This Past Weekend: w/ FDNY Firefighter Tony Bonfiglio (Transcript)

And Mineola? Is that here in New York?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah. Mineola is pretty much right by New Hyde Park.

THEO VON: Got it. So you’re over there, you’re in there with the meat.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Like Rocky hitting the meat.

THEO VON: Yeah, I’m sure nobody’s looking because that.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Was right around the time, so.

THEO VON: Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah. There we go. That’s what it looked like.

THEO VON: Oh, definitely. Everything turned to veal after this came out. Yeah, bro, you couldn’t get something that wasn’t tenderized.

TONY BONFIGLIO: It was funny because we were all kids, too. And all this meat after the place closed would be. But we never took an ounce of meat.

THEO VON: You got all this beautiful meat, you guys.

TONY BONFIGLIO: It would be like big tubs of filet mignons, all kinds of things.

THEO VON: You guys are just in there.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Cleanup Crew

THEO VON: And so what happens? Yeah, you’re in there. You guys are punching the meat or whatever. And is that a common, was that kind of a common future in your area?

TONY BONFIGLIO: No, it was not at all. Just got a job there. My friends were all working there. The whole crew was working, and we were the cleanup crew. So once the butchers were all done, we would come in with these high pressure hoses, and we would just hose this whole place down.

THEO VON: Yeah, we’re just partying.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah. Then we’d oil it up with vegetable oil. It was a funny job.

THEO VON: What was the vegetable oil for?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Just make everything shiny and clean. Because we had the inspectors there. That was the two inspectors every day. And they would inspect everything. And if they didn’t get their payola, then they would knock a machine down, and then they’d have to rope the whole thing off, and we would have to come in and clean the machine, and then they inspect it again.

THEO VON: So it was a little bit of kind of a meat, was there kind of a meat mafia kind of going, a little bit mafia?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah.

THEO VON: Was it really? Wow.

TONY BONFIGLIO: It was owned by two Jewish brothers, the Cohens.

THEO VON: Yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah.

THEO VON: So something was afoot. And so what makes you get out of there? Were your friends kind of graduating? Because I ended up working at, dude, me and like five of my buddies worked over there at, well, I think it was called Save a Center or something. It was a grocery or Winn Dixie, maybe it was called. Dude, one of my buddies would come clock in, go home, and then he would wake up, then he’d come clock out.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Dude.

THEO VON: He worked there for like, yeah, he worked there for almost 11 months.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Wow.

THEO VON: Dude. And the rest of us were afraid to do that. So we’d actually be in there working. But it was so much fun having your bro. There was nothing better, I think, than that time if you were either like late years of high school or right out of high school and you got to work with like your buddies who hadn’t gone, all like nobody kind of figured it out yet. You got to work with your friends.

Oil Fights and Saturday Mornings

TONY BONFIGLIO: That’s what it was. Saturday morning, we’d all be banged up from being out drinking all night. We’d just be getting home.

THEO VON: Yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: And we had to go in Saturday morning to clean, to oil the whole place. Oh, so those were fun trips. We’d have oil fights. Would get soaked in oil.

THEO VON: Oh, God. Well, I think we might pick up a new listener.

TONY BONFIGLIO: We would have some good oil fights.

THEO VON: Really? What?

TONY BONFIGLIO: We’d have these big squirt bottles, and then we’d have these 55 gallon drums of oil.

THEO VON: Yeah, it was seed oil.

TONY BONFIGLIO: It was vegetable oil. Oh, we would even do the trucks in the vegetable oil. Looks like they got waxed. Yeah, they were all shiny.

THEO VON: And what vegetables was it coming out of?

TONY BONFIGLIO: I have no idea.

THEO VON: Look, a vegetable or what? I never even thought about that. What could even have that much oil? Maybe an eggplant. What is vegetable made of?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Vegetables, you think? But they squish them.

THEO VON: Vegetable oil is made from the oils extracted from various plant parts, like seeds, fruits, nuts, and grains. Most commonly soybeans, corn, canola, sunflower, and palm. Because that’s kind of the oil that everybody’s kind of against nowadays. But I guess you guys were just using it to keep stuff shiny.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Shiny.

THEO VON: Wow.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah.

THEO VON: I didn’t know people use it like that.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, we had these black trucks and they would look all waxed after we were done oiling them all down.

THEO VON: Yeah.

The Pit and the Freezer Men

TONY BONFIGLIO: And it stunk too, because it was such a big place. And there’d be a lot of like the bones and the fat. And you’d have to go in the pit. Sometimes it’s like you would puke, it was so bad smelling.

THEO VON: What was the pit? It was kind of like below the floor.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, that’s where all the water would drain into there. And every now and then our boss would have to go in there. I’d see him reaching in. He’d have like fat on his glasses. And it was, oh, it was gross.

THEO VON: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah. No, I didn’t want to stay there.

THEO VON: God, it was cold. It was cold in there too.

TONY BONFIGLIO: And there was freezers there. And the guys that worked in the freezers, you never saw them. They look like they were from the Antarctic. They had these hoods and these parkas and these big boots. And you’d see them now and then. They were kind of scary. You were a kid, you’re like, “There’s the freezer men.” They never came out of the freezer.

THEO VON: Yeah, dude. Oh, that’s f*ing wild. Yeah, be living in it. It’s hiding from your wife and kids probably in there.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, God.

THEO VON: That’s when family life’s bad, when you’re like, “I don’t care how cold it is, I’ll stay in.”

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, yeah, that’s bad. That’s the last job you want is working in a freezer.

THEO VON: Yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, I think so.

THEO VON: That was in the line. And what kind of guys would do it? Was it tough guys? Was it Russians?

Working at the Meat Market

TONY BONFIGLIO: F*ing guys? Butchers, psychos. They got their own toolbox of knives. You know, the big. Oh, a couple of times they would pick you up by your shirt, you know, because we were just the kids, you know, we run it around.

THEO VON: Any ever get arrested for crimes or anything like that? Like, you think were any of them low key, like Dexters or like kind of that kind of guy?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, yeah, they were low key, but they were strange, some of them.

THEO VON: Yeah. Dang. That’s why.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Then you had the women. They were the packers. Oh, they were, yeah. They would like pack the chickens and all that and wrap it and everything.

THEO VON: Yeah, Women do better gift wrapping.

TONY BONFIGLIO: They had, like, tough women, too. They were working. It was like the boss of the women was a real tough broad.

THEO VON: Oh, yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, yeah.

THEO VON: Some girl would have tattoo of Richard.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Dent on us smoking. Everybody be out smoking. Yeah. Your smoke breaks and the guy would come with the roach and call you out for your coffee and sh*t.

THEO VON: He would.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, the coffee roach. You know, they were roach coaches here. Everybody would come out. You know what a roach coaches? It’s a coffee truck.

THEO VON: All right.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Back in the day, they would come to, like, factories.

THEO VON: Oh, so it just pulls up and you go and get your snack.

TONY BONFIGLIO: And they would be like, all right, the code guys here and everybody would be out a break, get their coffee, their lousy donut, whatever.

THEO VON: He had a little bit of a break. Yeah, I like that, man.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, dude.

Kindergarten Memories

THEO VON: We stop. When I was a kindergartner, they had, or I don’t know what grade I was in. I wasn’t even in a grade, but I, but they, it was Nap time or whatever at kindergarten. But they would, I wouldn’t sleep right. I would keep my eyes open because they had this, they bring in this other lady to watch us, right? And I was, like, kind of curious about her, so I would just kind of lay over there.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Eyeballing her.

THEO VON: Yeah, kind of eyeballing her, I guess, you know, because me and my mother always on the outs. I was shopping around, so I remember, like, at a certain point, she’d come over and kind of kick me a little bit and she’d let me go outside and watch her smoke.

TONY BONFIGLIO: That’s party.

THEO VON: Oh, that was nice, dude. And she had pretty nice hair. She looked a little bit like a man. Yeah, but she was definitely, she probably.

TONY BONFIGLIO: What year was that?

THEO VON: Oh, this was probably 84, early 80s.

TONY BONFIGLIO: God.

THEO VON: Yeah, she looked like a man, but she’s pretty. She’s like only the third woman I’d ever seen, you know? So at that point, she was really good looking.

TONY BONFIGLIO: You don’t know.

THEO VON: Yeah, yeah, she’s beautiful to me, you know, she was dying, you know, she was just stunning, dude. But, yeah, she’d let me go out there and watch her smoke and she’d complain about stuff.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, that’s funny.

THEO VON: God, that was nice. Yeah, Just getting a little break, you know. So that was like, it felt like it was my break from kindergarten. Like, we’re on break.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, I remember kindergarten well.

THEO VON: Really?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, yeah. Nap time. That was the best.

THEO VON: Oh, yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Snack and nap and then out to the sandbox and dig a hole of China.

THEO VON: Yeah, dig a hole down to a butcher shop.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, they would always put like a cone in the sand. They’d be like, oh, you’re almost in China. You know, I’ll be like, yeah, let’s keep digging.

From the Freezer to the Fire

THEO VON: Yeah, dude. And then some kid would get sand in his eyes and he would look like he was Chinese. Yeah, yeah, that’s. Yeah, that’s what I got. Good, dude. So, yeah, so take me out. How do you get out of the meat area into the, into the fire? Like, take me out of the freezer. Enter the fire, man.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Well, I, I went, I went before. After that, I went to a plastic mold injection factory job.

THEO VON: Did you?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Unemployment sent me to.

THEO VON: Oh, they did. They were, they were making body parts.

TONY BONFIGLIO: No, no, we were making, there was a game called Othello back then. It was like a white.

THEO VON: Yeah, remember that game?

TONY BONFIGLIO: And we were making the chips and we made the colored beads. So it was all like these plastic mold injectors.

THEO VON: The color beads. Like what, Mardi Gras or something?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, or people just buy them for their crafts and stuff like that. All they’re like 100 different colors.

THEO VON: Yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: And I could never remember the color after I backed, boxed it up and get ready to send it back up. I’d be like, oh, amethyst, brown, green. I put something down, and then the guy would come back. You can’t be. Okay, be yelling at me. You can’t send these out. And I’m laughing. He’s like, what are you laughing about? I mean, I’m making $3 an hour, dude.

THEO VON: I remember one time I ate a bunch of mushrooms or whatever after school.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah.

THEO VON: And I worked at this mail center. Right. My job was to mail out these insurance forms to these different companies around the country. Well, I’m in the mail room, dude. I’m not doing real good.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, I could imagine.

THEO VON: Yeah. Well, my body had gotten really hot, so I took all my clothes off and I, put all my clothes into a box. Mailed, mailed them to somebody.

TONY BONFIGLIO: My God, that’s great, dude.

THEO VON: My first girlfriend, her mom got me that job. Her, her dad, shout out, Mr. Earl. He was a fire chief, actually.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, really?

THEO VON: Yep.

TONY BONFIGLIO: And.

THEO VON: But anyway, I got laid off. And, yeah, the mother had to come. Thank God it was a day, it was raining because she let me borrow a raincoat she had so I could go get in my car.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah. Wow.

THEO VON: So anyway, we made some tough choices over the years, but, but I did have, have a good time. They were state, they had a firehouse down there on Chapatoulas in New Orleans. And it would be great because the Mardi Gras parade there. So we go down there, and the firehouse would be open on days like that and all.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Must have been an old firehouse, too. It was beautiful. Yeah.

THEO VON: I think. Bring it right up. It’s right down there. Off a chop of toolis over there. And that was it right there.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, I see it.

THEO VON: That’s it.

TONY BONFIGLIO: They made it into something.

THEO VON: Yeah, they made it into something.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Wow.

THEO VON: But yet, anyway, it was a great time. And it was a great time. We go over there, everybody’s cooking hot dogs.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah.

THEO VON: And just, you know, just having a great time, you know. That was a beautiful time.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, the Cajun.

THEO VON: Yeah. We had so much fun.

TONY BONFIGLIO: I’ll bet.

The Path to Becoming a Firefighter

THEO VON: So how do you get into there, man? How do you get, so you’re, you’re over there making jewelry and stuff.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Well, the funny part is they sent me to this place called Stonewell Plastics in Mineola. And I go in and I got this little Mexican guy, he’s doing the interview with me. He’s got, it’s like, middle aged little guy, he’s got a little pencil mustache. So I’m sitting there, I’m 18, you know. And he goes, so, what’s your name? And I said, Tony Bonfiglio. He writes it down. He says, and how old are you, Tony? I said, I’m 18. Writes it down. He goes, Antonio, were you born here? I said, no, I was born in New Jersey. He starts laughing. Oh, oh, you’ll do. You’ll do. And when I went back there, I realized I was the only American in the place. Everybody else was foreign.

THEO VON: Oh, damn. So you’re in there learning Spanish, huh?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, Spanish.

THEO VON: What languages were they? Yeah. Who was.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Who was mostly Spanish? Yeah, yeah, there was some black people, but, but even them I didn’t understand because some of them from Brooklyn. I had one friend, he would drive me home. I would say, yeah, I’d shake his head and he’d shake his head. And we didn’t know what the hell Eli was saying.

THEO VON: Oh, dude, I still can’t understand.

TONY BONFIGLIO: I’d be like, hey, Ms. Salvatore, steal my damn boss having. I’ll be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, dude. I mean, look, bro, I don’t know what he said.

THEO VON: It’s 40 years later, something’s never changed and maybe it’s for the best, you know?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Could be. Yeah.

THEO VON: So you, so you’re in here. Are you just like this in from me or how do the winds, how do the winds blow you over to the fire world?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Well, then I went, my father got me into the printing union, the Amalgamated Lithographers of America, Local 1. Wow. And I did that for about four years, but I took the fire department test when I was 18. I was 19 in like 78.

THEO VON: And was that part of school you had to take it?

TONY BONFIGLIO: No, my neighbor came over and he came in our back door with an application. Johnny Lalima. Thank God. Johnny saved my life. Gives me the application. He says, you’ll never get rich on this job, but he’ll put a roof over your head and food on your table. So I’m sitting at my kitchen table, I’m like, okay, Johnny, thanks. You know, I had no idea it was going to be the biggest career move of my life.

THEO VON: Dude. What? Yeah. What made him even come over there and do that on one night?

TONY BONFIGLIO: I guess he knew I was going nowhere because he was my neighbor and they saw us all hanging out all the time, you know? Yeah, well, you figured this kid be a fireman. It’d be all right. So thank God. I mean, he saved me because I was going, the printing union was going south. You know, computers were coming in.

THEO VON: Yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: And, you know, they weren’t printing anymore on these big printing presses, so, so I got that. And then about a year later, I took a physical test after the written test. The written test we took in a high school somewhere in Queens.

Taking the Fire Department Test

THEO VON: And was there a lot of people taking those tests at the 40,000. 40,000 people wanted to be firemen.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah.

THEO VON: Wow.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah.

THEO VON: Because the job, I think in, in a lot of ways it’s a very family, like, it’s a, like it’s a lineage job. It’s like a lot of families do it, definitely, and there’s a lot of esteem with it, you know, especially at that time. What was it like? Like, was it a very revered position? Did you even think you could get it?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Get the job? Yeah, yeah, I think I, you know, because I was 19, I was in great shape. And the physical test is really where they separate everybody. The written test was a joke. I mean, it was like a third grade questions, you know?

THEO VON: Yeah. Remember any of them or, no.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Well, I, you know, I saw the, the sanitation guy, he was saying about the dirt and the shovel, that’s exactly what it was. Like, what would you use, a garbage truck, a plow, or a shovel and brew. But it’d be ridiculous if you got your name right, you know, that was it. So I got a 98 on the written test, probably the highest I ever gotten any test in my life.

