Isle au Haut gets a fire truck; island boy writes a book about it

Caleb Mao with the Isle au Haut fire engine Kate Hotchkiss

Last spring the full-time students at the Isle au Haut school took a trip to Florida to visit Disney World -- all but Caleb Mao, who at 8 years old was too young. It was a disappointment for him, of course, but he made up for it.

"He got something pretty special," says his mom, Kate Hotchkiss. Caleb was invited along on a trip to pick up Isle au Haut's new fire truck in Norwich, Vermont.

"It was fun," says Caleb, who rode aboard the truck all the way from Norwich to the island. "It was pretty noisy." And he made the most of the trip after he got home, writing a lively account to accompany his mom's photos. He hopes to have his story published as a book.

The Norwich fire department bought the truck, a modified Ford, when it was new in 1969. Jack Frazier, Norwich's longtime fire chief, told Caleb it was "the best engine they ever had," Caleb writes. When Norwich decided to replace its fire engine after more than 30 years, the truck was sold to Bruce McLaughry, who "had it as a kind of big toy" for five years. Eventually McLaughry decided to donate it to Isle au Haut. He had it reconditioned at Dingee Machines in Cornish, NH, after which it made the trip, with Caleb in the cab and his mom and step-father, Ellard Taylor, in a car, to the island.

Caleb's account of the trip includes details like the walkie-talkies used to communicate between truck and car: "we might need to stop to use the bathroom or something like that," he writes.

Stops included Portland, where Caleb has relatives, Penobscot and finally Stonington, where the truck was loaded onto the Island Transporter barge for the trip to Isle au Haut.

"This is the barge coming to Isle au Haut with the fire truck on it," Caleb writes at one point in the descriptive text accompanying the photos his mother and Paul Lewis took during portions of the trip. "There's not only the fire truck on it, there are other trucks on it. You may think the barge is small but it is actually REAL big!"

The truck arrived safely. "Now we are prepared for a fire," Caleb writes. "I hope we never have one."

Caleb and his big brother, Ethan, have lived on Isle au Haut with Kate Hotchkiss and Ellard Taylor, since 2005. Taylor is one of Isle au Haut's two fire chiefs.