READING, Pa – \u200bHistory comes home.<\/p>\n
“Reading had probably the largest volunteer fire company in the country. Ten thousand members during its height,” said retired Reading fire chief Richard Boyer.<\/p>\n
From manpower to horsepower.<\/p>\n
“The early apparatus were pulled by the firemen,” Boyer said. “As they got heavier, naturally, you had to add horses.”<\/p>\n
There are many significant signs of the passage of time and history for The Reading Fire Department and the Reading Area Firefighters Museum.<\/p>\n
“1771, that is five years before the Declaration of Independence,” Boyer said.<\/p>\n
But now, across decades, many miles and a Sotheby’s auction…<\/p>\n
“We’re still shocked that we were able to do that, but it’s coming,” he said.<\/p>\n
The first motorized fire truck in the city’s history, circa 1911.<\/p>\n
“You can feel the emotion,” Boyer said.<\/p>\n
By way of a flatbed truck from Florida, the engine is once again back home. It may be tired from the long journey but it’s looking like a beaut nonetheless.<\/p>\n
“Once you get to be a hundred and some years old, you don’t do too much running anymore,” he said.<\/p>\n
How do museum organizers surmise they got the winning bid? History buffs with heart, they say.<\/p>\n
“We just had a feeling that a lot of the bidders knew where it should go and didn’t try to outbid us,” Boyer explained.<\/p>\n
History, heart and a return home for the first engine that did.<\/p>\n
“I really started to think in detail about history. We’re still uncovering things all the time,” Boyer added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa – \u200bHistory comes home. “Reading had probably the largest volunteer fire company in the country. Ten…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[5330,736,61855,128,130,129,6426,61856],"class_list":["post-133893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-firefighting","tag-reading","tag-reading-area-firefighters-museum","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-reading-fire-department","tag-richard-boyer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}