THEO VON: But what was the physical part like?

The Physical Test and an Unexpected Zero

Like, my father took me to East New York to an armory in this real sh neighborhood. And he parked it. We parked his Buick Regal. It was like the nicest car my dad ever had. And I bought him these spoke rims for it for his birthday.

THEO VON: Nice.

TONY BONFIGLIO: So we get there and he says, here, you take the keys, I’m running for the subway and you take the car home. I’m like, yeah, you sure, dad? You want to. Yeah, don’t worry about it. I mean, he’s an East Harlem guy, so I wasn’t too worried about him.

So he took off. I go in this armory. It’s like when you get in there, it’s the size of a football field. And there’s 100 guys that day that are going to take the test. And they break you up into like 10, 10 men groups. And you go around all these different stations and you take different tests. You had to run. One was a mile, one was an eight foot wall. You had to jump over the eight foot wall. That was like the separator. Like if you didn’t get over the eight foot wall, you went to the police department. Sorry, guys. But hey, that’s what separated them.

THEO VON: That’s what it is, man. Sometimes you got to separate the beef from the pork, you know.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Well, the funny part is I got a zero on one of them. And if you get a zero on one of those stations, you’re done. You’re not going to get hired.

THEO VON: Yeah, for sure. Which one was it?

TONY BONFIGLIO: I had this thing called a ledge walk. So you had to put on a turnout coat, a helmet, you had to put boots on, you had to put a mask on. And you went up on a balance beam next to a wall and you had to slide along the wall. Like you were shimmying along a ledge. It was called a ledge walk.

I’m shimmying along this thing. I’m like, why the f* would I be on a ledge? I mean, is this job that crazy? One of my Batman, you know, I’m going to be out on the ledge? And I went all the way down, I touched the line, I came all the way back and the woman scoring me says, you didn’t touch the line down there. What? I raced all the way back, touched the line, I come back, she ran out of time. I got a zero. I was like, ah, that’s it. Everything was down the drain.

THEO VON: So come on, you think she just didn’t do it correctly?

TONY BONFIGLIO: I think, yeah, I do. I think she was there to knock some of the white guys out because there was too many white guys on the job, which they were complaining about. They wanted women, they wanted minorities. I think they were told because I stepped on the line. She wasn’t even anywhere near the line.

THEO VON: No.

TONY BONFIGLIO: But you know, it’s like everything happens for a reason, you know, I mean, right.

The Lawsuit That Changed Everything

THEO VON: And so you get the zero, pissed. And so but, and there’s 10 stations you do. Fine on the rest of them. You get out of there and are you then waiting for your grade? Like, do you even like…

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah. So now, now after you get all that done, everybody says their half-assed goodbyes, you know. I went back out, thank God my father’s Regal was still there. Yeah, found it. I got into Regal. I found I had a joint in my workout bag. I lit that sucker up and now I’m driving home. We had no directions back then. So I’m looking for signs for the LIE. And boom, get home. My dad was there. How’d you do? I said, yeah, I think I did all right.

And so now the girls have a lawsuit because 40 girls took the test, the first 40 girls ever, and they didn’t pass. With 40,000 applicants, you know, none of them passed. None of them passed.

THEO VON: Were some of the women in there on that day you were there with that 100 people?

TONY BONFIGLIO: No, I didn’t see any women that day, but we had a couple in my battalion when I got there. But so anyway, they had a lawsuit and this lawsuit went on for six years. So from that time I took the test, I didn’t get a notice that I was hired for six years because it was because of the women. Because the lawsuit took so long.

They usually hire about 2,500 people off the list. Now they had to go deep into the list. And because of that zero, I was like 4,300 on the list. So the women saved me. Thank God. Thank you, girls. I appreciate it.

THEO VON: Yeah, because rarely does a complaining woman save you.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, they saved me that day.

THEO VON: Brenda Berkman right there.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Berkman. Everybody knows Brenda.

THEO VON: Pioneering female firefighter. She was the sole name class. She was a lawyer in the federal sex discrimination lawsuit that opened the fire department city in New York to women firefighters. After she won the lawsuit in 1982, she and 40 other women became FDNY firefighters. Was that a time where, like, were people supportive of the women? Were they against the women? What did that feel like?

TONY BONFIGLIO: They were totally against the women.

THEO VON: They were.

TONY BONFIGLIO: There’s an all male place, you know.

THEO VON: Yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: And you know, I guess a lot of guys, they don’t feel like they didn’t mind the women that really passed the test. But to just get on because you’re a woman, that was not, you know, today, now they have girls. You know, there’s so much into athletics and stuff. They could pass these tests now, but back then, you know, it wasn’t like that.

THEO VON: So some of it, they were just kind of stacking the deck like we’re just going to put some extra girls in because some of that’s just a liability.

TONY BONFIGLIO: That’s it. They want you. Well, yeah, life and death, you know.

THEO VON: And a liability for their own life.

TONY BONFIGLIO: That too. Yeah. But I mean, if your kid is trapped in a fire, you know, you want the best person going to get that kid. Not, you know, somebody that didn’t make it.

THEO VON: Yeah, for sure.

TONY BONFIGLIO: 100%.

THEO VON: I agree.

TONY BONFIGLIO: But they saved me. And I’m the luckiest guy for that.

THEO VON: So you’re in, huh?

TONY BONFIGLIO: I’m in.

THEO VON: You made it in.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah.

Getting the Letter

THEO VON: And do you remember like, like when you do get a letter that’s like, yeah, I’m in, guy. You got it. And does it have flames?

TONY BONFIGLIO: My wife came. I come pulling up in the parking lot from working at Mastercraft Litho, and I had a little Chevette. We both shared this little Chevette car that my wife bought on her own when we were kids. And I see her coming across the parking lot waving. I said, what is it? She goes, “Fire department watch. Six years. Fire department watch. They’re going to hire you.” I said, holy sh. I looked at it. Yeah. Tony Bonfiglio, New York City fireman, report to Randall’s Island. 8/23/84.

THEO VON: Wow.

TONY BONFIGLIO: I’ll be there.

THEO VON: That’s pretty cool, huh?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh my God. So happy.

THEO VON: Oh, well, she was happy.

TONY BONFIGLIO: She was happy. I was happy.

THEO VON: Where did you, what did you, where did you meet your wife Christine? I know she’s here with us today. Where did you meet your wife at?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Well, on my block. I was walking up my block in our neighborhood and her sister just moved in from the Bronx. They were in the Marble Hill projects. They were like the last ones out of these projects. And so I’m going up the block. I’m like 14 years old.

THEO VON: Yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: They’re coming down with one of my friends and he’s like, hey, these two girls just moved in from the Bronx, you know, Chris and Bernie. And I’m like, hey. First of all, I thought he was pulling my leg. But so that was like why we met and then, you know, we went through school. We didn’t really date until we were like 18.

THEO VON: Hey, we are.

TONY BONFIGLIO: That’s a great shot. Yeah, I was like size 32 waist back then.

THEO VON: Hey, look, I’m looking at Christine. Okay.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, she’s looking good.

THEO VON: Yeah. Yeah, you can say what, I’m not looking at your waist, buddy.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, we were, we were, you know, we were like 24 years old there. I was just getting out of the academy. That’s graduation day. I graduated from there after six weeks of training.

THEO VON: Oh, that’s nice, huh?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah.

THEO VON: Yeah. Dude, you look pretty pleased.

Assignment to Ladder 34

TONY BONFIGLIO: Well, the funny part is they give us your assignment, you know, so I get this thing, 34 truck. Now like 150 firemen, only 10 are going to go to trucks. The other 140 are going to go to engine companies. There’s an engine company, they’re the water. They got the hoses and then there’s the truck. That’s the ladders. And you know, they break down the doors, the ledge walkers.

So I didn’t want to go to a truck. I was like real. I didn’t like the heights, I didn’t like the ropes.

THEO VON: Yeah, look, I got a zero on the ledge walk. Yeah, you got the wrong guy. So, and why did they choose you for that then?

TONY BONFIGLIO: I have no idea. My father said they saw how good I was at breaking things, that they said, send him to the truck. So now I see a truck in Manhattan, I’m like, oh man. All right. So I tell her, I says, I got, I’m going to a 34 truck. They gave me a truck. She’s like, they gave me a truck. I’m like, yeah. Because most guys are in the engine for like maybe five, ten years before they get to a truck.

THEO VON: And so in the engine means they’re in the actual fire engine.

TONY BONFIGLIO: They’re in the engine and they’re a separate company. You know, their engine A4. And we were at a 34. It was a big hundred year old firehouse.

THEO VON: And so a ladder, they do different stuff than the engine does.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, the engine puts the fire out.

THEO VON: Okay.

TONY BONFIGLIO: The ladder opens up, opens up the door, breaks the doors down, opens, cuts the roofs open, makes all the rescues and the searches. It’s a lot more intimidating because you don’t have the hose line. You’re actually in there crawling around with no water. No water. Maybe a can on your back.

THEO VON: Oh, what?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, I was a can man for quite a while.

THEO VON: And that’s heating up quick, probably.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah.

THEO VON: So you get in a ladder and where’s the ladder at?

TONY BONFIGLIO: 161st Street in Manhattan, off of Amsterdam Avenue in a place called Washington Heights.

THEO VON: Washington Heights?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah.

THEO VON: Yeah. A lot of Dominicans up there.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh my God. When I got there, they were just coming in. Yeah, and they took over with blood, man. They killed everybody.

THEO VON: Really?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, they took over the drug business because that was the hub. You had the GW Bridge right there. You had all the parkways to head out to North Brooklyn, out to Long Island. So everybody would come in and buy their crack and their cocaine.

THEO VON: Yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: So it was badass. I mean, they would be shooting all day long.

THEO VON: Was it exciting?

TONY BONFIGLIO: It was, yeah. Oh my God. And the place was so crowded. It was like full of people with these old broken down tenement buildings, brownstones, tenements, all broken down, hundreds years old. The firehouse was 100 years old.

THEO VON: Did you, was it exciting to go work there? Did it feel scary? Like, what did it kind of become?

First Assignment and Finding the Firehouse

Well, the funny part I was going to say is that I went with my wife from the graduation. I said, we got to go. It’s on 84th Street. I told her I didn’t realize that was 84 engine when I read the thing. So I take her into Manhattan and I take her down 84th street and there’s no firehouse. I go all the way back up to the west side, I come all the way down, there’s no fire. And we’re saying, wow, this is nice. Look at this is all money. Brownstones, high end stores.

Finally, I go around 85th street and I find a firehouse and I got my uniform on. And they tell you to not always knock on the door and say, probery, probationary firefighter Bonfiglio. This old guy answers the door, what can I do for you, probie? He knew right away I was a probie just by looking at me with the stuff on. I said, I’m looking for my Firehouse 34 truck. They said it’s on 84th Street. He’s like, why? Let me look at that. He’s like, dude, you’re in with 84 engine and you’re on 161st Street. I was like, why? Holy. I had to get in the car and tell my wife, we got to go up the water. And now we left the glitz and now we’re in this freaking rundown neighborhood. It was like, holy.

THEO VON: The music’s a little bit better.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, you got a lot of salsa blasting in the street.

THEO VON: So you’re in there. You’re in the ladder.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Truck company. Yeah, ladder company.

THEO VON: You’re in the truck company. You guys are the ones that go in. So you have more of an ax and you do a hoe.

TONY BONFIGLIO: We got a forcible entry team.

THEO VON: Okay.

TONY BONFIGLIO: A roofman and another guy that’s called the ovs to be a vents out the outside. He goes up the fire escapes.

THEO VON: Oh yeah. Peeping Tom probably.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re the guy, the first guy in to break in the window.

THEO VON: Yeah. Or just sitting there by it, you know, I won’t say nothing. So you do you guys get there before the, the, the like an engine gets there or is it just does.

TONY BONFIGLIO: That try to get there at the same time? You never know. I mean, if we’re leaving quarters together, you know, we always let the engine take off first. Hopefully they go and find a hydrant.

THEO VON: Okay, got it.

TONY BONFIGLIO: And we try to get in front of the building with the ladder.

THEO VON: Okay. Okay, got it. So. So take me on your first fire.

The First Real Fire

TONY BONFIGLIO: My first fire. Well, I’ve been like car fires, rubbish fires. We had water leaks, so many water leaks. Because it was such an old neighborhood. You know, when we go to a water leak, we got to find out where it’s leaking. Sometimes we got to break into the apartment, gas leaks. We did everything, all the utilities up there.

So I doing it for about three weeks. I’m still wondering, oh my God, what’s going to happen with a job? Am I going to. What’s it going to be like? I still have no idea. You know, I’m a can man. The proby gets the can.

THEO VON: Okay. And the can means what?

TONY BONFIGLIO: I got a fire extinguisher with a strap on my back and I got a hook. And I’m going to be the guy that if I can put out whatever fire I can with the can.

THEO VON: Oh, is. Is it actually helpful? Is the can helpful?

TONY BONFIGLIO: It’ll put out. If a good can man could maybe put out a room of fire.

THEO VON: Okay. Okay.

TONY BONFIGLIO: You get your finger over that thing and you spread it around.

THEO VON: So it’s real.

TONY BONFIGLIO: It’s real. Yeah.

THEO VON: Okay, got it. Do you remember the day that you get your first.

TONY BONFIGLIO: It was like three weeks in and I’m doing my first 12 by watch. So you have a house watch, you know, and you got a man. Somebody’s got a man. It. It’s got a computer in there that comes on and tells you what your alarms are and you acknowledge them. You hit all the lights, you send the companies out. So I got to do my first 12 by. So I never done a watch alone yet. So the 12 buy was like, you know, it was a little scary at first.

THEO VON: And that’s 12 hours.

TONY BONFIGLIO: No, 12 to three, you do three hour watch.

THEO VON: Okay.

TONY BONFIGLIO: So 12 o’clock came, I went in, I took the book over. It’s midnight and I’m sitting there and it’s like one o’clock in the morning and all of a sudden like 1:30, I start falling asleep. I’m like sleeping.

THEO VON: Look, I’ve had a job before. I know how it is.

TONY BONFIGLIO: I’m sacked out. All of a sudden the alarm goes off. The. The computer goes. It starts ticking out, this alarm. I’m like, oh my God, I’m was so scared. I got up, I hit the housewatch light. I’m looking at the ticket. It says engine A4, ladder three four, first two, fire on an eighth floor.

So now I got to hit all the bunk room lights. I got to hit the intercom, say everybody goes. I got to hit the three bells. And then I got to acknowledge on the computer, both companies, 10, 4. And then I got to take the tickets and put them on the truck side and the engine side. And then I put my gear on and out the door we go.

THEO VON: Let’s go, Tony. I’m amped up.

Into the Fire

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh man. So now we get there, it’s 3:30, quarter to 4 in the morning. And it’s like a projects building, about 11 stories. It was pretty decent building was on Amsterdam Avenue. And so we had a forceful entry team. Me, my lieutenant, who was this salty guy from the Bronx, Spinelli. He was like a real. I mean, he was the war days, you know, back in the 60s and the 70s.

THEO VON: How salty?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Salty means, you know, like. Oh, yeah, yeah, he was salty. Burly mustache, unruly hair, gout in his smile, huh? Bent and burnt, you know.

THEO VON: Yeah, dude, definitely great guy though.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah.

