About Chip Lytle
Few people have as much fun with fire trucks as Chip Lytle.
You will seldom see him without a smile on his face. Chip eats, breathes, and
love fire trucks. He is an self-made ambassador for the fire truck nation. About a year
ago Bill Darrow and Larry Suttman took a ride down to the Cincinnati Firematic
auction. Chip was there having as much fun as a teenage farmer at the county
fair. As the hour got later and later conversation touched on the fact that I,
Larry Suttman, had never seen Chip’s collection. So…we had to go to Middletown
and see the fire trucks.
At 1 a.m. he greets a dog as big as a Shetland pony, unlocks
the doors, and turns on the lights. Great googly-moogly! Fire trucks galore! It
was just like fire engine heaven. Dozens of them. There seemed to be every make you could think
of: Reo, Pirsch,Howe, Stutz, Seagrave, Darley, FMC, and of course Ahrens-Fox.
In fact I noticed two of the Miamisburg Foxes I remember as a boy. Chip Lytle’s
philosophy is that if he doesn’t save a fire truck it wil be cut up for scrap
or just left to turn to rust in a field somewhere. Sort of like the Mother
Teresa of fire trucks, he saves every poor orphan fire rig he possibly can. He
doesn’t just collect them or the sake of collecting, he restores them to an
operation—reviving the pump within as well. Every one of them! Many are in the
process of restoration. For the others they sit, patiently waiting their return
to glory. What he can’t do himself he gets help doing. If Rick Knife had a
dollar for every time busted his knuckles working on Chip’s trucks, well…let’s
just say Rick could retire to a very warm ocean-front property.
Chips spends much of his time researching what goes where,
what the missing thing-a-ma-jig looks like and how it was once attached. He
doesn’t go tearing apart a rig helter-skelter unless he has photos, Xerox
copies, schematics, a compass, a Jacob’s ladder, or diagrams of the rig. For
Chip it has to be “correct”—an admirably quality for sure. I think his goal in
life is to let people know fire engines are an important part of our heritage.
To this end he trots out some of his fire trucks every chance he gets. Seldom
does he miss a parade or muster. He seems forever trying to find men to drive
some of his rigs to an important meet or parade. His passion is talking “fire
truck” to anyone who will listen—and always with that big smile. His redeeming
feature is that he doesn’t claim to be an expert—I’ve seen him scratching his
head trying to figure out why a Fox isn’t pumping like it should. He’s not
above asking an old timer if the engine sounds OK or if that carburetor needs
tweaking. Chip may be late getting there, but if it’s about fire trucks you can
be sure he’ll be there!