SMITHFIELD - Decades ago, it narrowly escaped the indignity of becoming a toy in the town's kiddie park. Now the 1927 fire truck affectionately known as "Big Bill" has been restored to its original grandeur.

On Saturday, the Smithfield Fire Department unveiled the antique truck it's been working to restore for the past two years. The truck will be on display at the fire station and will be used in parades and firefighter funerals.

"It's quite a piece of equipment," said Emergency Services Chief Patrick Harris, adding that Big Bill was the first mechanized fire truck the town owned. "It will continue to preserve the history of the department."

But the truck's future hasn't always been so rosy. In the late 1960s, town leaders wanted to move the truck -- no longer in service by that time -- to the Second Street kiddie park where children could play on it. That plan didn't go over too well with the town's volunteer firefighters, including current mayor Norman Johnson. They knew that, exposed to the elements, the truck wouldn't last long.

"When the chief told us about it, we all disgreed," Johnson said. "We didn't want the truck to sit out in the rain and the weather."

Johnson and several other firefighters decided to hide the truck in order to derail the town's plan. They snuck into the fire station after midnight, chained the fire engine to a dump truck and hauled it away to a warehouse outside the town limits. It stayed there for two years, "until politics changed," Johnson said.

Town officials didn't make much of an effort to investigate the truck's mysterious disappearance, Johnson said.

"They got the message," he said. "I don't think they wanted to get 30 or 35 volunteer firefighters upset with them."

Long before the kiddie park caper, the truck stirred controversy when the town decided to buy it back in 1927. Harris said the truck, then state of the art, cost $12,500, a substantial amount of money at the time. One reluctant councilman reportedly said, "That's a mighty big bill to pay," and from then on, the truck was known as "Big Bill."

"They felt strongly enough to have that painted on the side of the truck," Harris said.

The truck was a major improvement over earlier models, which were horse-drawn and required several people to pump the water by hand. With only a few fire departments in the area, "Big Bill" often traveled as far as Raleigh to fight fires. It helped fight a major fire at the Sir Walter Raleigh Hotel, Johnson said.

In Smithfield, the truck was in use until 1960, when one of its last calls was fighting the blaze that gutted the Howell Theater.

The truck was in storage for many years, and a minor restoration was done in the 1970s, not long after Johnson and his colleagues brought it out of hiding.

The current restoration was much more extensive, with extensive research to find authentic parts, including antique lanterns and fire extinguishers. Everyone in the department helped raise money for the project so it could be done without tax dollars. Much of the work was done with prison labor at no cost.

"It's really been a group effort," Harris said.

Several other fire departments in Johnston County also have antique trucks, but most aren't as old as "Big Bill." Wilson's Mills Fire Department has a 1947 truck that it found in a field and restored in 2007. The Benson Fire Department has a truck from the 1950s that it is looking to restore.