CIRCLING THE SQUARE

"Two kibitzers peeking at a disgruntled poker-player's four flush" would be an appropriate title for the ornamental keystones over the Cambridge Fire Station doorways--seen from a distance. At close range though, the figures turn out to be the driver of a fire engine with two mates grimly holding on behind. And this Janus-like duality in the stone heroes' appearance can also be found in a real smoke-eater's life.

For the casual observer finds the fire station, located in front of Mem Hall, a Republican cartoon of W.P.A. inaction. Everywhere shirt-sleeved men are loafing. In the third floor recreation room a dozen firefighters play penny ante, some of the more energetic shoot pool, and a few others watch traffic along Cambridge Street. Down the hall in a library-common room another group smokes, reads Esquire and the New Yorker, occasionally studies. Off the kitchen, where a stoutish chap is raiding the refrigerator, the Bonfire Band struggles through "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" in preparation for the policeman-fireman ball. And the impression that a firefighter's nine and one-half hour daily stint cannot be classified as labor is confirmed by long rows of cots in the second floor dormitory.

Snub-nosed, horn-rimmed, soft-spoken Chief Herman E. Gutheim looks more like a Harvard professor than a Hollywood fire chief. (He does teach first aid to many faculty members and university employees in evening classes.) Reminiscing about the day in 1908 when Chelsea burnt down or showing his souvenirs from the time when every Cambridge householder was required to possess one ladder and two leather buckets for the bucket brigade, Chief Gutheim points out that in the 41 years of fire fighting which he can remember Cambridge has always been rated A-1 by the underwriters. This has been accomplished "despite what we have to work with"; namely, an almost brand new $275,000 plant including even the latest in patented tulip-trap-door poles for the men to slide down. In fact, the only bit of equipment which the chief would like to add at the moment is a "shillalah" to crack automatically the skull of anyone sending in a false alarm from the box in front of the Lampoon. Last year this box established a new record of five false alarms in one night. Such needless trips and careless smoking are the chief grievances the Chief can recall against Harvard students as he waters the geraniums in his office window box.

But at the first clang of the alarm all this social club atmosphere ends. Men slide down the poles, jump into their night bitches (a one-piece outfit of boots, pants, and suspenders), run for the engines, and are speeding away with screaming sirens in less than a minute. The visitor, impressed by the leisure of the station, often forgets this other part of the fireman's life: the midnight alarm, the race through crowded or icy streets, and the calm heroism obscured by heavy smoke. He forgets that there are always a couple of the men doing their loafing in the Cambridge City Hospital and that from an occasional one of the 1800 alarms the engines answer each year some fireman doesn't return.