THEO VON: It’s like he was raised in an ashtray.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh yeah. Oh, this guy. Yeah. So we’re this forceful entry teams. The cam man and irons man. He’s got an ax and a Halligan and the boss, and we’re the three guys. So now we go into the lobby door and we hit all the buzzes. 3:30 in the morning.

THEO VON: And there’s people in there sleeping.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, no, they’re. They’re in there. So all of a sudden they start. But who is it?

THEO VON: Who is it?

TONY BONFIGLIO: You’re like, fire department. Open the door. Open the door. Fire department. So they buzz you in. Now go in the lobby, nothing showing. Nobody’s bailing out, you know. So I’m like, I don’t know. So this might not be it. Take an elevator to the seventh floor, because the fire was on the eighth floor. So we get to the seventh floor and you never take the fire. The elevator to the fire floor for obvious reasons.

So we take it and we take the stairs to the eighth floor and we get in this hallway. And now it’s like a big projects hallway. I don’t know if you ever seen one of them, but they’re painted green and they got like fluorescent lights and it’s long. So we go to all the doors and we stick our noses in the jams trying to smell smoke. We don’t smell nothing.

So the boss says to my friend Jimmy the Duke, he says, go up to the next floor and check it out. Calls down the battalion, says, yeah, we got nothing showing on the eighth floor. We’re going to check out the ninth floor. So with that, now we go into the hallway and my friend is on the top of the stairs and he says, lou, I think we got something.

So I’m like, oh, shit, this is it. I’m in this project hallway, caught at four in the morning. I’m running up the steps with my hook and everything. And there I. And I said, the boss says, what do we have? And the Duke opens this door and I was like, oh, my God, if there was a gate to hell, this was it. Okay. Black shimmering smoke that looked like satin curtains just going in all different directions. And my first thought was, no way we’re f*ing going in there, right?

THEO VON: I see these guys, hey, look, let me see. A two bedroom. Yeah, this won’t work for us.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, they’re pulling their boots up and they’re putting their air. They’re turning air bottles on and everything. I’m like, oh, this is it. So now we’re getting down on our hands and knees and the Duke tells me, you. You hold my coat, okay? And I’m like, yep, sure, I’m holding your coat.

THEO VON: So you’re behind him, crawling behind the Duke.

TONY BONFIGLIO: The boss goes in first. Like this black abyss we just crawl into on the.

THEO VON: What are y’all. What are you looking for?

TONY BONFIGLIO: The fire apartment. We got to find it.

THEO VON: Oh, so you. This is just the hallway.

TONY BONFIGLIO: The hallway. Oh, somebody left the door open.

THEO VON: Pull up that hallway you had, Nick. Is that the one from the actual building? Oh, this is a general one. Yeah. I think I know what you’re talking about, though. It’s narrow hallways.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Narrow hallways. Long. Green. Yeah, look at that color. Yellowish green that looked just like that.

THEO VON: Oh, God.

TONY BONFIGLIO: So now we’re on our hands and knees, and I’m. I’ve got his coat. I got the can on my back. I got my mask on. And we’re in total blackness. And I’m crawling down like 100ft. And I’m saying in my mask, I’m saying, what the f am I doing here? This is fing crazy. I’m never going to do this again. I felt so helpless. And what am I going to do? It’s pitch black. We’re crawling in a hallway we’ve never been before.

So we crawl up and all of a sudden we. The Duke stops and he says, we’re at the fire door. And I’m like, okay. Can’t see nothing.

THEO VON: Yeah. It almost seems like some kind of sex trafficking. Whatever’s good anyway, whatever’s going on. It sounds kind of out of sorts.

TONY BONFIGLIO: You know, it’s out of.

THEO VON: So anyway, so carry on. Sorry.

TONY BONFIGLIO: So it’s something that I never. I’m like, I’m not do. I’m quitting in the morning. I swear to God. I was quitting. I was like, what are we going to do in here? Yeah, we don’t.

THEO VON: Can’t see.

TONY BONFIGLIO: I’m on the ground. So finally we call in and I crawl in and. And I hear the boss. He’s above, ahead of us in the apartment already. He says, bring the can in here. So now I crawl past the Duke. I’m on my hands and knees, and about 10ft up, I see the boss on his knees with a glow of the fire. He goes, you see the fire? It’s to the left. And I look and there’s a room on fire. It looks like cotton candy. The flames are, like all over the place.

THEO VON: And how much is it protecting you? How much is your suit protecting you at that point?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Nah, nothing.

THEO VON: Take it off, bro.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, no, they know. They’re just coats, you know, to keep you warm. Basically. He got your leather helmet on, keep you warm, but.

THEO VON: And at that point, does it kind of take on it like do you start to feel a little bit more empowered kind of or something?

TONY BONFIGLIO: No, I felt scared. I just wanted to get out of there and get this fire over with. So now I see him and he says, do you see the fire? And I look to the left and I said, yeah, I see the fire. I’m in this mask, you know.

And he says, hit it with the can. Got the can. And I’m on my knees and I go to hit it and nothing comes out. I hit it again. Nothing comes out. I didn’t have air in the can. It’s like a total f* up for.

THEO VON: You should have put it in there.

TONY BONFIGLIO: That’s my f* up, my first job. So I said to the boss, I got no air in the can.

THEO VON: I’ve used that excuse a lot of times, a lot of times over the years, buddy, I’ll tell you that. And I want to apologize to a lot of his women out there. That was my excuse. I got no air in the can.

TONY BONFIGLIO: You know, that’s a good analogy.

THEO VON: Yeah, I got a ladder, but go on.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Fully extended.

THEO VON: You must have been embarrassed, huh?

TONY BONFIGLIO: I wasn’t embarrassed, but yeah, I felt like, oh, man, I’m going to catch some for this. Yeah. Embarrassed everybody.

THEO VON: Did you just make a sound like you had here?

TONY BONFIGLIO: No, I didn’t make no sounds as I could believe it. Because, I mean, you always check the can, you know, you got to pressurize it, put a little water. So he says, all right, back out to the doorway. So I paired. Now the fire is coming out over our heads in the hallway.

And I get to the door, we came in crawling, and the elevator was right across from the apartment. Fire, apartment. And the door opens and there’s 84 engine without a mask on or any. And they got. They took the elevator to the fire floor and they got stuck. And they’re going down on their knees and they’re trying to put their masks on.

And I’m in the. I’m yelling in my mask. I’m like, get the bucket line in here. Put the bucket 5. Screaming. I’m out of my mind now. So finally they get in the line. Now it’s black again.

THEO VON: And the line is the.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Is the hose, the hose, okay? And it’s all asses and elbows now in this hallway, you know, that’s what we call organized confusion. And everybody sort of bringing the line past me. I see him get up to the. The apart the. The. The room.

And the boss says, there’s the fire to the left. He crack. I hear the line crack, you know, get the water comes up. He cracks it and now he hits it, you know, and he starts pushing the fire in. And I squeeze past them because I got to search the apartment. That’s my job.

THEO VON: And you’re searching for. To see if there’s anybody in the bodies.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah. Wow. So now I’m searching along the wall and still can’t see. And I’d get to a window and I’d smash it out with my hook, and I would stick my head out the window because this is the first time I could see again since we left that stairwell.

THEO VON: You know, fresh air.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Fresh air and some view of something. Yeah. So then I go around and then all of a sudden, they. They knocked it down fast. And I run into the Duke, the Irons, man. He’s like, yo, probie, you broke your cherry, man. Congratulations.

And I was like, wow. I took my mask off. It was kind of still gray smoke and steamy. But it was better than the mask, you know, because that was so confined. So I said, yeah, Jimmy. I said, my first fire. But I. This might be my last fire. I said, I don’t know if I’m doing this again.

And there we were. We overhauled the apartment and we threw the mattress out the window. We took everything out. Throw the street down into the street.

THEO VON: And who’s down there catching that? He’s hitting whoever that’s free.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Back then, nobody here. Who gives a. Yeah, just hopefully nobody’s down there. You yell out, look out. And then you throw the burning mattress out the window.

THEO VON: Oh, I’ll throw my ex wife out there. You know, don’t just take that out. Let’s take that out.

TONY BONFIGLIO: And then I’m looking out this window, and it’s encrusted with all these embers and, you know, gold and amber and everything. And it 5:30 in the morning and the Manhattan skyline was turning purple. So I had all this beautiful thing I was learning. I was like, wow, this is some sight. You know me.

THEO VON: Yeah, yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: It was definitely rock and roll, man. I was like, yeah. So now I had to get back and I put the air in the can when I got back, changed all the masks and everything. I had to go up and see the boss, you know, take my medicine.

So I walk up to the truck office and I knock on the door. It’s open. He says, yeah, come in. He’s wiping his face down with a towel. He just came out of the bathroom. I said, I made puppy eyes. I said, Lou, I’m sorry about not having air in the can. And he’s wiping his face. He goes, yeah, don’t worry about it, kid. Happens. And I was like, oh. Oh, wow. Thank you. I was 23 years old, you know, so now I’m walking out, and he goes, hey, kid. And I turn around, he goes, you did a good job. And I was like, oh, wow.

THEO VON: Wow, that’s awesome. Yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: And then I’m driving home saying, am I quitting this job? Because it was. It was nothing I’ve ever experienced. And I. I. Growing up, I did a lot of crazy things, but this was the scariest thing I ever did. But yet it was so exciting and thrilling.

I mean, I got home and. And the grass was so greener, the sky was so blue, and the air that I was breathing was so appreciative.

THEO VON: You were alive.

TONY BONFIGLIO: I was alive, man. It made me. I was like, wow, that was. That was something. Of course, that wasn’t my last job. I went 21 years more after that.

The Decision to Continue

THEO VON: So what kind of made you decide you just have to go back to work? And it just kept being like that or.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, no, I. You know. Yeah, you know, we were busy truck back then because we had a lot of fires, a lot of occupied fires, which are really. They’re a lot more intense than a vacant fire or, you know, something that. You know, you got a lot of people bailing out, and they’re. Sometimes they’re trapped, and, you know, you got to get to them. The truck. That’s their job.

THEO VON: You know what’s. Almost hearing you say this and thanks so much for your time, Tony, too. I appreciate it, man.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Thank you for the. This is an honor.

THEO VON: Oh, thanks.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Kidding me. Yeah, you guys are pioneers. You know, you’re the millennial pioneers with entertainment these days. I think you changed the whole scene.

THEO VON: Oh, well, I just. I think it’s people just. We got to find more humans that have the best stories, you know?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Exactly.

THEO VON: It was so crazy. We’re just. We’re coming to New York and we just get an email from you the other day that you had seen that we put out a thing about. About looking for somebody that works in. In a fire department. And my producers actually forged it to me. He’s like, can you believe we just. This guy, we’re going to be there. I was like, wow, it seems really interesting.

TONY BONFIGLIO: So I think it was meant to be.

THEO VON: Hey, I think so, too. And I think I was about to say, I think it was meant to be that your first fire didn’t have any. Nobody was in it. Yeah, because that would have. That could have been super scary.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

When Lives Are at Stake

THEO VON: Take me through some of the times where there was somebody in there. How much of a different scenario is that? Is the energy different when you get there? Who lets you know if somebody’s in there or do you even know? Take me through that process of right when you get there and then take me into one of a fire where it was inhabited.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Well, one. Well, this one fire where I. We. We lost this little girl. And that one really hurt me a lot because we got to the apartment and my. My lieutenant, he was an. A little Irish guy to. Bravest guy I’ve ever met, Lieutenant Maloney.

And I would chase him up to the fire of the door, the caller, and he would knock on the door with his little crowbar. Fire department open the door. You know, it sound like some cartoon. You know, the Irish broke. So these people open the doors and we walk in and there’s a card table sitting there, about eight people playing cards. They’re eating. We’re standing in the kitchen, the three of us, and they were. My tennis was.

THEO VON: What the hell?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Did you call the fire department? So they’re looking up. They’re like, yeah, something’s burning in the back. It was a big apartment. So we’re looking at each other. Something burning in the back. What the hell is this? So now we go down the hallway. My lieutenant’s cursing under his breath, you know, he said, well, he’s out of these motherfers. I can’t fing shit.

THEO VON: Still playing cards. So now we get fun, though. Cards can be fun.

TONY BONFIGLIO: They were. But we get into the living room and there’s these French doors. I don’t know if you know French doors. Probably from.

THEO VON: Is it like that?

TONY BONFIGLIO: They’re glass paneled and they. They’re two doors you open to a room. They’re called French doors.

THEO VON: And you think there’s going to be somebody French in there, but there ain’t.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, no French people.

THEO VON: It never is, dude. That never is typical French. You’ll send the doors, we’ll be there. They’re not typical French.

TONY BONFIGLIO: So anyway, I. I opened the French door and the room is on fire. Oh, it’s. Close the door. We get down on our knees, start putting our masks on, and we’re calling 1075. That means we got a working fire. He’s telling the battalion, you know, the engine. Now they’re coming up with the line.

So right before they got the line, I says, all right, guys, it’s right here. I put my mask on. I said, showtime. And I went to open the. The French doors. And I get a call over to handy talkie. There’s a kid in the room, my friend. The OV is with the mother out in the street.

So now we bust into these doors. They’re hitting. Thank God we had the water hitting her. And I’m frantically looking for this kid and the dawn. Black smoke. I’m on the bed. I’m feeling all over the bed. I want. I got to find this kid.

THEO VON: And is it mostly feeling? How far can you see?

TONY BONFIGLIO: I don’t see anything. You don’t put tape over your eyes. It’s nothing.

THEO VON: And you’re feeling with gloves on, too?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, sometimes gloves. Sometimes you forget your gloves. But yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, back then we were, let’s unfold. Doing less equipment. Better. You want to get in? You want to get. You want to get out quick too?

THEO VON: No, that sounds like a guy who forgot his equipment. Ah, yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: That’s always air in the can.

THEO VON: Yeah, put some air in your can, Tony. That’s always that guy’s excuse, you know?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Exactly.

THEO VON: But that’s a great attitude to take. Nah, guys, if there’s air in this game, we’re going to have to be here all afternoon.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, yeah.

THEO VON: We’re in and out.

TONY BONFIGLIO: I could have probably put that, maybe put it out with the cam. But anyway, so the engine, I’m in there, I’m going around, and finally I’m going around the wall. And I could feel, I’m under the bed, feeling around, trying to find this kid. And I get to a window. I break the window out, and I look out the window and I see my irons man that was with me. He’s in the street with the kid, a limp, limp kid, you know, and they’re taking the kid. They open the battalion car door. He throws, they go in there and they rushed off to Columbia Presbyterian.

THEO VON: How’d the kid get out?

TONY BONFIGLIO: No, he carried. She was unconscious. He found out she didn’t make it. She didn’t. The kid was dead. Unfortunately, she was burned. They tried to revive her at the hospital, but it didn’t work.

So I’m overhauling now, and I see my lieutenant, and I said, “I just saw Jeff in the street with the kid.” He’s like, “Anthony, the kid was right there behind the door.” And I was like, oh, I was crushed, man. I shut that door. I felt like I killed that kid, you know?

So we go to Presbyterian. Oh, so before we leave now, the deputy shows up because now we got a 1045, which is a body. And he’s like, “What happened here?” We’re in this apartment. People are still playing cards. So my lieutenant says, “Well, we came up to the apartment,” and I said, “I’ll tell you what happened.” And now the deputy looks at me, you know, I go, “You see these motherfers over here? I said, they didn’t bother to fing tell us there might be a kid in that back room.” And I’m throwing F bombs at him.

