By Bill Adams

Maybe I should hang it up and spend my remaining time strapped in a rocking chair drooling all over myself on the porch down at the Happy Valley Convalescent Home. Times are changing, and I have a hard time adjusting. Take ladder trucks as an example, and in particular tillers, also known as TDAs and tractor-drawn aerials. They’re probably called TDAs because people today can’t remember if there’s one or two L’s in tiller.

I recall the 1923 Stutz city-service ladder truck my father’s fire company ran in the early 1950s. He grumbled when they bought the 1953 75-foot Maxim aerial. He thought the world was coming to an end because they put doors on it. When we went into the “city” I became enamored with tillers, including the 1942 100-foot American La France at Ladder 5 (photo 1) and the 1927 American La France with a 75-foot wooden aerial at Reserve Ladder 6 (photo 2). The 1963 Maxim 100-footer tiller (photo 3) at Ladder 10 caused dad to say, “The damn thing’s got a roof on it; that’s blasphemy!” I agreed. When I joined the fire company in the early 1960s, Station 1 ran a 1957 Mack with a 75-foot Maxim ladder and Station 2 ran a 1932 Ahrens Fox city-service ladder. No pumps and no roofs and no doors on the Fox.