view. It was a Mack AC series, chain drive, and the avenue which crossed the side street had the Belgian Block paving. It was late afternoon, and the trucks were headed back to their batch plant (about where the "Kings Plaza" shopping mall has stood since 1968 or thereabouts). The sound of the solid rubber tires on the Belgian Block pavement, the "singing" of the chain drive as the rear wheels tended to jump off the pavement (truck being empty), all is a sound I can hear even now, better than 60 years later. The AC series Mack trucks had a "C" cab, a cab which provided a roof and windshield, but was open at the sides. I waved to the drivers of those AC series Mack concrete trucks, and they waved back. Just a kind of snapshot of a moment when I was a kid, and seeing and hearing the old chain drive trucks made my day.
Even then, I knew those AC series trucks were old, and were something I enjoyed seeing. Back then, the transit mix trucks had a separate engine (a power unit) to run the mixer, often a LeRoi or Continental Red Seal engine.
Another memory of the Belgian Block paving and the theft of those blocks comes to mind with this thread. It was 1981 and I had just begun my employment with the NY Power Authority. Until things got rolling at the field construction site I was assigned to, I was "flying a desk" in the Power Authority headquarters. The HQ was then located in the old "Coliseum Tower" Building (since demolished) at 59th Street/Columbus Circle in NYC. I was bunking at my parents' house out in Brooklyn, and was using my own 1980 International Harvester Scout to commute. The Power Authority paid me mileage and gave me a guaranteed parking spot in the Coliseum's underground garage. This one evening, darkness had already fallen, it was rainy and I was bucking traffic in the Scout. Driving a manual shift vehicle in bumper-to-bumper traffic gets old quickly. I was driving down the West Side of Manhattan, under the old West Side Drive. Traffic came to a standstill, horns honking, and no movement happening. I got out to see what the problem was. A car had its rear wheels stuck solid, having dropped into a hole in the road surface. The hole was created by the theft of some of the Belgian Blocks. It was dark under the West Side Drive some light coming from street lamps, tempers were short, and the problem was not likely to get solved anytime soon. I decided to take matters into my own hands. I got the driver of the car that was stuck and told him I had a winch on my vehicle and would pull his car out of the hole. A few other people who were stuck there helped out, and we got things to where I was able to manuever the Scout so I was facing opposite traffic, lined up for winching the car out. I chocked the Scout's wheels and hooked the winch line with a chain I had to the front suspension (1970's full sized car, so plent to hook onto). I had the car up and out of that hole in short order, and we got my Scout turned around and headed towards Brooklyn. As I was to learn from people at that location, theft of the Belgian Blocks was a regular occurance. The West Side Drive was an elevated roadway. It was closed to traffic from the Battery (Southern tip of Manhattan) up to about 57th street due to a collapse of the elevated roadway in about 1974. Demolition of the West Side Drive was in progress, so people were helping themselves to the paving blocks on the street below it, probably figuring it was easy pickings.
During that same time period, with me commuting in my Scout, I had another incident under the old West Side Drive. Same time of day, after dark, traffic crawling along, stop-and-go. I was sitting in traffic, holding in the clutch, when all hell broke loose around and on my Scout. There were abandoned piers with buildings on them, formerly used by various passenger shipping lines and some freighters. Some of these buildings were burned out shells. At the Power Authority offices, some of the people had told me that the abandoned buildings on the piers were used for all sorts of illicit activity- drug related, and trysts by people who practiced "alternative lifestyles". As I sat in traffic in my Scout, I heard screaming and cursing in a falsetto voice, and the next thing I knew, some guy wearing whacked-out sunglasses had jumped on to the Scout's front bumper as I crawled along riding the clutch. With the winch and winch guard/push bars, there was room for a person to jump aboard. This person was swinging a piece of bent rebar he had grabbed along the way, screaming curses at some other individual. This was the last thing I needed, a whacked-out person having a violent lover's quarrel on the front bumper of my Scout. I set the brake and grabbed an ironworker's spud wrench I kept in the Scout for situations like this one. I jumped out and hollered at the creep on my front bumper, telling him plainly that I was going to bust his head wide open if he did not get off my bumper. He took the hint that he might not have long to live if he attempted to hitch a ride on my Scout. The creep bailed off the Scout and seemed to run even quicker than when he'd first hopped aboard. I climbed back into my Scout and headed to my folks' house, another day in the Big Apple and nothing unusual for those times and that location.
I well remember the streets of Brooklyn, where I grew up, and the Belgian Block paving. Some of the streets had street car rails laid in them, and I am old enough to remember riding the trolleys with my mother and grandmother. The streets which had Belgian Block paving and street car rails were often paved over with asphalt concrete. This gave a smoother road surface, but was short-lived. The pounding of traffic soon exposed areas of the Belgian Block paving, and things were worse than before. We took the Belgian Block paving for granted, and it is one of those things that is likely nearly gone from NYC streets.
At Hanford Mills, when the engine jamboree is held, a regular feature is an old Ahrens-Fox pumper. The family that owns this pumper drives it over the roads for some distance to attend the event at Hanford Mills. The A-F pumper has a piston pump on the front end, ahead of the radiator, with a large nickel-plated air-chamber. The
A-F pumper is run during the event, taking suction from the mill pond and throwing up quite a jet of water from a hose nozzle. It is something to hear the big six cylinder engine in that old A-F pumper really snort when she is pulling the load of the pump at full revs. The engine in that truck is big in-line 6, and if I am not mistaken, it is a "headless" engine. These are side-valve engines with screwed access plugs over each valve. I never paid attention as to who made that engine, but it is typical design for the 'teens or early 'twenties. The family who owns that Ahrens-Fox pumper keeps it spit-shined and well maintained, and it is always good to see it at Hanford Mills. The old-timer who bought the A-F pumper when it was surplussed by a fire department died a few years ago, but his family continues the tradition of showing that old fire truck.
A co-worker had been chief of his local volunteer fire department, not too far from where we live. That department had an old Mack firetruck, a B series with diesel power, and no cab. Chances are that truck was a hand-me-down from some bigger fire department, and was likely a 1940's or early 50's truck. The fire chief told me that when he was about 18 years old, he was a member of that same volunteer fire company. One winter, when the bottom fell out of the thermometer, an old hotel building about 35 miles away caught fire. It was 35 miles of winding roads around a NYC reservoir for part of the run, so no making time and no easy driving. A mutual aid call went out to neighboring fire companies, and this fellow's company responded. The more senior men took the newer trucks with closed cabs and heaters. As an 18 year old, he was assigned to drive the Mack pumper with the open cab. The fellow told me he and another young member bundled up in insulated coveralls, mufflers wrapped around their faces, took wool blankets, and set off. 35 miles in bitter cold weather on an open truck was a tough run, and when they got to the fire, about all they could do was try to contain it. They were relieved to go into some nearby building to get warmed up, but had to drive that old Mack on the return run a few hours later, after dealing with iced-up hoses and having to square away the truck, draining down the pump and piping.
I remember in the 60's, when there was 'trouble' (i.e., rioting, looting, burning of buildings) in NYC, the NYFD still had open cabs on most of their trucks. The NYFD retrofitted plywood cabs to their trucks to protect the firefighters from the people in the surrounding neighborhoods. Like the Belgian Block paving, the open cab fire trucks disappeared, one of those things we took for granted and when we thought about it, it was already long gone. Similarly, gasoline powered fire trucks have quietly been replaced with diesel power. No ordering a diesel truck engine with dual fuel injection systems, so the 'old heads' and 'brass' at the fire departments must have accepted the fact that diesel power is quite reliable.