And the deputy says, “Lieutenant, you better control your man.” So the boss puts his arm around my shoulder. He says, “Come on, come on. I’m Finny.” Called me Amphony. That’s Anthony in a brogue. “Amphony, let’s go down to the street.” You know, we went down to the street and we went and we picked up my friend Jeff at the hospital. I said, “How’d they make out with the kid?” He said, “They were trying to revive her. They were bringing her to the burn center.” So that was the last we heard of her.

THEO VON: But there’s no way you could have known that, right? Because you go in and the kid was hiding behind.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Who would think? You’d think somebody would tell us there could be a kid back.

THEO VON: It’s heartbreaking.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, man.

THEO VON: Do you ever find out why they wouldn’t let you know what was going on there?

The Hidden Dangers of SRO Buildings

TONY BONFIGLIO: I guess there was like an SRO bid or something. They were renting out that little back room to this woman and a child, you know, so it was pretty bad. And I had a few of those. I mean, right after I got over, was getting over with that one, I had another one where we showed up without our masks on because it was the middle of the day.

THEO VON: Yeah, no, I get.

TONY BONFIGLIO: There was nothing showing. We get out and the guy says, “Hey, they’re working on the oil burner all day.” And we had a lot of oil burners, you know, they would smoke up. So we’re like 1020 says on the box, which means all the other companies, take your time. Don’t blow the red lights and s*.

So now we’re heading up to the stairs to the caller’s apartment. It’s forcible entry team. Me, Lieutenant Clipper, and this guy Jimmy Lynch. And we get to the door, and the woman opens the door and we own the apartment. And it’s like, like a slight smoke condition in there, but slight. So we’re like, “What’s what? What do we have here?”

So my boss says, he was a smart fireman. He was from rescue, too. He said, “I think we got something above us.” Usually it’s below us, you know, but this, I guess, because the light was, the smoke was so light. So now we get up. We don’t have no masks or nothing. We get to the, I see smoke coming out of the doorway, you know, the locked door in the hallway. So I turn around, I like, donkey kicked the door open, like, three kicks. It kicks open, and we got a black wall of smoke. We’re like, holy. Now we got, after the 1020, we got to give a 1075, which means now we have a fire. So now we’re crawling in.

THEO VON: No mask.

TONY BONFIGLIO: No mask. We’re on our bellies.

THEO VON: Was it better or worse without a mask in this?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Worse. It was worse.

THEO VON: Yeah, because you could feel the heat.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah. You know, back in the day when they didn’t wear masks, like in the 60s and the 50s, everything was wooden, cotton. And then once the 60s and 70s, and everything’s vinyl and plastic, and it’s a whole different smoke. You know, it’s poisonous.

THEO VON: So it gets a great point, right?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah. Yeah. Back then, you could suck the cotton and the wood, you know?

THEO VON: It’s like, yeah, you’re probably, yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: You’re like, smoking a pack of cigarettes.

THEO VON: Or you’re like, hell, I wish somebody, I wish somebody had a couple tobacco plants in here. Crawl around for another two minutes.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Exactly. That’s what it was like.

THEO VON: Hence, things would burn slower back then, too, wouldn’t they?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Well, back then, yeah. But plastics will take off a lot faster.

THEO VON: God.

A Tragic Discovery

TONY BONFIGLIO: So anyway, he crawls in, and we’re like, “Oh, s*, we got to go in.” Jimmy goes in ahead of him, and I’m the last guy in. We’re like, almost on our bellies, crawling in, and I hear the horrible words, “We got bodies.” I’m like, “Oh, my God.” Now we got to give 1045s. So we had 1020. That means don’t come. Take it easy getting there. Now we want 1075. Now we got two 1045s, two bodies.

So with that, I get a body, a little girl come to pass it back to me, and I cry, like, shimmy out of the apartment.

THEO VON: You don’t know if she, do you?

TONY BONFIGLIO: I don’t know any. I can’t see nothing yet. I still can’t see nothing until I get to the stairwell. I knew I had a kid in my arms. I see it’s a little girl, you know, the face is all darkened. So now I’m like, “Oh, s*.” I’m going to run her down to the EMS, is going to take her in the street. And I go running down the street, the street, and there’s nobody there. And all the people are screaming. You know, they’re yelling and screaming. And I’m holding this kid and I’m looking around because we gave the 1020, there was nobody there.

THEO VON: Yeah, they’re at the malt shop.

TONY BONFIGLIO: I put the kid down. I did CPR on this little girl and I, you know, I put it down, I cup her head and I, pretty much all I knew was like a 15 and 2. You know, you get two breaths into her and then you give her 15. And this went on for like, like 10 minutes before I got relieved.

And the sound that she was making when the air would come out, they call it machine gun breath because it’s like. And the smell, because I had the smell of the burnt lips. So finally somebody came over and they started taking over. And then the EMS came. After 10 minutes, they let me go. So now I’m like, I’m walking around the sidewalk. All these Dominicans are very emotional. They’re all screaming and yelling and crying and everything. Some of them probably praying and everything.

THEO VON: Yeah, for sure.

TONY BONFIGLIO: I figured, let me go back up to the floor because my, the other two guys were working on the mother. And when I got there, the EMS already took over. And I was like, “Holy s*.” And it was like the first fire we had where the windows didn’t break open. They were the new windows that the Gambino crime family put in in all of Manhattan. And they didn’t break like the old windows, so it never got air. So it smoldered. And they died from the smoke.

THEO VON: God.

TONY BONFIGLIO: And that stayed with me for years. I would like, sometimes I would smell and taste the burnt lips and everything and, ah, it was horrible.

Processing Trauma

THEO VON: That’s heartbreaking. Like, who do you even talk to for about that kind of stuff? Do you guys go to some of the services? What is some of that like?

TONY BONFIGLIO: I got back in the firehouse, the guys were listening up. They knew I took my turnout coat off and I just went in, I took a shower. We all took showers. And then the boss says into the office, you know, “Let’s talk about it.” So he says, “You know, we did everything we could. It really wasn’t nothing else we could do. I mean, not having the mask didn’t hamper us at all because we still got the bodies.”

And so then I went home. My wife heard about it already on the news. And so when I got home, they all greeted me, and that was pretty much, you know, all I got was some nice hugs and some tears at home. Yeah. Yeah, you get over, you know, it takes a while, though.

I mean, I had a couple of things. I had this junkie that we kept, called three times. We got called to the sixth floor. He kept lighting fires to stay warm in the winter. Yeah, you know, he was a young black kid, you know, and so we would have to climb up these vacant stairs. I had to pop a hole in the cinder block walls to get in. Vacant building.

THEO VON: And a couple times it’s happened.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah. Oh, well, it’s the first one. We go up, sixth floor. Dark, cold. It’s icy. It’s about 30 degrees out.

THEO VON: A nice kid.

TONY BONFIGLIO: I have no idea. I got to the back with my, and I see my Irish lieutenant yelling at him. He’s like, “What the f* you doing? You can’t light a fire.” Blah, blah, blah. And he was sitting there, and he was in the corner, and I came in, I put my flashlight on him, and he was looking at me with these eyes, you know. And I was like, “God, he had like, tombstones in his eyes,” you know? And he was only about 16, 17.

So we put the fire out. We leave two hours later, we get called back again. Go up. Got to climb these stairs. Six floors, no steps, just risers and no lights. It’s dark. So now we climb all the way up again. We go through the thing. He lit it up again. Bosses, “Yo, you can’t fing do this.” He’s yelling at him and s. I got the light on him and, and the funny part was we just had, we just broke into an Entenmann’s cake at the firehouse. Vanilla icing that we would keep in the fridge. Get it nice and stiff.

So as my friend Jeff, in the dark, he’s putting the fire out. I put the light on him, and he still got the vanilla icing on his mustache.

THEO VON: Somebody took a piece for the road. Jeff. Huh?

TONY BONFIGLIO: The boss is yelling at us.

THEO VON: That’s why he was pissed. This guy interrupted his dessert.

TONY BONFIGLIO: All three companies and a battalion are responding every time. And we got chains on. It’s snow, and it’s not like, no, right.

THEO VON: So you can see out there.

TONY BONFIGLIO: So the third time I hear, we just, we just got back from something. We went in our bunks, and we get in the bunks, and we’re like a little pillow talk before everybody was sleeping. And then before you know it, beam, boom. Same box. Here we go again. I hear the boss yelling, “I’ll kill that dude.”

THEO VON: Let him cook.

TONY BONFIGLIO: At this point, we’re sliding down the pole.

THEO VON: This guy’s trying to get to heaven. And you guys keep, oh, my God, you guys keep coming in and ruining his trip.

The Third Call

TONY BONFIGLIO: Third time. So we’re in the rig, and I said to my friend Jeff, I says, “Let’s tell the boss, stay on the, don’t even come up the stairs. We’ll take care of it.” And surprisingly, he agreed. So when we got to the door, I says, “Lou, we’ll take care of you. Stay down here.”

So me and Jeff go up though my light, my light. My die hard battery died on me, so I had like, no light left. I’m trying to follow Jeff’s light. And we’re going up just on the rises, and then there’s no platform. So you got to like, lean over your step to get on. And when you get to the fifth or sixth floor, you’re looking down at this skeleton staircase.

THEO VON: What?

The Heroin Addict’s Apartment

Yeah. So now we go in, go through the dark apartment again. He’s in there again. Now he’s got candles burning because we broke his bucket up, smashed it all up. So we’re like, holy. So now Jeff is like leaning into him, and he says, listen, you can’t do this anymore. And Jeff’s like the good cop, you know, I’m the bad cop.

So I lean into him, I look at him, I says, we come back here again, I’m throwing you out that f*ing window. And he just looked at me, you know, and that was it. That was the last time we went back. We left there, we took his candles.

But years later, I would see that kid’s face looking at me, and it made me feel so bad. A wasted life like that, you know, heroin, he had the works. Everything that’s scary.

THEO VON: And the fact that he kept going back to do it, it’s just that power of addiction, you know?

TONY BONFIGLIO: It was cold.

THEO VON: Oh, I guess they keep you warm.

TONY BONFIGLIO: He was in a vacant. Yeah. Oh, yeah. A lot of like that vacants were disgusting.

THEO VON: Because it’s just anybody could be doing, they’re doing anything. Huh?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Squatters. Yeah, they’re on the floor. Drugs, needles. And you’re crawling around in there because you still have to save them. Oh, yeah, yeah. Vacant fires.

THEO VON: Yeah. Do you start to develop a certain, like, attitudes towards humanity or drug users or society?

Dealing with “Skells”

TONY BONFIGLIO: Absolutely. Call them skells. They’re all skells. Yeah, to us back then, you know, and matter of fact, on my block, we had a tight block, 161st Street, and we had a bodega, a gypsy cab dispatcher, a whorehouse and bunch of drug apartments.

THEO VON: Yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: And it was a busy block and we had two guys on the block that were almost there the whole time I was there and they were the lookouts. And one guy was bald and we called him Eight Ball and the other guy always had a hat and we called him The Hat.

And the funny part was they would watch our cars for us so nobody would break into the cars and shit. But, you know, I mean, I would see every agency there is come down and raid our block through the years I was there. ATF, Manhattan Tactical North, CIA. I mean, everything I tell you who was the worst ones was the FBI. Yeah, they come down with machine guns and I’ve never seen anybody that. And then they clear the street, they hit all the apartments. It’s amazing.

THEO VON: I bet they were all just visiting that whorehouse.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, I would inspect it now and then. I’d go in there with my hat and that thing and they’d all be looking at me and I’ll be like, what the f* you want? You know, like, I got to inspect this place.

THEO VON: You know, what was it like in some of those joints? Was it interesting? And there, was it just women trying to just survive? Most of those types of some middle.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Aged, young, not too young Dominican women, I guess they took care of the cab drivers and stuff. And they had the different rooms, you know, everybody had their little bed in there.

THEO VON: Just trying to.

TONY BONFIGLIO: And I would inspect it, you know, I got you. You got condoms? The condoms are here.

THEO VON: Making sure the alarm works, ladies.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, they would be like, come on. Some of them were, the prostitutes would be like, get the f* out of here, man. You know, they’d be up all night. They didn’t want nothing to do with me.

Hotel Fire Alarms

THEO VON: Oh, I’m sure. That would be the wildest thing for me, would just be like the access you could see, dude. I remember one time, I’m in Kansas City, right? And I guess somebody started a fire, right? And I’d like, as a comedian, you go to different hotels, you’re always in hotels over the years.

And I got to the point where every now, like, you know, every seven weeks, somebody’d start a fire, pull an alarm, right? And so in the middle of the night, you got to go downstairs and be outside hot. So I finally decided for myself, I’m going to wait because, yeah, I’m not going out there.

TONY BONFIGLIO: There was never. It was never a good fire, right?

THEO VON: Right. So I was like, I’m waiting out there for 45 minutes or whatever while they see if there’s a fire or not. So I finally said, I’m staying in the room until I smell smoke or whatever.

So one time I’m in there, I just made this big sandwich. Dude. It was really good. It was one of the better ones I’d probably ever made in my life. And a guy, I remember this, this big fireman with an ax comes in or just opens my door and the alarm had been going off for a while and he’s looking, he’s looking for me. And I was like, is there a fire?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Did I miss something?

THEO VON: Yeah. He’s like, you got to get out of here. I was like, bro, every week they doing this. I’m not going right.

TONY BONFIGLIO: I hear this all the time. Yes, but that’s the cry wolf thing too though, you know?

THEO VON: Oh, for sure. I knew it was on me. Hey, if it’s bad, come back and, you tell. I think he’s like, you know, you know, I don’t blame him.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, that’s a fireman attitude.

THEO VON: Yeah. And it should be, hey, come back if I’m going to burn, you know.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, exactly.

THEO VON: Yeah. There’s just a lot of pressure. Yeah. Like immediately I was putting all the pressure on this guy, but yeah. What were some of the environments you went into? Like, did you ever just walk into an environment like, oh, well, this is crazy. Or like a drug den or.

The Coke Money Fire

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, plenty of drug dens. I mean, every building had a drug apartment where they would sell drugs. Oh, yeah, yeah. But this one fire that I went to, it was in the middle of the day. It was like the second floor, we pull up, fire’s blowing out four windows. I mean, it was going good.

And so we run out. Now we’re second due, which means we go to the floor above the fire. So the first due truck has the fire floor. Second due goes to the floor above, which the floor above is really shitty.

THEO VON: Because that’s where the heat’s going up.

TONY BONFIGLIO: That’s where everything’s going, you know. So now we get up the staircase and it’s starting to bank down and get dark. And I see a guy runs past me, no shirt on, no shoes. It’s got like a 3 year old kid under his arm and a Hefty bag.

THEO VON: Oh, yeah. So a politician probably.

TONY BONFIGLIO: So he slips by us, you know. So now we’re going to take the door in the hallway above the fire apartment and it’s getting smoky and my boss puts his mask on, but we have to take the door. So I wanted to see a little bit.

So I’m hitting the, you know, the guy’s got the halligan in the door jam and I’m smashing it with an ax and he’s trying to get a bite on the jam to bust the door open. So finally we get it, we bust the door open, we put our masks on, and we go in, and we crawling around.

And the engine company did a good job. They knocked the fire down pretty fast, you know? So as we’re crawling around, it’s starting. The black smoke starting to go away, and it’s getting lighter, and I’m on the floor, and I bump into a dresser.

Oh, now I could start to see a little bit. I put my light on the dresser. All the drawers are open. Stacks of hundreds and fifty dollar bills. Every drawer. I mean, no twenties. No. It was all coke money.

THEO VON: Yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Bad. And I’m like, oh, my God. You know, I’m still like, I’m like my one year there. So I’m, oh, yeah, I’m a junior man.

