By Lynn Peisner
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
SANDY SPRINGS, Ga. —After it was sold at auction 30 years ago, the 1955 Ford F-800 fire truck sat in a field in McDonough. The elements weren’t kind. Trees and scrub grew around it, and the group of men who bought it for $1,100 last December had to use chain saws to get it onto a wrecker.
The truck was found on a bet between original members of the Sandy Springs Volunteer Fire Department, who remember how important the truck was to the fledgling department.
It was light on power, and it had a lot of quirks, including when the hoses froze after the 1959 Hammond Elementary School fire. But it was the first fire truck Sandy Springs had.
Now, it’s back in the hands of some of the men who drove and operated it in the 1950s.
“It started as a bet in a conversation between a bunch of retired guys,” said Sandy Springs resident Al Whitton. “Someone said, ‘I wonder where the truck is?’ and someone else said, ‘If you find it, I’ll buy it.’”
Whitton heads the Sandy Springs Fire Truck Restoration, a 501(c)3, with the truck as its only possession and its only mission to make the antique vehicle roadworthy again for use in parades and to help promote local businesses.
“I’m so happy the truck was found because it means a lot to get it restored,” said John Vickers, who was a founding member of the fire department and chief of the day crew.
Most of the firefighters were untrained and desperate for a station nearby. The closest one before the founding of the department was on Pharr Road in Buckhead.
“We had some funny things happen on that truck and some very serious things,” Vickers said, recalling one of the firefighters getting his foot run over and how men sitting on the back in the open cab would arrive at calls in winter with their mouths cracked and bleeding from the wind.
“There’s a lot of history behind that thing,” Vickers said. “It wasn’t the best vehicle, but it was the best thing we had and we were happy to have it.”
Copyright 2011 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution