The Bellevue Fire Department started as a Volunteer Department. Back in the 1970's Bellevue didn't have adequate fire department coverage, so local Bellevue residents started the Volunteer Fire Department. At first they used the park (now Red Caboose) as their home base, later they built a real fire hall before Metro built the hall and eventually took over fire protection for the area. Below are photos of the fire halls over the years.
In 1978 the second Bellevue Fire Hall opened on Highway 70 just past the the 70 N and 70 S split.
In 1978 the second Bellevue Fire Hall opened on Highway 70 just past the the 70 N and 70 S split.
The first fire hall was located on Old Harding Road near Belle Pointe
The next fire hall was built by Metro and was in use until 2020 when the new fire hall next door opened. The BVFD still sponsors an annual scholarship for graduating seniors. Check their Facebook page for details. |
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Memories of the Haunted House sponsored by the BVFD
By Edward Coke
Bellevue is a suburb of Nashville. We even had a Nashville Councilman to represent us, but being a suburban area we lacked many of the services that the city of Nashville had.
That was the reason we had a Volunteer Fire Dept. Bellevue did not have a dedicated ambulance service either. Any calls for ambulance or EMS service would go all the way back to Nashville Fire Dept and we were at least fifteen miles away from the nearest Nashville EMS.
So how Voluntary were we? In the early days we had no fire hall. Our communications network was a pyramid phone system and CB radios in the one fire engine and the one tanker. We lived on donations and we tried hard to do a good job so we would draw in more citizens. That would be more citizens as additional Firemen and as donors to help support our funds.
Memories of Halloween
Nobody does haunted houses like Firemen and EMS personnel. I know this because the Bellevue Volunteer Fire Dept. did a haunted house each year for at least four years.
It was a fund raiser in concept. Much like the Firemen’s Ball we had for so many years. Haunted houses were popular in Nashville.
Location is the most important thing. You need a place that can be accessed and has plenty of parking. You need a place that can be customized to give the haunted, spooky, scary, evil, and yet it must provide safety for the visitors.
One location was made to order although it would take a lot of work to get it in shape. The old high school site, right across from the new high school was not in use. The building we wanted to use was the old school shop building. It needed a lot of cleanup and somehow, we would have to be able to partition it off to create themed rooms.
A themed room might be a room of animated mummies, or a chained in place werewolf. This was going to be difficult in this building. One thing a volunteer fire department has is many different people with many different skill sets. Our fire dept. had some incredibly talented minds. I think there may have been seven members with private pilot license. Possibly five or six ham radio operators. Several people associated with the Nashville entertainment business. Our strength was in the diverse membership.
Someone came up with the idea of using sheets or hardier cloth hangings to build walkways, some walkways were almost tunnels. Our resident fireman who owned an insurance company did some research and told us we had to fireproof all those hanging tapestries. We found a nontoxic chemical wash and soaked all those sheets and then let that dry before hanging them again.
We also realized that some of us would have to provide security inside the exhibits. It was a public open for admission and we could not control who would come in. Wives and older children gave much of their time to this project. Finally, Halloween was approaching and we had a meeting to identify what exhibits would be set up. It should not have been quite a surprise, but I think it hit us all when firemen and families described what they wished to do in their exhibit ideas.
We joked about how macabre some of our friends were.
Internal security had multiple jobs. If an attendee got too upset to continue we had to have a flashlight to escort them out If attendee got too rambunctious or caused any of the “actors” problems security had to be within close proximity without being readily obvious when all was normal. Those of us selected for security would help to create dark pockets where we could stand without being seen. Safe words were developed whereby an actor could call for security without yelling “I am being attacked.”
Some of the guys had gone to downtown Nashville to the costume houses and theater supply businesses and found out that for some healthy prices very realistic masks could be purchased. We also found out which of our firemen actors were committed to their roles.by how much they were willing to spend on a mask. Some of those masks were super scary even in full daylight and you knew the guy who was wearing it. Or maybe you suspected you were getting a glimpse of your best fishing buddy you had no idea about his inner sanctum.
The wives of the firemen made up a group called the Fireman’s Auxiliary. Much of the decorations were devised by those gals.
If you think for a minute about all the trauma that Firemen an ambulance EMTs are exposed to you may have an idea of how accurate some of these guys can be when it comes to decorative realism. Some things we had to tone down.
