The fire hydrant cap was a brass pentagon that weighed about five pounds and every kid on the block knew how to get it off with a wrench. You needed a wrench and you needed nerve because opening a hydrant without a cap was a misdemeanor. Nobody cared. It was a hundred degrees in July and the apartment was a furnace and the hydrant was a fountain and the cap came off and the water shot thirty feet in the air and the block became a water park for free.

The spray cap was the civilized version. The city gave out spray caps that screwed onto the hydrant and turned the blast into a shower. A gentle arc of water that fell on the street like rain. The spray cap was the city admitting that people needed to cool off and providing a way to do it that did not flood the intersection. But the spray cap was weak. The spray cap was polite. The kids did not want polite. The kids wanted the full blast. The cap came off and the water went everywhere and the cars drove through it and the buses drove through it and the whole block was wet and laughing.

The bodega across the street sold Italian ices and the combination of a fire hydrant and an Italian ice was the entire summer economy of the Lower East Side. You stood in the hydrant spray until you were cold and then you bought a lemon ice for a quarter and you stood on the sidewalk dripping wet eating an ice and the day was perfect. The fire hydrant cap made summer possible. Without the hydrant cap coming off the summer was just hot. With it off the summer was an event.

The old man on the first floor hated when the hydrant opened because the water pressure dropped and his shower went cold. He came out in his undershirt and yelled at the kids and the kids turned the hydrant toward him and he went back inside wet and angry. This happened every summer. The same man. The same kids. The same hydrant. The old man is dead now and the kids are old men now and the hydrant is still there. The cap is still a pentagon. The wrench still fits.

They put locking caps on the hydrants now. Tamper-proof. You need a special key that only the fire department has. The city that once looked the other way when kids opened hydrants now locks the hydrants and posts signs that say unauthorized use is punishable by fine. The kids have pools now. The community center has air conditioning. Nobody needs the hydrant. But need and want are different things. The hydrant was not just water. The hydrant was the block deciding together that it was too hot and doing something about it. The locking cap took away the decision. The city made it for them. Like everything else.