Henry Taylor – Fire Ranger

After he was hired by McRae’s, Jim Taylor recommended his younger brother as a replacement for the remainder of the season. “ I went by canoe from the old Conroy Farm, up the Little Mississippi River, for an interview with Chief Ranger Harry Legris. That Chief Ranger told me that they would expect me to carry on as my brother had. I had to have a car and they would expect me to pay the extra fire fighters- just as my brother had.”

A Fire Ranger’s pay was $2.75 per day. The only time you got mileage was when you went to a fire on Crown land. Then you got 10 cents a mile. Gas was 45 cents a gallon and Henry was offered the option of mailing the payroll but “ I told them I couldn’t put that 3 cents on the payroll.” Well during the Depression men would start a fire to create work and Henry spent a lot of money delivering their pay. Hindsight is  a perfect science and Henry soon realized that the 3 cent stamp would have been a lot cheaper. “ They ( fire fighters) received 20 cents per hour. You could have a man for $2.00 a day. None of my cheques bounced.”

Using Jim Taylor’s 1914 Model T Ford Henry put in many miles enforcing the Fire Act. “ It was a real good car that had been overhauled with over-sized pistons and had a smaller pinion in the gears which made it slower but it performed better on the hills.” When he had laid enough money aside Henry traded the Model T in on a 1925 Model T that he purchased from Bob Stringer, the Ford dealer in Bancroft, for $120.00. It had a “ruksteel axle in the back end with spoke wheels. All cars were black but this was a robin egg blue. Its 2 sets of big shock absorber springs made it ride like a rocking chair.” Later Henry would trade up to a Model A for $120.00. “ I drove 2 years for free.”

“ For a while I had no driver’s license and so on the one hand I was administering the Fire Act and on the other I was breaking the law.” I ran into one old lad up there in Openham; old man Jonathan. He got a brand new car and his sons wanted to keep that car all to themselves. They wouldn’t tell him how to drive it so he asked me if I could give him a few lessons and me with no driver’s license. I got him out in the field and after a few jack rabbit starts and stops I left him as a young lad with a new toy tearing around the field.

All there was to that driving test was to drive the roads and apply the brakes. I was half way up a big crooked sandhill when the examiner turned the key off. I was going to crank it up and go on up the hill but he said, “ No, I want to see if you can back down.” So I backed down and turned around. That’s all there was to it. There were no traffic lights.