One member played the role of a hanged man. He remembers how chaffed he got wearing the harness under his clothes.
While our efforts were well met by the attendees and our sound systems were over top, we did not get into the Haunted House expertly until the next year.
THE NEXT YEAR;
The school shop was not available this year because the city had decided to remodel the site and use the old gym as the foundation for a community center. The old shop would later become a great library and the area under ground level beneath the old shop would be groomed for a new fire hall and an ambulance quarters.
Forgive me if I don’t have the timeline exactly correct. This was years ago.
What are we going to do this year? Should we plan on another Haunted House? How did we do last year on fund raising? Well, we did ok, thanks to people who knew this was a fund raising and also a safe place Haunted House. They could bring their kids through this and not have to deal with any nightmares.
But the response to another Haunted House was overwhelming. It seems the firemen really got into it.
The first Question, which is always the first question, is where will the location be this year. No one had a clue.
Discussion would continue after everyone got to think about locations. Next Meeting and we still had no ideas. Then someone stood and suggested something that started this way. This might work but it is a very different approach. It may take too much work. What? What is your idea? I know a place where we can rent semi-trailers That are in good shape. If we had the land space, we could tie these together. You can get trailers that have a door in their side. The back of one trailer could be coupled to the side of another trailer and then the side door could allow us to have another trailer at ninety degrees. We could have as much room as we want, and all the floors are wooden so we can erect any walls and stalls as we need.
The more we thought about this the more it seemed to be workable. We got permission to use the space available at the recently created Caboose park. It has that name because the L & N railroad was giving away old Cabooses that are no longer used on trains. Communities were at the top of the list and the restoration of Cabooses was generally well done. There are many old train restorers around where there are large railroad terminals. Those people are always ready to offer their help since one of their objectives is to have realistic restorations on display.
We worked out a plan and started bringing truck trailers to what is now the Red Caboose park.
We had an admissions area and I do not remember prices. I am certain prices were reasonable and kids would get a discounted price. Remember the hanging man from last year? This year he and his sister thought up a scene where a table was set for dinner and white mice were running around all over the table. White mice are not supposed to jump off a ledge. Is that supposed to only happen when its dark?
Dark was the overall theme for haunted houses. He had a pocket full of very real looking rubber mice and as people filed through, he would pull out a mouse and put it into his mouth and chew. It went very well until the mice must have thought they might be dinner, then they started jumping off the table. That had a pretty good effect on our guests also.
The Chief Engineer, (your author), was to be security inside the haunted house. We didn’t expect anything serious to happen, but we had to provide all the safety we possibly could. One consideration was that there were only two exits available and the semi-trailers were 60 feet long. It was also a long step to the ground. About 5 feet at least. If someone needed to leave before they reached the end They would need some help.
One night the actor who was to play the werewolf was going to be late. Security was suddenly the actor and The Chief Engineer was tapped on the shoulder. I got into the costume and stood in the booth which had a low railing in the front. The mask was excellent, and I do remember wearing a large wool plaid shirt. We used a tow chain looped around my arms and over my neck. The werewolf was securely tied in place. I did my best slobbery growling.
At one point a couple of guys and gals in their later teenage years came through and of course The werewolf just didn’t scare them. Remarks were made and the werewolf, (me) was faced with insults and a possible assault. I pulled up the chain, which of course was not bolted to the floor and twirled it around in front of me. I suggest you continue through the rest of the haunted house and improve your behavior, taking a step closer. The guy on security at the dark pocket stepped over and it was “Bear” our nickname for big Joe. “Any problem here? He asked”
“No Sir” was the reply and “we were only having some fun.” as they quickly walked off. There usually were no problems when Bear was there.
One night, we didn’t do the haunted houses in daytime, a dump truck pulled into the parking lot. The driver got out and started helping kids get out of the back. There was a lady helping him. I remember about fifteen to twenty kids and they were all here to go through the haunted house. I know the lady went through with the kids because I was still outside when they came back through. I was called by the admissions people as they thought there was some trouble. I got into the last trailer at its exit and I see this little boy about eight years old and he is scooting on the trailer floor saying “feets don’t fail me now!” He scooted until I could grab his arm and help him up and outside. When I went back out the rest of the kids and the lady with them came out. I could judge by the faces that this group had a great time, and they were sufficiently scared. Oh, the lady was scared also. Lucky for her she had a large purse that she was holding a bit below waist level, because she was wet. They got back into the dump truck and I managed to ask, “how was it?” The lady with the purse said, “it was great the kids loved it. And as you can see I did too.”
