When Arden “Bucky” Knapp turned 16, he went to his local fire department in Lander and signed up. “I helped them build their original fire station,” he said. “When they put their first truck in there, it still had a dirt floor.”

Until that time, Lander was served by departments in Sugar Grove and Russell.

Knapp knew all about that.

“My first experience with fire… my folks had a chimney fire,” Knapp said.

Times Observer photo by Brian Ferry Arden “Bucky” Knapp looks through photos and clippings he has maintained in a scrapbook during more than 50 years with the Pleasant Township Volunteer Fire Department.

He was at the store in Lander at the time. He heard about the fire when firefighters from Russell, needing directions, ran into the store and asked where his dad lived.

Not long after that, Lander had its own department.

The department’s fire police had a contract with Stateline Speedway to do parking.

“That’s what got me started… the lights, the sirens,” he said.

“In a small town like that, everybody got involved,” he said. “It gave me something to do.”

He served in Lander for a few years before serving his country for two years – in Vietnam for one.

When he returned, he was asked to get back to volunteer firefighting.

“Dave Worley was the chief here (in Pleasant Township),” Knapp said. “When I came back from Vietnam, somehow he found out I’d been in Lander Volunteer Fire Department.”

Knapp didn’t join right away, but, after a year, it was time.

“If you really get it in your blood, it’s never gone,” he said.

He walked into a job title.

“I joined the fire department and that night (Worley) said, ‘You’re my head engineer,'” Knapp said.

He was in charge of three trucks. Unfortunately, only two were running.

“I walked into a fire department and they’ve got a truck they can’t use,” he said.

He handled that situation quickly enough. “I called Larry Zobrist at Warren Truck,” Knapp said. “He said, ‘You get it up here, we’ll fix it for nothing.'”

There were other issues to handle with the vehicles. “You remember the good and the bad,” Knapp said.

One trip to a structure fire in winter was an exciting one for the crew. “We had chains on the tires,” Knapp said. “The chains ripped off and tore the brake lines off.”

That tanker, with 1,000 gallons of water pushing it around, got to the scene “with nothing but emergency brake and gearing down,” he said.

Another winter fire resulted in no injuries, but left Knapp encased in his equipment.

“The North Warren Children’s Home burned,” he said. “It was below zero. On the way back, I rode on the back of the truck. My turnout gear was frozen on me.”

From engineer, Knapp became assistant chief and, eventually, chief for nine years.

“I remember a refinery fire when I was chief,” Knapp said. “We were right by electrical stuff.”

Knowing that electricity and firefighting don’t mix, Knapp told plant personnel, “You gotta shut this thing down.”

Of course, they wanted to maintain power to that portion of the facility. But, they relented eventually when faced with the possibility of losing the help with the fire.

“If you don’t, I’ll cut these lines and move my truck,” Knapp told them.

Knapp remembers well the Exchange Hotel fire of November 1986. “They called everybody in the county,” he said. “Ed Stanley and I ran one of these deck lines.”

The deck line – much like a deck gun on one of the trucks, but on the ground – was important in fighting a widespread fire in a large, downtown building. “You can get a lot more range,” he said.

Knapp has a picture of Stanley manning that deck line in a scrapbook he has maintained over the years.

At the time of the Exchange Hotel fire, Pleasant’s hoses were red. That detail was noted on a radio broadcast, Knapp said. “Leroy Schneck said, ‘It looks like they’re standing in a pile of spaghetti out there.'”

Not all of Knapp’s memories from his many years in the department involve things going up in smoke.

“There were the good times – like when we paid off the loans,” Knapp said. “There was some comedy. There were two guys that lived on Arlington” just a block from the Pleasant station. “They’d race through the back yards to see who’d get here first. One day, one of them fell in the mud.”

“We used to have more activities for the kids,” he said. “We’d set up and have games – a fake ‘fire house'” that youngsters could try out hoses on.

As he was in Lander, Knapp was part of the construction of a building project in Pleasant.

“I was chief when we built this,” he said, looking around the current station.

When the department acquired the Fuller Avenue property, there were two houses on it. “We used those for drill,” he said.

Fill was added to the footprint of the property and packed down.

“We were going to have a hose tower out here,” Knapp said. “They neglected to build it on compacted fill.”

“During a rainy spell, the part that wasn’t connected to the building started to sink,” he said.

From that grew the legend of the Leaning Tower of Pleasant.

“We never got to use it,” Knapp said. “Eventually, they decided they’ll just destroy it.”

There are fewer active members of the department than there were in the past. “It is hard to find people and it’s getting worse,” Knapp said. But, no matter how many or few, the people are what Knapp remembers.

“I consider everybody brothers and sisters,” he said. “That was instilled growing up.”

“Being a member here… it’s just the camaraderie,” he said. “When I first joined, when the meeting was over we sat around and played cards.”

Knapp is no longer an active member, but he’s doing what he can. “I work Bingo and I fire police as much as I can,” he said. “I’ve been a trustee for the fire department for 20 years.”

“It’s been a good run,” Knapp said. “I’ve gotten to know a lot of good guys.”

And he would do it again.

“It’s fulfilling to give back to the township,” he said.