| Lee Stewart |
09-12-2020 04:43 AM |
Living on Long Island has some very interesting and unique items. One of them is/was L.I. Drill Team Competition.
I am going from memory so if they are wrong - please correct me.
Long Island Fire Departments were all volunteer. Each town had it's own. But a long time ago, how they got paid was who was first to show up at a fire and put the fire out. This bred competition which started longer than many of you Long Islanders may be familiar with.
Originally it started with men just running with hose and ladder then it grew to pulling wagons loaded with hose or ladder. When that wasn't exciting enough, trucks were added.
The motor competition started as what we know today as "B" class in two styles: hose and ladder. It later morphed to an additional "C" class which was faster and more dangerous to the participants.
What you are going to see is unique to Long Island only. For me I used to get up early Saturday mornings and rode my bike all the way out to the Meadowbrook Parkway equipment facility - about a 45 minute ride - to watch the No. Merrick STUMP JUMPERS practice. It was my first experience watching high performance vehicles (in this case trucks) perform.
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