Note: I wish I had more details of the exhibits we created. My memories are fair but I really needed more people to tell me their memories. Still this captures the essence. Hope you like it.
Bellevue is a suburb of Nashville. We even had a Nashville Councilman to represent us, but being a suburban area we lacked many of the services that the city of Nashville had.
That was the reason we had a Volunteer Fire Dept. Bellevue did not have a dedicated ambulance service either. Any calls for ambulance or EMS service would go all the way back to Nashville Fire Dept and we were at least fifteen miles away from the nearest Nashville EMS.
So how Voluntary were we? In the early days we had no fire hall. Our communications network was a pyramid phone system and CB radios in the one fire engine and the one tanker. We lived on donations and we tried hard to do a good job so we would draw in more citizens. That would be more citizens as additional Firemen and as donors to help support our funds.
Memories of Halloween
Nobody does haunted houses like Firemen and EMS personnel. I know this because the Bellevue Volunteer Fire Dept. did a haunted house each year for at least four years.
It was a fund raiser in concept. Much like the Firemen’s Ball we had for so many years. Haunted houses were popular in Nashville.
Location is the most important thing. You need a place that can be accessed and has plenty of parking. You need a place that can be customized to give the haunted, spooky, scary, evil, and yet it must provide safety for the visitors.
One location was made to order although it would take a lot of work to get it in shape. The old high school site, right across from the new high school was not in use. The building we wanted to use was the old school shop building. It needed a lot of cleanup and somehow, we would have to be able to partition it off to create themed rooms.
A themed room might be a room of animated mummies, or a chained in place werewolf. This was going to be difficult in this building. One thing a volunteer fire department has is many different people with many different skill sets. Our fire dept. had some incredibly talented minds. I think there may have been seven members with private pilot license. Possibly five or six ham radio operators. Several people associated with the Nashville entertainment business. Our strength was in the diverse membership.
Someone came up with the idea of using sheets or hardier cloth hangings to build walkways, some walkways were almost tunnels. Our resident fireman who owned an insurance company did some research and told us we had to fireproof all those hanging tapestries. We found a nontoxic chemical wash and soaked all those sheets and then let that dry before hanging them again.
We also realized that some of us would have to provide security inside the exhibits. It was a public open for admission and we could not control who would come in. Wives and older children gave much of their time to this project. Finally, Halloween was approaching and we had a meeting to identify what exhibits would be set up. It should not have been quite a surprise, but I think it hit us all when firemen and families described what they wished to do in their exhibit ideas.
We joked about how macabre some of our friends were.
Internal security had multiple jobs. If an attendee got too upset to continue we had to have a flashlight to escort them out If attendee got too rambunctious or caused any of the “actors” problems security had to be within close proximity without being readily obvious when all was normal. Those of us selected for security would help to create dark pockets where we could stand without being seen. Safe words were developed whereby an actor could call for security without yelling “I am being attacked.”
Some of the guys had gone to downtown Nashville to the costume houses and theater supply businesses and found out that for some healthy prices very realistic masks could be purchased. We also found out which of our firemen actors were committed to their roles.by how much they were willing to spend on a mask. Some of those masks were super scary even in full daylight and you knew the guy who was wearing it. Or maybe you suspected you were getting a glimpse of your best fishing buddy you had no idea about his inner sanctum.
The wives of the firemen made up a group called the Fireman’s Auxiliary. Much of the decorations were devised by those gals.
If you think for a minute about all the trauma that Firemen an ambulance EMTs are exposed to you may have an idea of how accurate some of these guys can be when it comes to decorative realism. Some things we had to tone down.
One member played the role of a hanged man. He remembers how chaffed he got wearing the harness under his clothes.
While our efforts were well met by the attendees and our sound systems were over top, we did not get into the Haunted House expertly until the next year.
THE NEXT YEAR;
The school shop was not available this year because the city had decided to remodel the site and use the old gym as the foundation for a community center. The old shop would later become a great library and the area under ground level beneath the old shop would be groomed for a new fire hall and an ambulance quarters.
