"Like the wise man said: first we try then we trust." Sean Connery line in the movie Entrapment. Well, in 1914, those Otsego bastards pulled a fast one to win the annual hose cart contest, by switching the hose connector threads to left hand tighten. Plainwell lost to those dirty cheaters

 

as the images show, the hose cart was an important part of the fire departments of both neighboring towns, and they had an annual race, which was alternately held in each town.

Otsego got sneaky and conniving ONE year, and switched their connections so that only THEIR hose would thread on. Those bastards! 

Would you trust all these evil looking mustaches? Heck no! They appear quite dastardly! 

See! How those 4 shaved guys made the team I can't even guess. Maybe the losers of the previous years team had to shave them off! 

Scoundrels! Especially that guy in the front row. 

Notice the caption! I didn't make that up... "they USUALLY came in 2nd place!" HA! Until 1914! 

(Obviously, I root for the home team... don't you? Remember what the Beach Boys sang about cheering for YOUR school... well, I went to Starr, Otsego, and Gilkey schools, and I KNOW what I'm talking about! (lol) ) 

https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Image/IM83383

lots of hose cart racing at https://www.marinfirehistory.org/hose-cart-racing.html

the Otsego and Plainwell old photos book is scanned by google https://books.google.com/books?id=E1iUYKnNWzoC&pg=PA114&lpg=PA114&dq=otsego+hose+cart+race&source=bl&ots=CaX1A7fzlM&sig=ACfU3U3RuIjHi4awirXl_Kt5W6X-DEH7Xw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjsg6-80Jr4AhUKbTABHRtQCoQQ6AF6BAhWEAM#v=onepage&q&f=false 

there have been some mighty cool cars in the fire dept drill team races, I've posted these before, but not with pictures this good. Hard to believe, but this hemi Coronet is an original factory super stocker

The original post has these, and a large variety of other fire dept drill team race cars, http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2017/01/one-of-things-that-made-usa-cool-place.html but these are better photos of those cars, and thanks to 914Driver, I went looking into this Corvette looking one. 

https://www.facebook.com/lyndstromsnail/photos/?ref=page_internal

THANKS James! The 2018 New York State Championship! Love these trucks!

skip the first 7 minutes, to get to the trucks. Skip 15 minutes top get to the customs

if you want to read about it: https://www.hotrod.com/articles/you-are-now-aware-of-firematic-racing-a-combination-drag-the-olympics-and-fire-fighting/

this is great! I just found two color photos of fire fighting drill team competition cars I only had posted black and white photos of back in 2017

and it's extremely weird that the new color photos show the front, and the back, conversely, of the cars that I had a black and white photo of the OTHER end of previously

http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2017/01/one-of-things-that-made-usa-cool-place.html  for the full gallery of the competition special customs

http://forum.grantorinosport.org/the-vintage-photo-thread_topic8113_page85.html

One of the more fun aspects of blogging about cars is recognizing a car when I find a new image of it... the Central Islip Fire Department drill team 1965 hemi Coronet with a truck back end welded in

I posted about it in 2017, https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2017/01/one-of-things-that-made-usa-cool-place.html

I think that's pretty cool

and really, a Hemi Coronet! There were only 105 made by the factory, the A990 cars

The NHRA was fed up with the nagging by the losers, so, it told Chrysler "No fiberglass, no aluminum"

So Chrysler says ‘no problem,’ and simply stamped new sheet metal out of super-thin steel, changed the heads to aluminum and built the intakes out of magnesium.

Result: the new A990 cars weighed the same as previous year’s S/S cars!

The A990 Coronet was one of the bare-bones designs whose execution was heralded as Chrysler engineer Jim Thornton’s finest achievement.

Thornton figured out ways around the rules; beyond body lightening, the wheelbases were lightly massaged, a hood scoop was added, and the battery was moved into the trunk

The name A990 was the motor’s engineering code, used this single year and denoting the  magnesium intake, special aluminum cylinder heads and special factory-authorized tubular exhaust headers, many of which were never offered again on a factory Super Stock package.

The cross-ram with dual Holley 4-barrel carburetors was designed specifically for sonic tuning, a factor that allowed versions of this engine to win NHRA Championships in 1965 and 1967.

https://www.mopar-forum.eu/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=9064&start=3760#p951851

1928 Packard, New York fire squad competition car

https://www.facebook.com/packardapproved/posts/2589601214465665

one of the things that made the USA a cool place to be, was the firefighter team competitions... on Long Island they used to race cars as part of the championship... some far out hemi cars too, backwards Corvettes, etc. Crazy shit, I LOVE it!

Back in 1965, ABC ran a television show called Wide World of Sports. On one of their shows they had a fireman's competition between different fire departments in the country. The competition involved putting five fireman on the back of a homemade firetruck and taking off from a dead stop and hooking hoses to fire hydrants, unloading ladders, etc. It was like a quarter mile of competition to see who could do it the fastest time.

the above Dart is an altrered wheel base wrinkle wall monster, a Super Stock Hurst special?

One of the fire departments on Long Island, the Central Islip Fire Department drill team used a 1965 hemi Coronet with a truck back end welded in place where the trunk would have been.

All found on http://members.tripod.com/termites_drillteam_1/oldpics/page_3.html
http://www.1962to1965mopar.ornocar.org/ml-heininger65firetruck.html

the 1966 and 68, West Sayville Flying Dutchmen

And this competition still happens!

but to really spin your brain, they have a full photo gallery of all the cool old race cars on a Facebook page  https://www.facebook.com/pg/NYSDrillTeamMemories/photos/?tab=album&album_id=310852747035

Dexter,  New York, has a 1st  mention of a "foot team" in the dept. minutes in 1898 and participation continued into the late 1980's.

https://www.facebook.com/pg/dexternyhistory/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1136855399765476

http://nysdrillteams.x9494.com/

and one Facebook page is looking to connect us to all of them, there seem to be about 70 teams  https://www.facebook.com/NYSFireDeptDrillTeams/

3 years ago Hemmings ran an article on one of these race cars, and called it a Fire Chiefs car.

The object is, a team of competitors board a customized vehicle that looks sort of like a fire truck. They line up at a starting line against another team and, on signal, race for 475 feet. The rigs halt, they dismount, and hook a hose to a hydrant before hitting a target with the water stream. Or, throw a ladder against a platform and scramble to the top.

 So on one level, it's a car race. Today's hottest "trucks" are often based on tubular steel chassis originally designed for drag racing or paved-oval Modifieds. One team famously used to use a mid-1960s Corvette body turned around backwards, with the fastback rear window serving as a driver's windshield and the engine bay, less hood, as a hose bed.

Where these contests exist, almost all in New York, they're big, big stuff. Millions were first exposed to firemen's jousts during the 1960s when ABC's Wide World of Sports, which had a top producer living on Long Island, discovered them. Their proximity and low production costs made them staple segments on the program, like figure-eight racing and demolition derbies from nearby Islip Speedway. A Web site specializing in the drills, www.nysdrillteams.com, lists well over 100 fire companies with drill teams, about 75 percent from Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island.

https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-fire-chief-always-got-coolest-car.html