THEO VON: Like, I got to get something for Christine.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Well, that’s it, you know, I got an angel and a devil on my shoulders, and they’re fighting it out. You know, I’m looking at, we’re in smoke. So, I mean, it ain’t like a setup. Nobody’s ever going to notice.

THEO VON: Yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: So I’m thinking, oh, my God, I could buy myself a new Harley with that money, you know? And then I was like, the angel be like, oh, you buy the new Harley, and you’re going to crash, and you’ll get paralyzed. And I’m like, oh, shit. Yeah, it could happen.

So now I told the senior man, I said, Eddie, come here. Look in this dream drawers.

THEO VON: Yeah. Bring another guy in.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Senior man. You know, he’s like, holy Tony. He’s like, what are we going to do here?

THEO VON: Oh, Eddie’s setting you up again.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah. I’m like, you’re the senior man. You tell me.

THEO VON: This is dirty, Tennessee, guys.

TONY BONFIGLIO: I could have been stacking thousands in my pocket.

THEO VON: If Eddie would have been like, hey, let’s take a little. You have to.

TONY BONFIGLIO: I would. Yeah.

THEO VON: Yeah. You got to. I think, just to even make sure that it is what it is, get it back home.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Right. You know, I was young. I had this, oh, it’s dirty money. It’ll bring me bad juju. Yeah.

THEO VON: You know, I think that the karma of it. Who knows?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah.

THEO VON: You don’t know.

The Drug Bust Discovery

So the boss walks in, you know, the lieutenant, and he’s like, what do you got? And I was like, we got all this drawer full of mud, dresser full of money. He’s like, oh, I don’t see nothing. He was like, I don’t know. If you ever see Schultz on Hogan’s Heroes. He’s like, “I see nothing.” He turns around, he walks away, you know, like.

So now we go out, and it’s still a little smoky, but we could see we don’t have our masks on. And there’s another room with a padlock on the door. So he’s like, take the door. So he puts the ads in at the Halligan, and I whack it with the ax. Yeah, the door would bust it open.

And Theo, I’m telling you, there was like half the coke in Manhattan was in there. Bricks all the way to the ceiling on all sides of the walls. A pile of cocaine about 18 inches high on the table. We were like, holy s*. So the boss gets on. Tell the battalion we got a drug apartment. Send the PD up.

So now we’re, like, waiting for the PD to come. We wanted them to come before the drug dealers got back. So finally, two NYPD guys show up, and they’re like, yeah, guys, what do you got? I said, well, go in that room and go in that room. I said, that’s the money room. That’s the coke room. So they both go in, and at the same time, they go, holy s*.

THEO VON: Wow.

TONY BONFIGLIO: They call a backup, you know? So now we’re like. My boss is like, we’re out of here. You know, we don’t want me. Nothing. Part of this whole show here.

THEO VON: I’d have stuck around, man. You know, like Joey Diaz says, every now and then you bump into a Colombian.

TONY BONFIGLIO: I love Joey.

THEO VON: Oh, he’s the best.

TONY BONFIGLIO: He was a fireman in Colorado or some s*. Denver.

THEO VON: Was he a fireman?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, but he was selling blow. He said all they had was a pickup truck. I don’t know if he ever saw. I think it was a Rogan baby.

THEO VON: Yeah, it sounded like, bro.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, he said, I was just selling. It was an easy way to sell coke. He said, I’ll go around.

THEO VON: People call the fire department.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Sorry, Joey, but you did tell that story.

THEO VON: No, people call the fire department. He shows up in a pickup truck selling coke.

TONY BONFIGLIO: He says it was a ski lodge place. There was never any fire.

THEO VON: Oh, yeah, that’s a great idea, actually, dude.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, the ski lodge. So it was, what, perfect for him? Yes.

THEO VON: Joey Diaz has talked many times about having been a volunteer firefighter, which is really a drug dealer in Aspen, Colorado, in the 1990s.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Can you imagine him doing that?

THEO VON: I bet if you were anywhere with Joey in the 1980s, every place was Aspen, Colorado, dude.

Joey Diaz and Food Recommendations

TONY BONFIGLIO: I go to a restaurant he recommended in Jersey, a Chinese restaurant, Kings. Oh. He says, “Oh, dude, this is the real deal. This is the Chinese food.” You know, he talks, right? So I go there, and the guy’s name is Freddy the Chinese guy. I’m like, Freddie, Joey Diaz sent me here. He’s like, oh, yeah, Joey Diaz. He said, he popular. I said, yeah, he’s pretty f*ing popular. He’s like, oh, I didn’t know food was excellent. Thank you, Joey. I love that food Joey has.

THEO VON: It’s like, bro. I’d be like, dude, my friend died last week in Buffalo, New York. He’s like, oh, next time you’re in Buffalo. Yeah, it doesn’t matter. Your friend died. It matters. You got to walk 11 blocks to get this prosciutto, right?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Prosciutto.

THEO VON: He’s like, the only way you get there is by foot, right. It sounds very alarming, but, dude, he’s always got the best food recommendation.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Absolutely.

THEO VON: He just loves life, man. He just always has a connection.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, man, what stories. He’s so funny.

THEO VON: He’s one of the best.

TONY BONFIGLIO: I love him.

THEO VON: Yeah. I don’t know anybody like him, but I bet in your line of work, you probably met a lot of guys not like him, but with similar energies like him.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, crazy people.

THEO VON: Yes.

The Changing Face of the Fire Department

TONY BONFIGLIO: When I got on in 83, we still had Vietnam vets that were in the fire army, you know, really? Today it’s more college kids. You know, they came out of college and they get. They take the test.

THEO VON: Yeah. A lot of guys that want to be in the calendar, it’s a whole.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Different thing, you know, nothing to the new guys. You know, they’re all great and everything, but it was a different atmosphere with the vets guys. And plus, back then, you know, they didn’t have computers and, you know, there was no cameras. It was BC. So you got away with a lot of.

THEO VON: Yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Today you’re on camera. You go on YouTube. They see you fighting the fire, the OV. The roof, man.

THEO VON: Yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: If you f* up, people are seeing it right there.

THEO VON: People in the chat are like, get rid of this guy.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Like, what’s he waiting for? Why doesn’t he go in? Where’s the hose line? What’s taking him so long?

THEO VON: Yeah. Yeah, dude, that’s.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Comments.

THEO VON: Yeah. Like, Caruso’s a see, you know, like. Like, dude, he is his first day on the job.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Absolutely.

THEO VON: Dude, that is crazy that that’s how it’s going to be. Everything’s going to be streamed and people will be able to comment.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yes. So that’s a whole bit. And the other day, I was watching the chief had like, a some kind of iPad thing or something. And they had a drone in the air. No. And the thing was showing them all the roof, the holes, the fire, the back. It was like a 3D thing. Thing is, like, everything changes, you know?

THEO VON: Yeah. There’s already a real estate agent there. Yeah, everything’s changed.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Changes. So, you know, when I got on, the guys from the 60s and 70s, they were tough because.

THEO VON: So some of them come from, like, come from war, actually, and big time. And this was just another place where they at least had, like, camaraderie. They had a brotherhood.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Exactly. Because it was a paramilitary organization. So, you know, you had your lieutenants and your captains and your chiefs.

THEO VON: Did the stress of the job ever affect guys too much? Was there scenarios like that that kind of happened or not really?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Nah. I think most guys love the job.

THEO VON: What made you end up kind of loving it? Like, what made. Like, what kind of changed for you, like, or when you look back.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Brotherhood.

THEO VON: Really?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, my God. Like family. Yeah. Yeah, that’s. That’s why, you know, I did 15 years in 34 truck from a probie. I did 15 years. I think I left there in 98. But yeah, I mean, I had a lot of friends, but I’m still today, you know, we’re all together. The wives, the kids. The kids are on the job. Some of them are already captains.

THEO VON: Wow.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah.

THEO VON: Yeah, I guess that’s something that’s so nice is just that. That’s one thing that’s harder. I even notice about life, even just like, as you get out of times in your life where you’re either in school, we have, like, teams that you’re on or like your buddies are always around or in the college. You don’t really find a lot of places where there’s that much camaraderie anymore. You just don’t find it.

Firehouse Meals and Celebrations

TONY BONFIGLIO: No. And that was it. That was it there, big time. We’d make the meals. Yeah. See, this is a. The two probies are coming off their probation. So when you come off probation, you throw a big party in the firehouse, and they all got lobsters and filet mignons, and they have a big celebration. It’s a lot. I remember my probing meal. It was a lot of fun. I came off with another guy, Richie, who. We both came out of the academy together.

THEO VON: Oh, that’s.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah. I know all these guys like family. A lot of them aren’t. Aren’t even here with us anymore.

THEO VON: Really.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, yeah. And that pick. That’s old.

THEO VON: A lot of them who’s gotten older. Passed away even.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Or passed away. Yeah, some of them. I know some of them might even passed away on 9/11.

THEO VON: Oh, yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah. That’s a great shot.

THEO VON: That’s awesome, dude.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah.

THEO VON: Yeah. I mean, you could just feel so much excited.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, my God. The fun we would have and the meals that I would make, really incredible.

THEO VON: That’s why they kept you around, huh?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, I was a good cook.

THEO VON: Were you?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah.

THEO VON: Yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: First meal I brought in, my mother made meatballs and sausage and a whole Sunday gravy, and I bought gabadil, and I brought it all in with the bread and everything, and the guys loved it. You know, the Irish guys call it red lead. That was what they call tomato sauce. Red lead tonight. Yeah, red lead. They loved it. They were like, man, that was so good and everything. But you know what, kids? You got to make it here next time. So I was like, I get it. You got to make the meal in the firehouse.

THEO VON: That’s part of it.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Everybody comes together, you know, because it could be all over the firehouse, but that’s where everybody. Who’s chopping this, who’s cooking that, who’s sauteing things.

THEO VON: Yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Who’s doing the entertainment, the camaraderie. I would put my Louis Prima on the stereo, and we would just be going, you know, jump driving whale, and I’m just a gigolo and. And place would be hopping.

THEO VON: Yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, it was fun. Oh, that’s great. Meals. About 11 guys would eat at the same. You know, we’d all eat at the same time.

THEO VON: Yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: And then everybody chips in at the end of the meal because, you know, city doesn’t pay for anything. We pay for everything.

THEO VON: That’s crazy.

TONY BONFIGLIO: All our TV, all they get paid for is a firehouse. Everything else we have to buy.

THEO VON: Really?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah.

THEO VON: Is it still that way?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, still that way.

THEO VON: Wow.

Changes in Firefighting Gear

TONY BONFIGLIO: Well, when I was on the job, you bought your own turnout coat, and you had a helmet. I brought some helmets here, too. And the helmet fit perfectly to your head. They made it a mold to your head. You didn’t need a chin strap. It just stayed on there.

And then when Giuliani came in as mayor and we had a couple of fires where guys got killed and everything, and he couldn’t believe how shabby we looked because we had. Nobody fixed their gear. Nobody gave you new gear. So you went years with this gear, and it looked like the coats were all ripped up and, you know, looked. I loved the way it looked.

THEO VON: Like the Blaze News Bears, huh?

TONY BONFIGLIO: And all the other fire departments around the country. And they already had bunker pants and bunker coats and they had hoods. He had to wear these. I hated all of that. I hated the bunker pants. I hated the hoods. And so that, that changed right there from the uniforms. And then they gave us a new helmet. Three sizes small, medium, large. And they had up a damn chin strap to hold it on. It was a lot heavier. Oh, I hated it.

THEO VON: Yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: But you get charges if you didn’t wear it. You know, if you took your old helmet and you got caught with it or you got caught without your bunker pants on. Because it was like the takeover, you know, it takes a few years before the old timers really give in to all the changes.

Everything takes a few years to kind of seep in.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Especially in the fire department’s all tradition.

THEO VON: Yeah. Yeah, dude. That was one of the nice things. Even like whenever I would go with my first girlfriend, her dad. Whenever I’d go over there, it would just be nice to see the guys all spending time together, you know?

Yeah. And they would know other fire departments around the city. It was just like there was like, definitely a. It was like this kind of secret society that was a little bit. It was a little hidden kind of. Because you don’t really think about the fire department all the time, you know, I didn’t. But yeah, but they’re right there, dude.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yep.

THEO VON: And they’re the first ones that have to get involved when things get bad. You know. Yeah. If it’s okay to talk about what were things like during 9/11, like, what was. I mean, I know kind of like what some things were like, but when you look back on it, like.

Responding to 9/11

TONY BONFIGLIO: Well, I got off work that morning. I did a 24 hour tour on the 10th, and I just got home and I had a power wash and painting business on the side.

THEO VON: Oh yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: And I had my Dominican helper waiting for me at home, you know. So I got home, we came in, I’m making coffee and my wife calls me, she’s at work and she says, you see what happened? They flew a plane into the towers. I’m like, you’re kidding me.

I put a little TV on that I had in the kitchen and I’m like, holy s*. I’m like, what happened? The guy have a heart attack that, you know, I thought it was like a single plane that the guy just flew in by accident.

THEO VON: Yeah. Some guy f*ing just couldn’t get a ready downstairs one.

TONY BONFIGLIO: You didn’t know it was terrorists. So then we get to the paint store, and the guys are all around the counter with a TV. And I come in, and the guy Tony, turns around and he says, why the f are you here? They terrorists flew planes into the towers? And I’m like, holy s. Now it’s both towers going. Now I know it was an attack.

So I says, all right, we got to get out of here. I had to paint a rabbi’s house in Woodmere. So I got this painting truck with ladders, Tony’s power washing and paint. I raced. On the way there, I hear the first tower collapses. So I’m like, I’m cursing. I’m like, my Dominican guy don’t speak English. He doesn’t really hear, but he knows something bad. He knows the towers.

So now I get another 20 minutes or 10 minutes later or whatever, and I hear the second tower come down. And I was at a light. I put my foot on the brake, and I just started crying. I was on the steering wheel because I knew how many guys just got killed, you know, from this whole deal. I was crushed.

THEO VON: So you like. Yeah. At that point, did you know because you were privy to the information of, or you just knew how it works.

TONY BONFIGLIO: The way it works. You know, they called in everything once those planes hit, you know.

THEO VON: Could you have gone back in or you were, you weren’t even allowed to go in when, like at that moment, since you had just gotten off of a shift.

Racing to Ground Zero

TONY BONFIGLIO: No. Well, now I’m, I race to the rabbi’s house. I throw the ladders, the paint. I knock on the rabbi’s door. I says, listen, Rabbi, I’m a fireman from New York City. I got to go to the Trade Center. I knew he knew it because I could hear the TV on inside. So he was like, okay.

I said, Roberto is going to take care of everything. I told Roberto, listen, I don’t know when I’m going to see you again. But he’s like, no worry, no problem. My boss, I take care. He was such a great guy.

So now I’m racing with my van, and I’m going in and out of the elevated train. And I’ve got my hand on the horn, and I’m pedal to the metal, and everybody’s probably looking like, what the f is with that painter? I’m on the wrong side of traffic. I’m just like the French Connection. I’m in and out of fing cars.

I get to the firehouse and it’s chaotic. Everybody’s running in. What are we going to do? Who’s going? How are we going to get there? One guy said he was taking a boat because my firehouse in Howard Beach was on a canal. Yeah. So my friend Whipper comes in, he’s got a Suburban. And my friend Bobby comes and he was like, I’m going in with my Suburban. Whoever wants to go, I’m leaving now.

THEO VON: And were there some guys that did not want to go, did not want to be involved?

