1934 Ford pumper survives fire, time to return home

Fire trucks usually don’t travel very far and that means it can be a genuine shock to see a familiar truck hundreds and hundreds of miles from home.

“My brother, Jerry Porter, goes to all kinds of car shows,” said Marty Schneider, of the Newark Valley (New York) Fire Department, “and he saw it at the Orphans show at Ypsilanti, Michigan. He noticed ‘Newark Valley’ when it was going by and he was taken aback by it. That started it.”

That was in 2010 and what was going by was the 1934 Ford Sanford pumper that had spent the first 21 years of its life in Newark Valley. Schneider, who works in the town historian’s office and is a member of the department’s auxiliary, said minutes from its commissioners’ meetings provide a look at the thinking that led up to the truck’s purchase.

“At the beginning,” she explained, “it was, ‘We want this truck’ and, ‘so-and-so’s going to go and look at it’ … The