Remembering the Fireman’s Ball

By ELIZABETH COSIN / Healdsburg Correspondent

The Geyserville Fire Protection District has gone through more changes than anybody can count in its nearly 100-year history. But over the last half-century, the one constant has been its annual Fireman’s Ball, a dinner dance that has been held every year since 1962.

This year’s 50th anniversary dance is Saturday at Clos duBois Winery, the latest chapter of a long, colorful story. There are still a few people left who remember its earliest days. They recall it as an important fund-raiser for the department and as a chance to have a whole lot of fun.

“It was a real opportunity for people to let their hair down,” says Harry Bosworth, 73, a retired volunteer fireman and owner of the Bosworth and Sons General Mercantile store in Geyserville.

“In those days, everybody drank, and the dance was an excuse to show up and let it all hang out.”

While there had been other dances before, 1962 was the first one to be held in the firehouse. Five years later a dinner was added at the Odd Fellows Hall down the street, with guests going back to the firehouse for dancing.

In the early 1970s, the Grange (Oriental Hall) combined the two under one roof, but before long it outgrew the hall’s 130-person capacity. It moved to the Villa Chanticleer until Healdsburg voted to charge out-of-town users to rent the Villa. Then it returned to Geyserville, eventually landing in its current location. The menu has changed over the years, but the firefighters still do most of the cooking.

In 1962, Ray Pigoni was a young fireman. He later became the fire chief, and held that spot from 1975-1989. He and his wife Betty fondly remember dinner dances over the years.

“It was a pretty big thing back then,” said Pigoni, 80, who is retired and lives on his family’s 21-acre vineyard off Geyserville Road.

“We’d have a big dinner like corn beef and cabbage, and then this local band, The Johnson family, would play a little and everybody would kind of go hog wild.”

Bosworth says he also remembers the band that played many of the early dinner dances. As he recalls, they weren’t always flawless.

“It was a mother and her two sons,” he says. “She really pounded the keyboard, but they would sometimes change the tempo mid-song. It was one of those things you got accustomed to.”

The dance has always been key to the growth and stability of the volunteer fire association, which continues today even though the new department now includes professional firemen.

Monies raised from the dance go for a variety of services, including equipment and insurance. It also has helped raise the money to build new firehouses when they were needed.

“It’s our biggest event of the year,” says Fred Peterson, the group’s treasurer and long-time volunteer fireman who also owns Peterson Winery in Healdsburg. “We almost always sell it out.”

Pigoni says he’s most proud of the improvements they were able to make over the years, especially bringing in equipment to help with medical rescues.

“Ray had to convince the department to get some of the new stuff,” says Betty Pigoni.

One of them was for a resuscitator that he had used while serving as an MP in the army, a suitcase sized device that was a precursor to equipment like defibrillators.

“It took a lot of convincing,”Pigoni says. “But we managed to get the money to do it.”

It was a big jump for the small-town fire department that has continued to seek out state-of-the-art equipment and training. They’re showcased in the beautiful Geyserville Fire Department, which opened in 2005.

For Pigoni, the most helpful advance came in a small package – pagers that helped get fireman to the scene faster.

“In the old days, we had to phone everybody,” he says. “And if you were out in the field or something, you might not get the call right away, if at all.”

Pigoni says he knew the gamble on new equipment was worth it when the fire department was called to rescue a cyclist injured when a trailer lost a tire out on Dry Creek Road.

“We got there and helped the guy and got him to the hospital,” he recalls. “Turns out he was a doctor, and he wrote us a letter to thank us. He couldn’t believe we got out there so fast. To him we were in the middle of nowhere.”

A lot of that progress would never have happened without events like the annual dinner dance.

“It was the way to help the volunteers and help the community,” says Bosworth. “Back then when there was a fire, people would jump on the truck to help their neighbors.

“That’s what we did.”

- Geyserville Towns Correspondent Deborah Mitchel Serval contributed to this story.