History

American LaFrance Foamite Inc.

company · active 1939

Fire-apparatus makers. Ocean City resolved on 3 March 1939 to buy a pumper from them for $8,500 and the old thirteen-year-old truck, in three annual payments. The order was signed for a 750-gallon pumper and the fire chief afterwards changed it to a 1,000-gallon one without telling the council, which wrote to the company direct in April to ask why. Notes for $2,833 each, dated 23 May 1939 at 6 per cent and running from 1 July, were signed by the mayor and treasurer on 2 June, and the company's letters were read into the record and filed as a supplement to the contract.

In the record (2)

  1. 1939 · 1939-04-18

    From 1939 the telephone operator in Ocean City could set off the fire alarm herself

    The minute of 18 April 1939: 'Ordinance passed to have C&P Telephone Co put in alarm plug in in Central office so operator could set off alarm.' On 3 March the council had resolved to buy a new American LaFrance Foamite pumper for $8,500 and the old truck, in three annual payments; notes for $2,833 each were signed by the mayor and treasurer on 23 May, the machine to start 1 July at 6 per cent. In December the town granted the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company a franchise ordinance for its poles and conduits, section 3 of which reserved space on one crossarm or in one duct, free of charge, 'for the purpose of carrying wires of any fire alarm or police telegraph system owned and maintained by said City'.

    Fourteen years after the fire that took the downtown, Ocean City's fire alarm finally stopped depending on somebody running to it. The town put the switch in the one building that was staffed all night and never closed - and then wrote free wire-space for it into the telephone company's franchise, which is a small town making certain the thing can never be taken away.

    Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone CompanyHarold J. RayneArchie DavisT. J. Moore

    Source · checked 2026-08-11

  2. 1945 · 1945-07-10

    Ocean City's reckoning of 10 July 1945 shows $6,827.29 in the bank against $21,000 of notes outstanding, after a town that had held $23,430 in cash eighteen months earlier borrowed twice in two months.

    A typed statement headed 'REPORT FOR JULY TENTH 1945' lists taxes and water unpaid at $7,952.21, book account $12,718.00, bonds $20,000.00 and cash in bank $6,827.29 - $47,597.50 - plus estimated income of $9,300.00 from licences at $7,500, the comfort station at $300, the park lot at $500 and the magistrate at $1,000, for $56,897.50 in all. Against that: accounts owed of $24,657.18, being $21,000 in notes, $2,009.18 to Bob Quillin, $1,200.00 to Clark Gardner, $415.26 for parking lot material and $42.74 to the LaFrance Co.; and estimated expenses of $30,350.00, of which $20,500.00 is garbage, life guard and pay rolls to 1 October, $6,000.00 the State Roads Commission, $1,900.00 lights and power, $1,000.00 the Chamber of Commerce, $400.00 insurance, $300.00 administration and $250.00 repairs to signs. Total $55,007.18. In January 1944 the town had $23,430.94 in the bank; it borrowed $15,000 from the Bank of Ocean City in April 1945 and $6,000 on ninety days in May. The Chamber of Commerce had asked $3,500 and is budgeted $1,000.

    Ocean City Chamber of CommerceBank of Ocean CityClark Gardner

    Source · checked 2026-08-12