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Showing posts with label Ambulance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ambulance. Show all posts

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Ambulance 1942 Sepia Saturday Week 83 (Click here to visit Sepia host site)

We are again in Pennsylvania attending to business for Uncle's estate and visiting friends while this  busyness continues.  I did download a few photos to share on the road.  This week's  theme of "What's Going On?" could have worked for me the past two weeks with some of the men.  But this week I share a postcard sent to my Uncle Carl by his friend, Ed Saliba, who was on the home front, when Carl was in the Army in WWII. 


In addition to this handsome vehicle, what strikes me is that back then, fundraisers were held to purchase equipment, and although folks had little money they contributed.  I do recall community fund raisers as late as the 1970's in California, but today the attitude is to get money from the government, from a well which is now nearly dry.  I wonder if we have lost our ability to pay for what our communities need by fundraisers, bake sales, good old fashioned contributions and the like.  It has not happened as recently as last month in our town, where a new community swimming pool was overwhelmingly foisted onto the backs of property owners in the town.  People looked at me as if I had lost my mind when I mentioned that perhaps we could hold some fund raisers first to generate a baseline for the swimming pool before going to the taxpayers. 

But I will climb down from my soapbox for now and post the back of this card.  Ed Saliba would become the fire chief for many years, for the same New Kensington Fire Department #1 where Uncle Carl was a lifelong member, today Ed's son is the  fire chief.    Here is the back of that postcard.  I understand that Uncle Carl sent a dollar of his Army pay toward the ambulance.  That sounds insignificant today but if he made only $12 or $15 per month, that was a mighty sum. 


This third photo shows the 100 year old fire bell on the front of the 1981 annual banquet program,  celebrating that event.  Uncle Carl saved each of  these annual banquet programs some of  which I displayed in a memorial book at his funeral and all of which I have donated back to the local Fire Department.  I have written previously  that the fire department meant a lot to him all his life. 
This is my contribution for the week.   As usual, if you click on the title to this post, you can visit the international Sepia Saturday site and enjoy the multitude of photos and stories shared.