When I was five years old, my father took me on a venture to the local branch of the Chemical Bank. While he was inside waiting in line to deposit money, I was allowed to free-roam the bank. Free roaming the bank meant that I could go inside or outside the bank and hang out. Times were much safer back then, allowing my father to let me leave the bank and hang out outside without his supervision.
Safe or not, I explored the area immediately outside the bank. There, in front of the bank was a red structure. This structure was about two feet taller than I was and similar in shape to a queen’s chess piece. It also had a black handle near the top. As a curious and naîve boy, I could not help but notice that if I climbed onto the red structure, I could reach the black handle and probably had enough strength to pull it. So I did.
The resounding high-pitched alarm bell that went off when the fire alarm was pulled was enough to send me screaming back to my father in the bank. People came running out from the bank at the sound of the alarm, as did my father with me in tow. It didn’t take him long to surmise what I had done. He was not a happy puppy.
“Did you think it was a mailbox?” he asked me. To this day I remember him putting that question to me in a way that I realized was my only way out of what I had done. At this point, I still had no idea what I pulled. So I agreed with him. “Yes, I thought it was a mailbox.”
Brave man that my father was he decided that he and I should leave the bank area and start walking home before the fire trucks came. This was very confusing to me because I had always been taught to fess up to things I did wrong. We were about a half block from the bank when either conscience or the thought that we couldn’t get away with it changed my father’s mind. He had us turn back and talk to the firemen about me pulling the false alarm and how I thought it was a mailbox. The fireman gave me a short lecture about why we shouldn’t pull false alarms. My five-year-old self was hopeful that I wasn’t pulling these firemen away from a real fire and glad that that was all of the trouble I got into.
It was a long walk home with my dad. I’m not sure why he was angry. At me for pulling the alarm or at me for making him look bad. Just as we reached the steps to our apartment building, I hesitated. I asked my father if he could go in first and break the news to my mom. I distinctly remember not wanting to go in and face my mother with the news. At this point in my memory, my mind blanks out, so I don’t remember the story’s outcome.
What I do remember is that though I knew that I had done something wrong, I was willing to let someone else give me a reason as to why I did it. I remember my father’s first instinct was to walk away. I remember not wanting to confront my mother with the events of the story.
The event was written up in our local newspaper, The Riverdale Press:
July 16, 1956 – Riverdale Press
FIRE-FIGHTERS who swarmed to
the Riverdale Branch of the
Chemical Corn Exchange Bank the
other day were called out by
accident. A customer transacting
some business left his young son
unattended for a moment. Junior
climbed up to the fire alarm,
pulled it, and really started
something.
I still have the clipping.