TONY BONFIGLIO: No. Everybody went. Wow. Yeah. So we grabbed our gear. A lot of guys went to a staging area. They made that mistake because they got stuck at the staging area. We took my friend’s Suburban right to the pile right there. I mean, we were heading down Woodhaven Boulevard, and I’m like.

THEO VON: And there was no traffic.

TONY BONFIGLIO: It was traffic because, I mean, the s* hit the fan already. So the Whip is driving crazy. My friend, the Whipper, and I’m like, Whip, don’t get anybody killed or any people already, you know, slow down a little.

So we get to the LIE and the cops have it shut off the entrance to the Long Island Expressway. So I stick my turnout coat out the window, and they move the cop cars and they wave us in, you know.

THEO VON: Had to feel crazy. Was there some, I mean, obviously there’s excitement. Probably a ton of adrenaline.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Adrenaline. What are we going to do when we get there?

THEO VON: Right?

TONY BONFIGLIO: We said we’re going to be an ambulance, we’re going to take bodies, and we’re going to rush them to the hospital. That’s what we figured.

So now we’re racing down there, and we get to the Midtown tunnel. And my friend Whip is a driver, man. He’s the best. We’re doing a hundred. And we’re going through the Midtown tunnel. And it’s like a time warp with the lights and the yellow bricks. We’re doing 100 miles an hour.

We come out, we head downtown, you know, by the Midtown tunnel. We head down. He takes us right to the rubble, and we get out of the car, and it’s dark, like an eclipse. And all the stuff is coming down on us, all the paper and the ash. It was dark. The walls were standing still.

THEO VON: Did it look something like this or.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Just like that. Only, you know, that’s a few days, a week later or whatever, maybe, but it was dark. And when we got out of the car, we couldn’t breathe, so we had to rip up t-shirts and we put them around our faces to breathe.

And then I noticed there was an old hardware store right across the street with, like, a glass door. So I grabbed the tire iron, I went over, I smashed the door open, and we all went in. We grabbed ropes and masks and sledgehammers.

THEO VON: All.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Whatever. Cops came in behind us. Everybody was grabbing s*. So now we start the climb, you know, and it was like the top of the Trade Center was only about six stories high now, you know, and we were climbing and there was nobody around. It was quiet, dark, eerie.

And we heard all the pass alarms going off that when firemen aren’t moving, makes a screechy noise. And you could hear that all around, you know, and there was maybe one or two other firemen. We were the only ones there. And we were going in and out of voids, in and out of voids. Can anybody hear us? Banging on s* and waiting to see if that happens. And nobody. Nobody.

Finally, we worked our way all the way up to the roof of the Trade Center, which was Astroturf. And now you could see. And it looked like it went off for a mile, you know, it was like a movie set, it was so crazy.

And on one side was the EAB bank, and it was on fire. And they had, excuse me, they had mesh, like the black mesh covering it. And all you saw was the black mesh and the flames coming out. It was like satanic. Oh, it was so creepy.

And so we were climbing all around, inside, in and out of voids, and we did this for like, maybe about 1 o’clock, we got there at 11:30, and my friend Bobby says, my throat’s closing up. We got to get water. So I said, Whip, we got to get water. We got to head to the street.

Now it’s like 1 o’clock. People are coming in from everywhere. Firemen, cops, firemen, National Guard was coming in. So we worked our way to the street. And then we needed water. And there was a guy, a Wall Street guy with expensive suit on, covered in cement dust. And he had a bottle of water, you know, like big bottles, the big bottle. And he was going around giving everybody water and, you know, trying to wash their eyes out and s*. And we were just waiting our turn to get some of that water.

And as we were doing that, these four women, they come out of nowhere. They set up two barrels, a piece of plywood. They had Wonder Bread and peanut butter and jelly, and they started making sandwiches out of nowhere. It humbled me. And I got a little emotional because it was like, you know, to see all these people coming together right at this time, no matter what your race, creed, color, working together.

So we had the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, we had the water and we went back. But before we got up, a deputy gets up on a car and he yells to whoever can hear, you know, and it was like, six truck. We just got a call, they’re trapped, they’re in a shaft and we’re going to find them. Like, this is the first time we’re hearing anybody’s alive. We’re like, yeah, yeah.

So everybody starts running to get gear and there’s a rescue truck that was crushed. And we ran over to the rescue truck and we started opening up compartments. I grabbed a jackhammer, we grabbed some big jackhammer bits, bottles, gear. And now we start heading out to look for them, you know.

THEO VON: You had a mission.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, we were on a mission. Now you know, now we’re looking for. So now another two hours climbing up and down these. But meanwhile, Building 7, which is the big building everybody talks about, was on fire from the moment we got there. Every floor really burned. Every floor.

THEO VON: And what caused that fire?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Just the collapse, you know, they had the two Trade Centers. Oh, the collapse in front of them. Yeah, there was a lot of buildings on fire.

So now we’re working up and down and I take a fall, I fall into a void and I fall on my right shoulder and Bobby comes running over, he’s like, kiddo, you all right? I said, yeah. Hurt my shoulder. He helps me up, I take the jackhammer, I throw it into a void. I’m like, f this s. We had no radios. We didn’t know if they found anybody or anything. Excuse me.

THEO VON: It was almost impossible.

TONY BONFIGLIO: It was impossible. Finally threw all this s* down because it was a couple hours already climbing again. When you’re climbing up these big jagged pieces of concrete, scary in and out, in and out. And we made our way into a store, like a high end store that was maybe three stories up. And we went in through the window because.

THEO VON: Three stories up what high?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Because the rubble was that high. So we crawled into their window and it was a high end women’s store and it’s dusty and dark and we’re crawling around. I’m looking under all the clothes to see if there’s anything. We’re yelling, anybody here? Anybody here? Nobody there.

So we worked our way back out and now we went to the Marriott, which was a hotel right there. And we came in one of these big broken windows.

THEO VON: It was right there at ground. It was right around zero, huh?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah. We climbed down the debris into the lobby of the hotel. We’re the only ones there, you know. So we’re like, holy s*, look at this place. You know, we’re looking around and it.

THEO VON: Was kind of kept.

The Aftermath and Building 7

Okay, it was a big lobby. No, there was ash and broken glass and shit. But it wasn’t collapsed, right. So I said, look over there. I see a fireman sitting at one of those little desks in the lobby. We’re like, holy. So we go running over. First fireman we’re seeing, you know, and he’s covered in, in, you know, no helmet. He’s like pale white. He’s in shock.

And he’s sitting there and we’re like, holy. Buddy, you okay? Okay. And he turns and he looks at me, and it’s one of the young guys that got on rotation. He just left our house. And they sent them to Manhattan. We called him Monkey man.

THEO VON: Wow.

TONY BONFIGLIO: I’m like, holy shit, Monkey, what the f*? And he just, he looked up at me and he, and he said, all my guys are dead. They’re all dead. And we were like, oh, shit. And I’m like, kind of rubbing his shoulder. My other guys are like, Monkey, Monkey. All right. You all right? And he, he was in shock, you know, so we’re like, look, Monkey, we got to go, man. You know? You’re okay. We’re going to leave you here.

It was funny because the phone was on the table with the little messenger passenger light blink, and it was the weirdest sight, you know? And we left him. We climbed back out, out the window, back onto the debris. It’s a long day. Yeah. We were there for till like 9:30 at night, from 11:30 in the morning.

So we were going along. We found a hose line, believe it or not, a hose line all the way from the Hudson. And there was a big opening with a, like, a void that had, black smoke was pouring out of it. So we had the line, and for about an hour and a half, we just sat there with Building 7 about 100 yards away from us, burning.

And we sat there, and one guy would go around through the voids and the other two guys would just hold the hose line, pouring it into this hole from hell. I mean, it was like, it was horrible. So all of a sudden we’re doing that, and we see this chief and he starts yelling at us. He’s between us and Building 7 and he says, drop that line. Get out of here. This building’s going to come down.

So we were like, holy shit. Okay. We cracked it open a little, wedged it into some rocks so the water would keep going down the hole, and we took off. And we were like, hey, it was like five o’clock.

THEO VON: Clock.

TONY BONFIGLIO: We’re like, we’re hungry, we’re thirsty, we’re tired, we’re covered in shit. Let’s go back to the rig, his Suburban, and we’ll go uptown and we’ll get something to eat and then we’ll come back. So we, we get off the pile, like, where’s the car? I think it’s a few blocks this way. So now we heading down and there’s nobody around still. I mean, as far as you know, besides firemen coming in.

So I don’t know if you ever heard of Penny Crone, but she was like a popular reporter on Fox News. She was a real tough girl. She was, yeah, Penny Crone. And I don’t know if she was Fox, but there she is. It’s very well known New York reporter.

THEO VON: She was out there on the street.

TONY BONFIGLIO: She was in the street when we were walking and she had a microphone and a cameraman and she came running up to us. She’s like, guys, guys, can you give me some information? What’s like down there? So the three of us are standing there and she puts this big microphone in front of me and she goes, can you tell me? I said, oh, it’s bad, really bad.

Put it in front of my other friend, Bobby. Bad. He says, horrible. My other friend says the same thing. She’s getting nothing out of it. She’s like, she pulls back, you know, they ask us another question and I’m like, holy shit, look over there. And there’s this Asian woman, covered in dirt, bleeding from her head, and she’s got a suitcase in her hand.

So like, we run over to her, we’re like, ma’am, are you okay? She was in shock or whatever. And she just kept like looking. And my friend went to take the suitcase, she yanked it back, you know, and then she just walked away. And we were like, holy, that was weird. What do you think’s in that suitcase? My friend said, money. The way she had that grip on that day, it was full of money.

THEO VON: Batch of yen in there, I bet.

TONY BONFIGLIO: A lot of yen. Wow. Some egg rolls, I don’t know. But we, we got to the Suburban and it was covered now. It was green, it was now gray. So we all get in and it was like, Theo, the Seats. The leather seats were like, oh, we’re squishing our backs in, you know, getting comfortable. I was almost 40 at that time.

THEO VON: I can’t even imagine. And the fact is, you’re alive. Like, you’ve been through, I can’t even imagine, like, what your body’s going through.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, we were beat, covered in shit. And so it’s funny because he put the, he put the car on and he started up and he put the air conditioner on, and it blew smoke. It blew dust at us. Like Lily Munster’s vacuum cleaner thing. I’m like, oh, everybody’s getting to a choking. The thing’s blowing smoke out all the dust. Like, thanks. We needed that.

Now we’re heading uptown. Even with the windows open, the dust is flying off the rig. And we go up to 16 truck up in Midtown somewhere, and we take a break. I go in, we get a drink of water. I call my wife.

THEO VON: What is she been thinking?

TONY BONFIGLIO: I don’t know. It’s like, you know, 5:36. Oh, I forgot to say, before we go, got to the car, Building seven collapsed. Oh, we just missed it. We heard a roar. My friend said, seven just came down. So we were like, holy. We just, we just missed it.

THEO VON: But you’ve been near that all day down there.

TONY BONFIGLIO: All day. It was burning.

THEO VON: Because there’s a lot of speculation about Building 7 over the years.

Conspiracy Theories and the Truth

TONY BONFIGLIO: I think it’s all you do. Because I was there. Yeah. I mean, it’s, it kind of gets me a little because I, I don’t know what really happened that day. You know, who knows? You know, who was involved, whatever. I have no idea.

THEO VON: Right.

TONY BONFIGLIO: But all I know is Building seven was burning all day long from first floor to the top floor, every window. So, you know, people were saying there was explosions, and…

THEO VON: But you saw firsthand that it had been kind of cooked.

TONY BONFIGLIO: All the firemen that I ever talked to that were there that day, no one. Everybody says there was no f*ing explosions, but now they have all these things. Like, the other day, I thought I saw an AI bullshit thing about guys saying they heard explosions. Like, they’re putting that out on the Internet and it looks real. You think they’re really fire firemen? You got to be careful today. You never know what’s real.

THEO VON: Oh, yeah, I agree with that. You can’t tell.

TONY BONFIGLIO: You can almost tell a little bit today. But imagine a few years from now with the AI, you’ll never be able to tell. Yeah, you’ll need, like, an AI detection kit.

THEO VON: They probably will have that.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Maybe we can get in on that, we could come up with it first?

THEO VON: Yeah, okay, sure. I mean, if that’s what we met for today, to be able to start that and, and like, keep that out of the…

TONY BONFIGLIO: World, save the world.

THEO VON: What about over time with 9/11? There’s been a lot of conspiracy theories and stuff like that. Has any of that grown in the world of the, of the fire department culture or anything like that? Or is it person by person or, because you guys were one of the most affected groups.

TONY BONFIGLIO: You know, 343 men we lost that day. It’s hard to even get over that number. Yeah, it was a lot, and we knew it was a lot when we got, we left 16 truck. We stopped at a Genovese drugstore and somewhere in Manhattan, and we went in and we got a couple of bottles of water, about four giant Milky Ways, and some batteries for our flashlights.

So now we’re covered in shit, you know, we’re up at the counter and the young girl’s ringing us up, and she goes, you guys come from the Trade Center? So my friend Bobby said, what gives you that idea? So she just, like, looked and grinned. She’s all right. No charge for you guys. So we took off. We ate our Milky Ways, we had our water, and then we went back to the pile.

THEO VON: Is there a picture from that day, Nick? Do you have it? Where are we going to, if you have that, just pull it up. Don’t even wait for me to see that.

TONY BONFIGLIO: That’s my two buddies. That was like a couple weeks later.

THEO VON: That’s Whip and the other guy.

TONY BONFIGLIO: That’s my friend Andrew and Marty. That’s back. You know, you would have to go down and work at the Trade Center.

THEO VON: Yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: And it was very unhealthy. A lot of guys got cancer. A lot of guys died. After the Trade Center.

Ground Zero Lung and Long-Term Health Effects

THEO VON: We just had a breathing expert in the other day, this guy James Nestor. And he has a New York Times bestseller, a book called, called Breath. And he talks about, is it ground Z, Glass Zero. Ground zero lung.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, okay.

THEO VON: He talks about ground glass. It’s a condition that, that happened to a lot of people who were first responders at Ground Zero. Have you heard about this?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, Well, I never heard about the ground glass, but of course, the breathing everybody was in. You know, you, if you were there for like a month or two, some guys were there two, three, four months. My friend Bobby was there the whole time. You know, he, he just got his nephew on the job. It was his nephew’s first job, and he was in the trouble. He was there every day looking for his body day and night, looking for his nephew. Nephew? Yeah, for his sister. Yeah, it was.

THEO VON: God, that’s heartbreaking, huh?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah. He’s a good guy. He’s a great guy, too.

THEO VON: Who, his nephew?

TONY BONFIGLIO: No, my friend Bobby. This is his, he’s the boxing. He runs the fire department boxing team.

THEO VON: He is. Bring him out. Let’s get a picture of him.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Bobby. You see him on there? Bobby McGuire. FDNY boxing. He’s a Golden Glove champ.

THEO VON: Is he a pretty interesting guy?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, oh, you wouldn’t. I don’t know if you know the Knicks, but his uncles are Dickie McGuire and Al McGuire and Marquette and the Knicks. Yeah.

THEO VON: Oh, there he is.

TONY BONFIGLIO: His father was John McGuire, and he was like a big guy in New York. Jimmy Breslin actually called him the, the King of Queens because he opened the first gay bar in Queens back in the day.

THEO VON: Oh, that’s incredible, man. Oh, yeah, he sounds like an interesting guy. Yeah, I bet he’s got some great stories, too. Just from the boxing history of it. You know, Joey Diaz used to, he used to shovel ice out of James J. Braddock’s driveway over in Jersey.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, yeah, I heard him say that.

