SAUGUS — By 4:30 p.m. Friday, Group Four’s dinner preparations were well underway in the Hamilton Street firehouse kitchen.
Firefighter Anthony Arone stood at the counter breading chicken cutlets, while firefighter Dario Picozzi watched intently over a pot of oil on the stove as he fried eggplant slices to add to a catering-sized tinfoil plate of eggplant parmesan sitting nearby.
“This is how my mother makes it,” Picozzi said as he lay finished pieces flat over a layer of sauce. “I get tips from her.”
Communal meals like these are a common occurrence, Arone explained. Because the men in his cohort spend two 24-hour days together at the firehouse each week, cooking their meals in-house is a way for the team to relax and enjoy themselves between calls.
“For us, this is home,” Arone said. “This is our time to be together, cook together, have some banter in the kitchen, and make something we take some pride in.”
“We’re a really good group,” said firefighter Martin Hyppolite. “Everybody’s funny here, so when we get to do stuff like this, it’s a good time.”
Dinner planning usually begins early in the day, sometimes soon after the firefighters begin their shift at 7:30 a.m.
The group will make anything from barbeque to something as simple as grilled chicken and salad, but, Arone said, all meals must stay within the imposed $7 per-person limit.
“We’ll sit around the breakfast table, make some announcements, talk about what we’re going to do for the day, then somebody will say ‘what are you guys thinking for dinner?'” he said. “It’ll be five minutes or sometimes an hour and five minutes before we come up with what we’re actually going to make.”
Arone was halfway through breading the tray of cutlets for Friday’s dinner when an alarm sounded.
“That’s what happens more times than not when we’re trying to cook,” he said as the group received a notification that another team would take the call. “That’s kind of what we signed up for. It could happen any time, any moment. That’s the nature of the beast, so you have to plan ahead.”
Firefighter Joseph Phalin added: “Almost every time it’s done, we get a call.”
The mood was light by the time the group of nine sat down for dinner at 5:30. A hearty mix of meatballs, cutlets, eggplant parmesan, and pasta, there was more than enough for seconds, and even thirds, for everyone.
As the team finished up and conversation around the table died down, Captain Tom Nolan said group dinners are one way for the cohort to cope with some of the worst of what they’re exposed to on the job.
“We lean on each other. This is group therapy,” he said. “People ask how we deal with the things we see.” He knocked on the table’s surface. “(We deal with them) right here.”
