Town Topics
6 October 1982

Fire Truck Wins

Winning Oldie. It just keeps happening. And it happened still another time last Saturday when Princeton Engine Company Number One — that’s the fire company with headquarters on Chestnut Street — took first place in the Mercer County Fire Prevention parade in Slaekwood.

The winner, and persistent champion, is Number One’s 12-year-old pumper, tapped as “Best Appearing Pumper” in the parade. There were 116 pieces of apparatus from 56 companies, and that’s competition!

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This was the third time. The second time was September 26, in the two-hour Bordentown Tricentennial parade, when Engine Company Number One took second place for Best Appearing Apparatus. The apparatus? The 12-year-old pumper.

First time was back on July 3, and that was one to remember. The company had gone to Monmouth Junction for a parade, but fire broke out in Princeton at the Tenacre Foundation, and members of the company had to race back into town.

“We came back to town,” recalls William E. Rodweller, “laid out 1,400 feet of hose, fought the Tenacre fire, replaced the hose and equipment, went back to Monmouth Junction to the tail-end of the parade — and got number one as the Best Appearing Apparatus in the parade.”

It’s about a 15-mile round trip, Princeton-Monmouth, Engine Number One left the parade at 9:15, put out the fire, and got back at 11.

“It took some cleaning!” Mr. Rodweller says.

Tom Hagadom is foreman of Number One. Mr. Rodweller, now an assistant chief, is scheduled to be Princeton’s fire chief for the year 1983.