THEO VON: That’s pretty wild.

TONY BONFIGLIO: He’d give him side of, like, a couple of bucks.

THEO VON: Yeah, give him a couple of bucks. And Joey, like, this guy’s been punched in the head so many times, he thought, he gave me a five, he gave me a 10, so. But that’s just a wild story right there.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, yeah.

THEO VON: So go back and show the guys. That’s Marty right there.

TONY BONFIGLIO: That’s Bob. Bobby McGuire.

THEO VON: Bobby McGuire. And what was his, his nephew’s name? Do you remember?

TONY BONFIGLIO: No, I don’t remember. My wife might, but I don’t.

THEO VON: Alan, right?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Allen. He was a, a lifeguard in Rockaway. The kid.

THEO VON: His last name was Alan. And he just started on the…

TONY BONFIGLIO: He just started. It was like his first job. And Bobby was there. And I know his breathing is, you know, he’s had a lot of breathing problems once you’re there too long. So, anyway, they’re having a fight in Madison Square Garden in March. They, we fight the cops every year.

THEO VON: Yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Called the Battle of the badges.

FDNY Boxing and Charity Work

THEO VON: Who’s won over time, over the years? Who’s won the most you think?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Well, you know, the cops are double the amount of pool that they can get. They’re twice as big an organization as us. You know, we’re like 30,000. They’re like 60,000, but we still get some good fighters and we beat them quite a few times. We fight. They fight everywhere. They fight in England, they fight in Ireland.

THEO VON: Oh really?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, they’ll fight any fire department, any cops.

THEO VON: So Bobby and his gang, they kind of, this is like a thing they do all year.

TONY BONFIGLIO: All year? Yeah. Oh, he’s so busy. So he runs this, the FDNY Boxing Club.

THEO VON: Oh, wow.

TONY BONFIGLIO: They raise like hundreds of thousands for Tunnels to Towers every year.

THEO VON: And what is Tunnels to Towers?

TONY BONFIGLIO: That’s with the World Trade Center foundation where the guy’s brother ran through from Staten Island. He ran through the tunnel to get to the Trade Center and he passed away. And so they started this organization and it’s huge.

THEO VON: Oh, that’s beautiful, man. We’ll make a donation to him.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, that’d be great.

THEO VON: Yeah, right here. Born from the tragedy 9/11, the Tunnels to Towers foundation carries out its mission to do good by providing mortgage free homes to gold star and fallen first responder families with young children and building specially adapted smart homes for catastrophically injured veterans and first responders. Wow.

TONY BONFIGLIO: They ran through the tunnel with their gear on to get to Manhattan.

THEO VON: Oh. The FDNY Boxing Club is comprised of active duty members, FDNY and EMS who train on their own time. Established in 1982, FDNY Boxing has spent 40 years raising funds for worthwhile charities through spirited competition. Yeah man, we’ll make a donation to them.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, I’m going to.

THEO VON: Bravest boxing team will defend the Big Apple in the second international battle of the badges. Huh?

TONY BONFIGLIO: The funny thing is the best fights are in the crowd. The cops and the firemen going at it. Holy shit, the brawls. One time I was there and this girl cop, you know, she was bad mouthing some firemen and she threw a soda at the guy and the one fireman says, “Hey, you know I don’t hit firemen.” The other fireman said, “I do.” And he clocked her.

THEO VON: Oh yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Boom. She went flying over the date. Whole fight broke out. It was crazy.

THEO VON: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: I mean once you throw a soda at you.

THEO VON: Yeah. And with all the people getting sex changes now, you don’t know who’s got what on them.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Exactly.

THEO VON: You know, I’m not frisking you first.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah. What are you packing?

Changes in the Fire Department

THEO VON: Yeah, yeah. How has the department changed since you got involved in now?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Well, from when I got on and then in the early late 90s, mid-90s, computers came in and that changed a lot. Computers and now digital things. We had fax machines and computers and that changed a lot of things. Before it was just writing in a book, you know. Now more things are more digital, so they had a little more eyes on you, you know, you couldn’t get away with as much.

THEO VON: A lot more technology.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah. Because back in the day, you know, the bosses ran the firehouse. There was nobody else that knew what was going on. Whatever they put in the book is what it was. Matter of fact, when I bought my house, it was a funny story. I was 24, and I told my boss, I told the bank, “Yeah, this is where I work if you want to check on my employment.” And I gave him the number to the truck office.

So I said, “This is what I make,” you know. And it was like twice what I was making. He’s like, “Ah, you can’t say that.” I said, “Just tell the bank. Don’t worry about it.” And it worked.

Returning to Ground Zero

THEO VON: What did Christine say when you called her? That must have been crazy.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, yeah. Well, her sister answered the phone. Bernie. And I was like, “Bernie,” she’s like, “Tony, how the f* are you? What’s going on?” I said, “Oh, my God, we just got that firehouse. We’re taking a break. We’re all okay. And I’ll talk to my wife, tell her, you know, I love her. And I’ll see you in a bit. I’ll call her later.” So hung up. We went back to the pile.

So now we get back on the pile, it’s like, what do we want? First we’re walking along and guys are seeing other guys that, you know, you’re hugging. So my friend Bobby sees a guy, they’re hugging, and I’m standing there on a plateau, and this guy hits me, another fireman. He goes, “Buddy, you’re standing on somebody.” And I was like, “Oh, shit.”

I looked down and this guy in this three piece suit, he’s like part of the ground. He’s looking up at me and I’m like, “Oh, my God.” That was the first body I saw all day. Yeah. So now we’re like, okay, so now we’re moving along. What do you want to do? They started a bucket brigade. I don’t know. We must have had a thousand Home Depot buckets. And you would pass a bucket and take a bucket water along for like hours. We were doing that, you know, and it was starting. Yeah, it was getting dark out.

You know, the day was getting, it was like around 7:30, 8 o’clock. And so now we’re doing this for hours. My back is killing me. And all of a sudden we hear all this yelling. Everybody’s yelling and cheering. It’s 9:30 at night. You know, at 9 o’clock we’re like, “What is that? What is that?” My friend Bobby goes, “Look, look over there down there.”

We look down and here comes a parade of iron workers with heavy machinery cranes. They got their hard hats on, cut off shirts. Everybody’s got their fists in the air. They’re all hanging off the machines. Everybody’s cheering like we won the Super Bowl. It was like it was a drop in the bucket. But they got right to work, started taking off all the heavy shit, you know. I mean it had months, almost a year to go, but oh, it was just a start. Yeah. And it just felt so good.

THEO VON: We had a chance.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah. And then finally we were like, you know, let’s start heading home, you know. And I met a few guys heading home and I was thinking in the back of my mind, all the guys, you know, that got killed, we had no idea how many yet, can’t even imagine. And I run into a friend of mine and he was off in a rescue company. And I said, “Hey John.” He said, “Tony, how you doing?” He goes, “You know, Tony, Jerry was working.” And Jerry was like one of my best friends.

And I was like, “Oh God.” I just stepped back as I knew he was in Rescue, Rescue 1. I was devastated. My friend Whip, sorry. And he put his arm around me, he said, “Come on, who knew? Let’s go, let’s leave.” And I was like, I was, I’m still emotional over it.

Remembering Jerry Nevins

THEO VON: It’s heartbreaking. What was his name? Jerry. What?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Jerry Nevins.

THEO VON: Jerry Nevins. Let’s see a picture of him. Huh?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Funny story. When he told me he was going to leave to go to rescue, I was like, “You, are you kidding me?” It was like, because everybody was leaving, you know. I was there 15 years, I was losing guys left and right. They were getting made lieutenant. He wanted to go to a rescue company. We used to bash rescue all the time. Rescue’s like a special company. You know. When a truckee or a fireman gets in trouble, they send a rescue guy to get him. They’re like expertise, they’re like the Marines.

THEO VON: Or whatever kind of.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Or no like, well the Marines, but they’re like special.

THEO VON: Is that Jerry?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, it’s Jerry.

THEO VON: Oh, there he is.

TONY BONFIGLIO: And they were on 42nd Street. Rescue 1. So they’re right in the middle of Times Square.

THEO VON: Oh, they were there.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, he made so many rescues. It was amazing.

THEO VON: Wow. So he enjoyed it once he got over there.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, I used to go to some medal days and he’d be there and, you know, two, three medals, you know, hanging off of buildings, scaffoldings. He’d say, you know, a lot of times in midtown, the scaffoldings would break and they’d have to go over ropes and get these guys. And, yeah, he was just a great find.

But when he told me he was going to rescue, I was crushed. I was like, “You got to be kidding me.” He told me in the middle of a box. We were checking out a building. So now I get back in the rig, and we’re going down the St. Nicholas Avenue, and I turned the ladder all the way out, so now it looks like a square, you know. And I’m like this way, looking at him. He’s looking, he’s like, “What the…” I’m like, “You.”

And we straighten it out. Now we’re crossing over Amsterdam Avenue. And I seen him put the lights on, like, okay, we’re getting a run. I see the boss on the phone, you know, and he’s taking down the information. Puts his arm out like, “We got to run.” Sounds like a job. Numerous calls. Numerous calls means you’re going to work. That means people are calling. You know, “I see a fire. I see a fire.”

THEO VON: It’s not just some weirdo with a Ouija.

A Close Call

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, yeah. No Ouija boards, no fake alarms. You hear numerous calls, you know you’re going to work. So now we go around Broadway, and I see it. We come up, and it’s a second floor. It’s blowing out, like, four windows. And there’s an awning with off the fire escape on the second floor. And it’s still on fire out. I got to get in there. I’m the O.V. that’s my job.

So now I’m getting a ladder out. I’m putting the ladder up. The Dominican guys in the street, they’re helping me place the ladder into the deck. I climb up the ladder, I smash the window out, I put my mask on, and I drop in. Now it’s blowing all the other rooms. This room is getting ready to blow. You know, it gets hot. So now I’m in there and I’m searching around, and I get lost. I get a little, I get pumped into a bureau on my knees. And I get disorientated and I’m getting scared because my ears are starting to burn. I know it’s going to light up, which is crazy.

I got caught in a closet. You’d never think, how’d you get caught in a closet, right? But I’m crawling in, thinking it’s an opening. And I turned in there and I’m in this closet. Now I can’t get out of the closet. I’m going around in a circle. My ears are burning. And all of a sudden I hear Jerry. He came in behind me. Jerry had a bite bar, which was like totally illegal. Instead of having a mask with a net on, it was like you had a little bite bar in the mask, so you didn’t need that. You just held it with your teeth, which was totally outlawed, but it made it easier to take it on and off.

So I hear him say, “Tony.” I’m like, “Jerry,” he’s like, “You got to get out of here. It’s going to light up.” I’m like, “I can’t find my way out.” I was like taking my mask off, calling for my mother. I thought I was a dead man. And then all of a sudden I heard the engine at the door and I heard this guy McCarthy yelling, “Kick its ass.”

THEO VON: Kick its ass. Hit it, hit it.

TONY BONFIGLIO: I heard the water coming in and I was like, oh, it was music to my ears. I was going to live again. And then after that, when I was in the street, I was like a zombie, you know? And Jerry was like, “Yo, what the f*’s wrong with you?” I said, “Dude, I was close.” He just laughed, you know, but that was it. He went to rescue the next day. I never even thanked him for coming in after me that day.

THEO VON: Oh. Oh, man. Yeah, I mean, it’s just, even the stories are so exhilarating. I can imagine, like, I can’t even imagine what it’s like, really.

The Magazine Cover and the Corpse

TONY BONFIGLIO: We were putting a fire out. I made a cover of a magazine. I think you could bring it up. It was called Fire Command. I didn’t know what it was. You know, it was like one of these buff magazines. Yeah, that’s me in the middle in a neck brace. Yeah, I look like an Italian organ grinder monkey, man.

THEO VON: I thought you’re going to send me, maybe made the calendar.

TONY BONFIGLIO: I got the little ringlets in my hair. I got the bow ties on. And the friend next to me, Kenny, he was a probie. So funny story. We had to take this line up the fire escape because we got called in as an extra engine. It was a lot of fire, people were trapped. They were having a hard time putting the fire out from the inside. So we’re taking the line up the fire.

Now I’m in the engine. I’m detailed. I’m never in the engine, so. But when they need a guy and you got an extra guy, you go across the floor. Now I’m in the engine. And we’re taking this line up the fire escape to the fifth floor. And the boss is yelling. This Boss, there’s Joe McLaughlin. He’s yelling, Richie, get in there.

THEO VON: Hit it, hit it.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Finally, we get a charge the line, we tie it off to the fire escape. I mean, it’s a lot of water going up that high. He’s hitting the water. The guy right here, Richie, that’s squinting his eyes and he’s hitting the water and we’re pushing our way in. We made it up to the fire floor escape. We push the fire in and now we’re crawling in. We’re climbing in through the window.

The boss is yelling, they’re looking at us, Richie. They’re looking at us because we’re outside on the fire escape. We get in, the ceiling comes down on our heads. All this hot plaster and sht fing burn my neck. So now we’re getting in. We get to the engine on the other side is coming and they’re making a good push. They’re putting the fire out. We’re putting the fire out.

So now we’re at this wall with a window. And I’m on top of something. Me and another guy were Neil, I thought it was a pillow, the couch. So the boss tells the probe, he take the line and shoot the water out the window. And it’ll take a lot of smoke so we could start to see what’s going on here. And as they’re doing now, you can start to see a little. The boss takes his mask off and he goes, holy sh*t. Look what you’re kneeling on.

I look down and we’re kneeling on a corpse with no head, no legs and no arms. And he’s all like a crispy, burnt, like, ah. We all jump off. We’re like, holy sh*t. I thought it was a couch piece, you know? And it was. That’s what happened. They killed this guy. They cut him up and then they lit him on. They lit the place on fire. That’s why there’s so much fire. You get a lot of fire in the middle of the day. It’s usually arson. Somebody poured gasoline or something.

THEO VON: Oh yeah, that was a murder, huh?

The Probie’s “Third Degree Burns”

TONY BONFIGLIO: It was a murder. So anyway, before that, Kenny’s a probie. He’s probably about 21 years old and he was in softball and he hurt his leg sliding into second base. So we were on inspection. I said, Kenny, what happened to your leg? He said, oh, I caught it on softball. I said, oh, that looks f*ing terrible. Then we got that run to the fire.

So now we’re leaving the fire, we’re going down the steps. I said, we’re all going sick. We’re tapping out, right? So I said, we’re going to go with our necks from the ceiling coming down. I said, Kenny, take that bandage off and tell him you got burnt on your leg.

So we get in the street, the street’s busy. It’s all fire department cops, there’s reporters in the street and everything. And the fire department doctor comes running over to us and I said, yeah, we, the ceiling came down on our heads. And he’s like, oh. I says, and this guy got burned on his leg. And he looks, he. Kenny’s leg up. He looks at the softball injury and he goes, “third degree burns.” Patch this man right up.

So I look at Kenny because he didn’t know, you know, it was his first take. So now we, they take us, we’re on the wall on Malcolm X Boulevard. And they take us to. We said, where’s the boss? We don’t know where Joe, Joe McLaughlin is. So we see a bunch of people standing around. Somebody’s on the ground, they’re taking pictures. I call, we go over there. When we see the boss, he’s on the stretcher getting his head taped down. And they’re all taking pictures of him.

