The Texas Fire Extinguisher Co. and Hitler — 1942
by Paula Bosse
Texas Fire Extinguisher Co., across from Fair Park
by Paula Bosse
For a place that sells fire extinguishers and tractor equipment, this is a wonderfully comforting image. Hardly even looks like Dallas. The Texas Fire Extinguisher Company — operated for several decades by the Hancock family — was located at the corner of Parry and Second Avenue, across from Fair Park. While checking to see the exact address of this business (which, by the way, was 929 Second Ave.), I came across a 1942 article mentioning it and Hitler.
According to a Dallas Morning News blurblet, the Hancock company owner had placed a want-ad for a painter and paperhanger and received an odd response on a postcard:
Gentlemen: I wish to apply for the job as a paperhanger. Am hunting bears at present, but am about out of ammunition. Anyway, I am a better paperhanger than I am a bear hunter. –Adolph Hitler, Berlin, Germany. (P.S. Please rush answer as this job is playing out and may have to move soon.)
Humor doesn’t always translate successfully across the generations. But, hey, that was weird.
1951 ad, “Fyr-Fyter, Wet Water”
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Sources & Notes
Postcard (cropped) from the Boston Public Library Tichnor Brothers Postcard Collection on Flickr, here.
Quote from Dallas Morning News article “Reply to Want Ad Indicates Hitler Wants a New Job” (DMN, Nov. 6, 1942).
Ad from Texas Fireman magazine, June 1951, via Portal to Texas History.
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
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This is a little confusing. The mention of “Jimmy Hughes” was a comment made by “Jim Hughes” in response to the post — not by me. Most of that post is an article about and one-on-one interview with Dewey Groom from a 1971 local country music magazine called “Country Music Reporter” — not by me (everything in italics is a direct quote from that magazine).
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Although historians seem to be unsure, it was said that Hitler worked as a paperhanger (wallpaper-er) earlier in his life–Americans like Cardinal Mundelein repeated this reference as a way of discrediting Hitler as a no-account/no-talent. Still a weird joke, but I bet in the WW2 era, many Americans would have picked up on the connection to paperhanging.
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