Can you read the Engine # on the hood?

[Looks like 20. - tterrace]

The man on the left with the plaid newsboy hat is a dead ringer for Steve Carell from The Office!

[Uncanny. - Dave]

Reminds me of letting the Cub Scouts in my son's pack ride a few blocks (illegally in California) in the back of a pickup truck coming back from a long walk doing a food drive. They were all in the bed safely sitting, well behaved, and thought it was the greatest fun they had all month. Gotta have some old-timey fun once in awhile.

"Yeah, ladies. I'm the manliest man in Mantown, D.C."

The style and ornament lavished on a fire truck at this time is directly related to its importance to the community, the investment it represents, the pride it inspired, and surely the excitement it generated. Its steam predecessors were even more incredible - industrial goods as high art, as were the early railroad engines up into the 1860s. The ornament quickly fell away on the railroad (except perhaps in pullman and dining car interiors) as brute speed, pulling strength and efficiency became the focus of a mammoth business enterprise, more exciting for its awesome power than for its style. Fire engines have somehow never lost their hold on the imagination or their excitement, or surprisingly, their great style. While they are in service they are polished and more enshrined than garaged. I would put this old beauty in my garage - if I had one big enough!

How'd that kid at the top with the sweater-jacket get in there? He looks a little worried.

Have we seen that boy with the goggles before? Now I'll have to scroll back through all 500 pages of Shorpy photos!

This crew hopes to make up in numbers what it lacks in equipment, but there will be some attrition if they take any corners at high speed. Notice the kid hanging off of the kid hanging off of the back end.

Beautiful old American LaFrance.