Toy Firetrucks Receive Special Parking Places

Fillmore Fire Chief Pat Askren sits cross-legged on the floor of Fillmore’s new City Hall, eagerly pointing out the toy fire engines he fell in love with during childhood, when firetrucks without mufflers blasted their sirens down the streets.

“It just kind of got carried away,” Askren, 52, said of his collection of 150 toy firetrucks, ranging from the turn-of-the-century steam engine to the modern pumper firetrucks.

In the early 1980s, he bought a toy German 1939 firetruck, then began purchasing others. Friends and co-workers began giving him old firetrucks that their kids had left behind, or ones they bought when traveling abroad. His children still buy him the toy trucks, he said.

Now 100 of Askren’s toys are displayed in a glass case on the second floor of City Hall, offering an unofficial history of how firetrucks and even toys have evolved.

Missing from his collection is a model of the old horse-drawn trucks, but he has the steam-engine model, as well as trucks with bells rather than sirens. There are trucks with open tops for the drivers, trucks made of cast iron, tin trucks from Japan, as well as more recent plastic and metal trucks from Taiwan and China.

The toys are his treasures, but Askren isn’t interested in getting only new truck models without nicks or scratches. He actually prefers the ones that kids have handled, the kind that show “some kid was on his hands and knees and playing with it in the dirt,” he said. “That’s nice to know.”

During the 20 years that Askren has served on the city’s volunteer Fire Department--first as a captain and then as its chief for the last decade--he has ridden in firetrucks more times than he can remember.

“It’s a big toy,” he said before stepping into the front seat of the real McCoy, Fillmore Fire Department’s 1989 Pierce model. “It sends out 1,250 gallons of water a minute, and holds 1,500 feet of hose.”

In the drizzle, he drives the engine around Fillmore’s center, past Main Street, around to Mountain View and past 4th Street. While steering the 8-foot, 3-inch-wide vehicle, he recalled wanting to be in a firetruck as a kid. “I didn’t know what it was like; you just knew you wanted to do it.”

Askren still gets a kick out of taking a ride in the blazing red vehicle.

“Anybody tells you they don’t, they’re crazy,” he said.