The fire hydrant was a fountain for people who could not afford a fountain. The rich had swimming pools. The middle class had sprinklers. The Lower East Side had a wrench and a fire hydrant and a hundred and twelve degree sidewalk in July.

Somebody's uncle had the wrench. Nobody knew which uncle. The uncle appeared in July the way the ice cream truck appeared in July. Inevitable. Seasonal. The uncle put the wrench on the hydrant and turned it and the water came out sideways at a pressure that could knock a kid off his feet and did. The kid got up laughing. The kid always got up laughing. Getting knocked down by a fire hydrant in July was not an injury. It was a baptism.

The hydrant made a sound like a freight train trying to whistle. The water came out white because of the air in the pipes and then it turned clear and then it turned into a river that ran down the block and into the gutter and down the storm drain and into the East River and nobody on the block thought about the East River because the East River was not standing on this sidewalk in the sun with this water hitting them in the chest.

The city sent a man to close the hydrant. The city always sent a man. The man drove a city truck and wore a city uniform and carried a city wrench that was bigger than the uncle's wrench. The man closed the hydrant and drove away and the uncle waited ten minutes and opened it again. This happened three times every summer. The city sent the man. The uncle waited. The hydrant opened. The city and the uncle had been performing this dance since 1967 and neither one of them had changed a step.

The hydrant water was cold. Not cool. Cold. The water came from somewhere deep under the street where the sun had not reached since the pipe was laid. The first hit of the water on your skin in July was a shock that reset your whole body. Your lungs seized. Your skin tightened. Your brain went white for one second. And then you were cold and the air was hot and you stood in the spray and you were the center of the world. Every kid on the block was the center of the world for one second when the hydrant hit them.

I played guitar on the corner and the hydrant spray drifted across the sidewalk and wet my strings and the guitar went out of tune and I did not care. You cannot play guitar in tune next to an open fire hydrant in July and anybody who says you can has never stood on a Lower East Side sidewalk with a hundred kids screaming in a river that came out of a hole in the ground because somebody's uncle had a wrench. The hydrant was the concert and I was the opening act and the headliner was the water.