Forgive me if I don’t have the timeline exactly correct. This was years ago.
What are we going to do this year? Should we plan on another Haunted House? How did we do last year on fund raising? Well, we did ok, thanks to people who knew this was a fund raising and also a safe place Haunted House. They could bring their kids through this and not have to deal with any nightmares.
But the response to another Haunted House was overwhelming. It seems the firemen really got into it.
The first Question, which is always the first question, is where will the location be this year. No one had a clue.
Discussion would continue after everyone got to think about locations. Next Meeting and we still had no ideas. Then someone stood and suggested something that started this way. This might work but it is a very different approach. It may take too much work. What? What is your idea? I know a place where we can rent semi-trailers That are in good shape. If we had the land space, we could tie these together. You can get trailers that have a door in their side. The back of one trailer could be coupled to the side of another trailer and then the side door could allow us to have another trailer at ninety degrees. We could have as much room as we want, and all the floors are wooden so we can erect any walls and stalls as we need.
The more we thought about this the more it seemed to be workable. We got permission to use the space available at the recently created Caboose park. It has that name because the L & N railroad was giving away old Cabooses that are no longer used on trains. Communities were at the top of the list and the restoration of Cabooses was generally well done. There are many old train restorers around where there are large railroad terminals. Those people are always ready to offer their help since one of their objectives is to have realistic restorations on display.
We worked out a plan and started bringing truck trailers to what is now the Red Caboose park.
We had an admissions area and I do not remember prices. I am certain prices were reasonable and kids would get a discounted price. Remember the hanging man from last year? This year he and his sister thought up a scene where a table was set for dinner and white mice were running around all over the table. White mice are not supposed to jump off a ledge. Is that supposed to only happen when its dark?
Dark was the overall theme for haunted houses. He had a pocket full of very real looking rubber mice and as people filed through, he would pull out a mouse and put it into his mouth and chew. It went very well until the mice must have thought they might be dinner, then they started jumping off the table. That had a pretty good effect on our guests also.
The Chief Engineer, (your author), was to be security inside the haunted house. We didn’t expect anything serious to happen, but we had to provide all the safety we possibly could. One consideration was that there were only two exits available and the semi-trailers were 60 feet long. It was also a long step to the ground. About 5 feet at least. If someone needed to leave before they reached the end They would need some help.
One night the actor who was to play the werewolf was going to be late. Security was suddenly the actor and The Chief Engineer was tapped on the shoulder. I got into the costume and stood in the booth which had a low railing in the front. The mask was excellent, and I do remember wearing a large wool plaid shirt. We used a tow chain looped around my arms and over my neck. The werewolf was securely tied in place. I did my best slobbery growling.
At one point a couple of guys and gals in their later teenage years came through and of course The werewolf just didn’t scare them. Remarks were made and the werewolf, (me) was faced with insults and a possible assault. I pulled up the chain, which of course was not bolted to the floor and twirled it around in front of me. I suggest you continue through the rest of the haunted house and improve your behavior, taking a step closer. The guy on security at the dark pocket stepped over and it was “Bear” our nickname for big Joe. “Any problem here? He asked”
“No Sir” was the reply and “we were only having some fun.” as they quickly walked off. There usually were no problems when Bear was there.
One night, we didn’t do the haunted houses in daytime, a dump truck pulled into the parking lot. The driver got out and started helping kids get out of the back. There was a lady helping him. I remember about fifteen to twenty kids and they were all here to go through the haunted house. I know the lady went through with the kids because I was still outside when they came back through. I was called by the admissions people as they thought there was some trouble. I got into the last trailer at its exit and I see this little boy about eight years old and he is scooting on the trailer floor saying “feets don’t fail me now!” He scooted until I could grab his arm and help him up and outside. When I went back out the rest of the kids and the lady with them came out. I could judge by the faces that this group had a great time, and they were sufficiently scared. Oh, the lady was scared also. Lucky for her she had a large purse that she was holding a bit below waist level, because she was wet. They got back into the dump truck and I managed to ask, “how was it?” The lady with the purse said, “it was great the kids loved it. And as you can see I did too.”
Note: I wish I had more details of the exhibits we created. My memories are fair but I really needed more people to tell me their memories. Still this captures the essence. Hope you like it.