We’re like, Lou, Lou, you okay? You okay? And he looks up, he goes, “get the f* out of my pictures.” He says, like he’s okay. So they put us in the bus. There he is the best, Joe McLaughlin. CPO Joe, he was, you know, he was in the 17 truck in the Bronx in the war years. So he was like, he was a well rounded fireman, a tough as nails.

THEO VON: Wow.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah. So he says, “get the f* out of my pictures.” So we’re laughing, everybody’s taking pictures of them. So now they take us to the hospital, you know. So we’re in the emergency room in Columbia, Columbia Press. And the young nurses are patching up on and they’re laughing with us, you know. And it’s a busy emergency room and Kenny’s got his thing on.

And so all of a sudden it’s like, middle aged head nurse comes in, you know, good looking woman, probably 40 or so. So she goes to Kenny’s leg and she moves the bandage. She makes a face, you know, she’s like, when did this happen? And the Kenny’s sitting there, you know, he’s like, oh, we’re all looking at him laughing, you know, and she just patches it up. She goes, “you’re lucky. We love you guys.” And we’re like, oh, we love you too. You know? Busted.

So about a week or two, a couple of weeks later, I come into the firehouse and this guy says, “hey, here’s one of the superstars.” I’m like, what are you talking about? He’s like, “you made the cover of a magazine.” So I’m like, holy sh*t, you’re kidding. So now I go in the kitchen and everybody’s clapping and everything. They already have the picture in a frame, right? Right.

But they changed it from “report on firefighters injuries.” They put “report on firefighters faking injuries.” So they put captions on everybody. So you see the woman with her arms crossed in the bandana, her caption said, “I know those motherf*ers are faking.” And then there’s a cop walking here and he goes, “yeah, Chief, I got those fakers right here.” And then this salty Harlem fireman, he’s looking at us and his thing says, “you guys disgust me.” Look at that sad face. Oh, my God, that ringlet hair.

THEO VON: I love how you guys already have your neck braces on.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, yeah, I kept that in my back pocket. Well, we had a prop flop closet at home, you know, canes and braces.

THEO VON: Oh, that’s hilarious.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, so that’s. That was that. We made that the cover. I still have that hanging today.

Ground Glass Lung and 9/11 Health Effects

THEO VON: Oh, it’s just. Just. You had to go down to some memory lane, man. Does it think about different things? And just to hear about the camaraderie of what the lifestyle was like. Yeah, bring up the part about the ground glass lung. Is that what it’s called? I just wanted to make sure that we. That I mention it on here so that people know about it.

Let me see. Ground glass lungs refers to a radiological finding on CT scans showing hazy opacities in the lungs, often linked to inflammation or fibrosis from inhaling toxic dust at ground zero. Pulverized after the 9/11 attacks. The dust cloud contained over 2,500 contaminants. 50% construction debris, 40% glass fibers, 9% cellulose. Inhaling the dust led to World Trade Center lung injury, which firefighters losing up to 12 years of lung function. 70% of workers showed respiratory decline.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah. The longer you work down there, the worse it was. Yeah.

THEO VON: Yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Because the dust really never settled for you for months.

THEO VON: Yeah. It’s just. It’s. It’s so crazy to think that it created a new disease.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah.

THEO VON: You know, probably.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Well, you know, think about all those offices, all those fluorescent lights, all those computers. They just got pulverized to a dust. That’s why everybody was covered in. Between that and the cement, it’s a lot, Tony.

Looking Ahead

THEO VON: Yeah. There’s so many more things I want to talk to you about. Maybe we could have you come back sometimes, anytime, and talk about other stuff.

TONY BONFIGLIO: You know, maybe I’ll bring Bobby McGuire with me.

THEO VON: Dude.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Very interesting, man.

THEO VON: Is he.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, my God.

THEO VON: No, he seems very interesting, and I want to get a picture up, too. Is this his. Is this Richard Allen?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, that’s his nephew.

THEO VON: That’s his nephew right there.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Son of Richie Allen.

THEO VON: Yeah, that. That’s awesome, man. We’d love to. Maybe.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Every year they acknowledge him in Rockaway. They have a big thing with the lifeguards and everything.

THEO VON: Oh, they do?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yes. Surfer. He was a big surfer.

THEO VON: Oh, wow.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Wow. Yeah.

THEO VON: Oh, yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: I got plenty more stories there. What was the. Oh, the murder. That was a good story.

Common Causes of Fires

THEO VON: You know what? I think I want to save it because there’s even some basic. There’s basic questions. Is it like somebody leaving a candle on? Is that the number one cause of a house fire, maybe?

TONY BONFIGLIO: House fires, probably bad electrical work and a lot of arson fires. Arson? Yeah, big time.

THEO VON: Those space heaters.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Space heaters? I don’t know if you ever heard of the Happy Land Social Club.

THEO VON: I don’t know. It depends on which one you’re talking.

TONY BONFIGLIO: I was in the Bronx. Yeah, it wasn’t that kind of happy.

THEO VON: There’s a lot of different versions, but.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Sad story, but I think, I’m not sure the number, but about. You can look it up. 87 people died from a gallon of gas in a match. Oh, yeah, it was horrible.

THEO VON: You had to respond to that.

TONY BONFIGLIO: I didn’t respond, but my friend Sully did. He was detailed out to the Bronx, and they were one of the first trucks there. And when they got in, they were crawling up the stairs, and they didn’t know what they were crawling over. And then when they finally found out, it was all bodies. It was crazy. He had happy lands.

THEO VON: And so a lot of times you don’t know what’s going on. Or it used to be you didn’t know what’s going on until you got in there.

TONY BONFIGLIO: No, probably not. You don’t know who said it. You just. You just. The adrenaline is running, man. Oh, my God. Your hearts are pumping. And thought you never get. It never gets old, you know? Oh, I bet how many years, they would say, we get there and be a top floor fire. Now you got to carry that mask, all your gear, everything.

By the time you get to that sixth floor and you got to put a mask on. On. You’re sucking air. You’re like. Now you got to put this little man in baskets, like the man breathing, so you only get air. And I’d be in my mask. I’m getting out of this city. I’m going to Queens. I thought Queens would be an easier job for me.

THEO VON: Westchester, send me to west anywhere.

TONY BONFIGLIO: You know, I’m getting out of this ghetto.

THEO VON: Wow. Well, yeah, Tony, thanks so much for your service, man. Yeah, I would love to just have you come back sometime and just be able to just go down. There’s some other roads I want to go down and learn more about it.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, that’d be great.

THEO VON: And just. But, yeah, I think today we just got a really good idea of just kind of the brotherhood of. Yeah. Just what your journey has been like. Kind of getting involved with fire departmenting. Oh, what did your wife end up getting a job in?

TONY BONFIGLIO: My wife? Yeah, she was. Worked for a printer and then she worked for a dentist.

THEO VON: Oh, yeah, yeah. Dentalist. Dental assistant and kind of.

TONY BONFIGLIO: No, she was. She ran the whole, you know. Yeah. Took the phone calls.

THEO VON: Oh, yeah. Keeping everything organized.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, she ran it. Yeah.

THEO VON: Yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: You know, my wife was a hard worker.

THEO VON: Yeah. That’s nice.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Like I said, she bought her first car when, you know, we were 17, with our own money. Four grand. She bought a Chevette. Red Chevette.

THEO VON: Oh, dude, if I saw a girl with a car. Yeah, I’m going with her.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah. I was like, wow, this girl’s got her own car, her own money. No, mom didn’t buy it.

THEO VON: You know, that’s my. I think the number one thing I’m looking for in a spouse is hardworking.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah.

THEO VON: Oh, because life’s hard work.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah. You can’t try. You can’t do the door lock anymore. Right. Because now they’re all electric. Right. You always used to say if the girl don’t open, gets in the car and don’t open your door, she’s out. Yeah. So there’s all these little tests, but yes, my wife was a hard worker and a great mother.

THEO VON: Yeah, it’s a nice thing, too.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, yeah, it was funny because she knows. All them years of being in a fight, I’d come home sometimes and say, oh, my God, I had a fire. Top floor was burning this in the mouth. I’m telling them all this stuff. And then she’ll be like, did you remember that we have to go to school tomorrow? And I’d be like, I just told you this whole story. It seemed like it went right over your head.

THEO VON: You’re like, blah, blah, blah. We get it.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, you’ve been to matches. Go spit that black tar in the sink again like you always do.

THEO VON: Oh, yeah. Behind every good fireman, huh?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, yeah, it’s the. What Wives. I got some pictures of the fire department wives. And.

THEO VON: Well, look, you can show me that. As long as they’re appropriate, you can show me.

TONY BONFIGLIO: They’re appropriate.

THEO VON: Okay.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Good girls.

THEO VON: Okay.

TONY BONFIGLIO: While. You know, a lot of them are Bronx girls.

THEO VON: Well, look, these days. Oh, yeah. Tough women over there.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yes.

Tales from the Tiller

THEO VON: That’s what you need in the world. You need a good, strong lady. This is your book right here, Tales from the Tiller.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yes.

THEO VON: I didn’t even know you had written this.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, I wrote this. It just came out in September last. Really? September? Yeah. Great book, dude.

THEO VON: Congratulations.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, a lot of good stories in there. And I got recipes in there. Clam Sauce Casino. I think you might like that, bro.

THEO VON: I’ll tell you this. I took a gal out the other night, went to a place, they had clams and white wine sauce that’s kind of like.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, you would love the Clam Sauce Casino.

THEO VON: Really?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Well, you know, Clams Casino, you know, they put the peppers and the onions and a little bacon on it, and then they bake them.

THEO VON: No, I’ve never had that.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Louisiana didn’t have clam sauce. Casinos, they might have had it.

THEO VON: We had macaroni.

TONY BONFIGLIO: There it is.

THEO VON: Oh, yeah, that looks good.

TONY BONFIGLIO: So I make it this guy that got in trouble and was sent to our firehouse, and it was one of his meals, and I took it from him. And we make it with the spaghetti. So we put it over with the peppers, the bacon, the onions, breadcrumb, and the clams.

THEO VON: Oh, I want that. I’m a clam guy. Have you seen that kid that says that?

TONY BONFIGLIO: That.

THEO VON: No, bring up that clam kid. I love this kid. But of course, that a fireman’s book would have fires with recipes thrown in.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah. You know, so it’s funny because some of the stories are like tragedy and then it goes right into the recipe. It’s like a little weird, but. No, no, that kid, that does the Italian words.

THEO VON: No, no, I’m looking for the kid. Yeah, this kid’s hilarious. But the. What did I just ask you for, Nick? Yeah, yeah, I’m a clam guy. Kid. Have you seen this little.

TONY BONFIGLIO: No, I’d see it.

THEO VON: This kid, they interviewed him. We’ll finish on him.

TONY BONFIGLIO: All right. I’m a guy who only basically likes clams.

THEO VON: Really?

TONY BONFIGLIO: I’m a clam guy. Yeah, I like that.

THEO VON: That’s all I do.

TONY BONFIGLIO: All these. He looks like it.

THEO VON: Clams are awesome. This is crazy. I hated oysters. Kids getting a little bit weird, but yeah, that guy’s a clam guy. You know, it’s getting a little weird, but I could see you guys just like, you guys show up at a fight fire, but you also brought like. But you also brought dinner. That has to be preheat. That has to be heated up. So you’re like taking it up to the fire with you, leaving it on the ledge.

Firehouse Life and Cockroaches

TONY BONFIGLIO: As soon as you. As soon as you sit down to eat, the tone alarm goes off.

THEO VON: Oh, every time, huh?

TONY BONFIGLIO: And what happens is they have a big thing of foil paper and one guy just starts cutting the foil papers off and the other guys start wrapping it to go. Otherwise the cockroaches walk away. We had so many cockroaches in the firehouse.

THEO VON: Yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Oh, my God. You know, never get rid of them.

THEO VON: Oh, God.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah.

THEO VON: We’ll have to hear about it next time you have a book. Tales from the Tiller. The true stories of her.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah.

THEO VON: True stories of heroism, heartbreak and humor. The luckiest guy alive in his journey in the FDNY. That’s awesome.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Starts with some of my jobs before that and then right through the academy and right.

THEO VON: Who helped you put it together?

TONY BONFIGLIO: Just me and my son.

THEO VON: Oh, yeah.

TONY BONFIGLIO: And my wife. Yeah.

THEO VON: Oh, that’s excellent.

TONY BONFIGLIO: It was all in house. And my brother in law who was in Utah, in Seattle, he worked for Microsoft. He did all the proofreading. Funny story. Is it? You know, he threw his shoulder out working the mouse, doing all my corrections because every, every chapter had like a thousand corrections on it, so.

THEO VON: Well, that sounds like an insurance scam, but that’ll be the next book, you know.

TONY BONFIGLIO: But no, people are already telling me, when are you going to write another book? I’m like well, I’m just trying to get this one out now. You know, it’s hard. I go on the Instagram. That helps.

THEO VON: And some is always some. You write one book. He’s like, when’s your next book coming out? He hadn’t even. He can’t even read. It’s always people that can’t read.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah. What’s my next one going to be like? More Tales from the Till. You go, hey, hey.

THEO VON: If it sells, you never know, man. Well, I’ve enjoyed your time today, man. Thanks for thinking about just kind of taking us on a little bit of a journey. Yeah, we have. We had so many questions for today, so I’d love to be able to get to more.

TONY BONFIGLIO: I can’t believe how fast it went.

THEO VON: Another time. I know.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Know when you’re having fun. Hey, you’re the man.

Wrapping Up at the Chelsea

THEO VON: I’m just glad we’re not on fire in here today, man. I really am.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Dude, checking this lobby out over here, too. It’s about a thousand years old over here.

THEO VON: I know. This place is pretty cool, man.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, it’s cool.

THEO VON: Have. If you get to go to. There’s like a bar over there and a restaurant just at each end.

TONY BONFIGLIO: I went and I looked at them.

THEO VON: Yeah, it’s just cool.

TONY BONFIGLIO: It’s funny because I’ve been in, like, big hotels in Manhattan before and the lobbies are, like, tremendous, you know, I mean, there’s stores and restaurants, so I thought it was going to be. I never been to the Chelsea.

THEO VON: Yeah, this is a nice place to come if you just come for a meal or something. Like they went to the bar last night. It’s nice in there, huh?

TONY BONFIGLIO: And this is the suite.

THEO VON: Yeah, this is one of the sweets. And it’s. But yeah, it just feels like. I don’t know, to me, it just feels like a lot more chill here.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Yeah, definitely.

THEO VON: And relaxed. But thank you for your service. I want to say that thank you for coming today and helping to share memories of. Of some of your comrades that have fallen over the years and that have. Have also served. And we appreciate it. And we appreciate your wife and son, Dominic. We’ll have to put a picture of all of all of them together at the end of the episode. And. And thanks again, man.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Thank you.

THEO VON: Yep. We had a good time.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Pleasure, man. And an honor.

THEO VON: Well, I appreciate it, Tony. Thank you very much.

TONY BONFIGLIO: Thank. Oh.

THEO VON: But when I reach that ground I’ll share this piece of my life found.

TONY BONFIGLIO: I can feel it in my bones but it’s going to take.

Related Posts

• Transcript of Elizabeth Lane Interview on Propaganda Network: Tucker Carlson Show
• Transcript of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Interview: IMO Podcast
• Transcript: Mary Talley Bowden Interview on Tony Fauci’s Diary @ Tucker Carlson Show
• Transcript of CIA Whistleblower Jim Erdman Interview: Tucker Carlson Show
• Transcript of Shawn Ryan Interview: Trump’s Betrayal – Tucker Carlson Show