Joel Dinda's photos with the keyword: firefighters

We were most of the way out Gunflint Trail when we found ourselves amongst what were obviously fire fighting teams. A bit of research when we got home shows that they were still fighting the remnants of July's Cavity Lake Fire in early August. While we weren't really close to the fire site, neither were we far from it.

Back to where this sequence began: Martin Sernstinger caught my father (Roger Dinda), Fred Stone, and Sam Garrison waiting for a fare at Yellow's cabstand on Michigan Avenue, next to Michigan News, in Kalamazoo, Michigan. It's 1955 and Michigan was still a two-way street. You have to assume the city wasn't paying these fellows a living wage. Last photo in the set, folks, unless I locate some others. Thanks for looking in.

Kalamazoo firefighters, out playing with an old fire engine at the Kalamazoo fairgrounds, in 1955 or thereabouts. Another Martin Sernstinger photo inherited from my father, who was a KFD firefighter when he was young (and I was really young).

Photographer: Martin Sernstinger, developed (at Michigan News) June 8, 1955. Explored! #56 on Flickr [July 6, 2007.] Thanks! My father--Roger Dinda--is on the left in this photo. The guy in the middle is Fred Stone, and I'm not sure who the other is; since Dad & Stoney were off-duty firemen, I presume the other guy was as well [Sam Garrison, it turns out; see my brother's Flickr comment ]. Dad was a firefighter when I was young, and considered himself still a firefighter until he died. On his off-days, he held other jobs. The fallback job--this one--was called "driving hacks." Or just "hacking." The photo was taken on Michigan Avenue (still called Main Street in 1955, methinks) in Kalamazoo, in front of the cab stand beside Michigan News Agency. The official-looking building across the road is the Kalamazoo County Building, which still looks about the same; on the other hand, Michigan Avenue's been a One Way road for most of my life. Michigan News still stocks comic books, which was the attraction when I was a kid. Good place to buy maps, too. Since the picture dates from 1955, it's over fifty years old. Mom had us digging through boxes of old photos shortly before she died. This one was the best of a stash of Sernstinger pix which had mostly obvious firefighting connections. Dad was a little chubby, I see.... New scan uploaded 12/30/05.

Some of the fire engine photographs in my father's collection were of trucks which were old when Martin Sernstinger caught them on film in the mid-1950s. This one was clearly taken during a training exercise at the Kalamazoo County Fairgrounds.