If there's any lingering doubt about Fly Creek fire service, it ought to be laid to rest. Forty volunteers have stepped forward to create the new Fly Creek Fire Company. More than half of these are men and women training each week as firefighters. The new chief, Alan Thayer, is an experienced, serious, fair-minded man whose professionalism is being reflected quickly by the new company.

Besides the firefighters, the Fly Creek now has a first-responder unit in training. Many of our local calls are for medical emergencies, so this unit is just as important to us as the fire unit. It's a special value that several of the new first responders are Bassett medical personnel, whose existing skills are being focused through training to the specialized work of first responders.

And volunteers have also expanded the Fire Police. These people, some of them firemen a bit past the age of climbing ladders and hauling hoses, provide us with the essential service of directing traffic around fire scenes.

Backing up these three services is the Fly Creek Fire Company Auxiliary. Note, please, that the adjective "Women's" has disappeared from the name. The new corps is unisex_a breathtaking leap into the twenty-first century! Already one quarter of the Auxiliary is male (the present writer included), but we're looking for a few good men more. And some more women would be good, too. (Attention, Fly Creek geezers of my age: Sign up! This is much more fun than computer solitaire!) Interested parties should phone Donna Mulford at 293-6473.

The Auxiliary can be called to fire scenes to back up the firefighters with respite services, but they can also take over the firehouse during an emergency, handling the phone lines and radios that link the county-wide system. They're also the primary service-providers for the fire company's charities, and they provide for its fund-raising through drives, breakfasts, and dinners.

The new company's enthusiasm first burst forth during the summer flood, when the firehouse was the operations base for a half dozen volunteer teams who were pumping cellars and moving livestock. And another burst of new enthusiasm came with the end-of-summer pancake breakfast.

At firehouse benefit meals in recent years, Donna Mulford and a few women did all the work, struggling against discouragement to support the department and their community.

This time, Donna was overwhelmed by helpers. The firehouse kitchen was wholly staffed by men joking, laughing, as they flipped pancakes and scrambled eggs. A dozen other volunteers, men and women, collected admissions, served food, bussed tables. "I felt like I'd gone to heaven!" said Donna.

And, finally, glory be! The firehouse itself, which had been sealed up like an armed camp, is open again to a whole range of community activities. Chairman Richie Carr and the other new commissioners are welcoming all of us into the sacred precincts. Witness the meeting of two weeks ago when the engine bays were cleared to make room for the crowd of two hundred. A lot of upset people were in that crowd, but I heard many comment on how great is was to be back in the firehouse for meetings.

Let's never let it get away from us again. And let's also hope that the few

embittered men who carried off all of the building's photos and trophies will return them to the firehouse and to their rightful owners: the Fly Creek community. Maybe we have to write off the amount of expensive equipment that disappeared. We should not, however, be robbed of the hamlet's history.

I imagine those trophies and photos are presently packed in cardboard boxes, shoved in somebody's shed or garage. Guys, that does no honor to the hundreds of Fly Creek firemen, living and dead, who earned those awards. Give the stuff back, for their sake.

Now, let me beat my battered old drum one more time. It has to do with the blessed ties that bind a community together. The ties that, in fact, make a community. What makes a community is not just a set of people. It's also the local institutions, and how the people weave themselves together as they move among them.

In ages past, when Fly Creek was separated from the outside world by miles, slow transportation, and often by bad weather, the hamlet had to be a world unto itself. And so it had it own churches, school, grocery and dry good stores, barbershop, doctor, Grange hall, and hardware store. Besides hammers, nails, and hinges, that hardware store also carried cast-iron parlor stoves and lots of harnesses.

By the early 1950's, the world had changed and so had Fly Creek. Many of the hamlet's institutions were gone or on the wane. That's when a new point of community focus appeared: the Fly Creek Volunteer Fire Department. It was a godsend in its support of Fly Creek safety, but also of Fly Creek social life. It helped the hamlet retain a sense of place.

The hamlet got a boost to its sense of place with the founding of the Fly Creek Area Historical Society, and especially when the Society bought the Grange Hall and revived many of its past services. But for a while we lost the great social asset that was the fire department. Now, thank God, it's back.

But if we want to keep our renewed sense of place, we need to work at it, attending our church and its functions, buying in our general store, eating at our restaurants, hauling our guests to the Cider Mill. When you do so, you're quite literally strengthening the identity of Fly Creek as a place. Our place. Our home.

So come on, you Fly Creek geezers! Get off your overstuffed loungers and join the Fire Auxiliary. You'll help maintain the blessed ties that bind.

Read Jim Atwell's new book, "From Fly Creek_Celebrating Life in Leatherstocking Country" along with Anne Geddes-Atwell's charming illustrations. Books are for sale at your local book seller. Anne's prints from the book can be purchased by contacting her by phone or e-mail.