Dear diary,
Today white stuff started falling from the sky — again. Burying my stout, red body deep beneath the stuff, but at least it’s hiding the chipped paint LOLZ. Snow, is what the double-stems walking by call it as they roll it up in their cloth-covered spigots and throw it at each other.
It’s all dark and cold. These are the worst of times.
Dear diary,
Today I heard a distant scraping noise from the other side of the white stuff. It scared the water out of my breaker cap. The scraping persisted, getting louder by the minute. All of a sudden something struck my dome and snow lifted up from my bonnet. Ahh, the fresh air on my operating nut. It felt so good. I’m free! Sweet release!
“Hey there, lil’ buddy,” I heard someone say, my outlet cap still adjusting to the light and snow clinging to my bonnet. “I’ll be taking much better care of you from now on.”
I’m not sure how long I was in there, maybe days. Eventually I was able to see my lovely street again, and now I can go back to my favorite pastime, observing the lives of the double stems. Everything is as it was except whiter, of course. I never got to thank the one who saved me. My hero.
Dear diary,
OMG. I saw him again today. The one who freed me from that frosty hell. I saw him come out of the pale yellow box with the blue things by the windows close to my corner. That place is so dreamy, of course HE lives there. I see him walk by smiling. He’s got another two-stemmer he’s always holding onto. She seems nice. I’m happy he’s happy. At least I still get to hang out with that furry four-stemmed guy they have with them. He always showers me with warmth.
Jesse Evers’ interest in fire hydrants was piqued after Northampton neighbor and restaurateur Claudio Guerra’s house burned to the ground in July. He’d heard how difficult it was to put out the fire, in part because there were no hydrants nearby, meaning the firefighters had to carry in heavy hoses in the middle of the night to douse the flames.
In the end, all that remained of the house was the chimney.
After that, Evers, 15, a longtime Boy Scout says making sure hydrants are available to protect against “unnecessary damage to property and people” became a calling.
Soon after, Adopt-A-Hydrant was born. People across the city are snapping up their own hydrants and having a little fun with it. Most poeple name their hydrants. Some give them elaborate back stories they share on Facebook and Instagram. Hydrants don’t need much, just to be cleared out after the snow.
In the fall, Evers says, he and his troop were tasked with completing projects in order to ascend to Eagle Scout. Computer programming, he says, has become a favorite hobby — he interns several hours a week at Gravity Switch in Northampton — so he wanted to work on an online project that could help the community. He found the framework for Adopt-A-Hydrant on CodeforAmerica.org, an open source technology resource, and got to work.
“One of the first things you learn [as a boy scout] is how not to be stupid with fire,” says Evers. “If [a hydrant] is buried, firefighters have to take the time to dig it out and the fire can do a lot more damage in those few minutes.” He went to the Northampton DPW to get the geographic information for the city’s hydrants in order to overlay it into the framework. He personalized the page for Northampton, making some stylistic choices along the way, and his mentors at Gravity Switch helped him get the site online.
You can see the finished product and adopt a Northampton hydrant at http://adopt-a-hydrant-noho.herokuapp.com.
Then, Evers says, he had to let people know the site was there. He contacted the mayor and city council, newspapers, and put about 1,000 flyers up around the city. He says he couldn’t have done it without help his dad, troop 705, and Gravity Switch.
So far, 72 of the city’s hydrants have been adopted through the program.
Tiffany Matrone, owner of Bang Bang Body Arts, saw the adopt-a-hydrant link on City Council President Bill Dwight’s Facebook page — complete with a playful anecdote about Dwight’s adoption of a hydrant, named Jayden. He refers, in the post, to his hydrant as a “perfect stout angel,” which garnered more than 170 likes along with an active and fascinating comment thread. Matrone was inspired.
She wants to make her hydrant, tucked in the heavily tagged alley near her Armory Street shop, part of an art installation, though she says “functionality is priority.” “Firefighters need to be able to access it in case of emergency.” The hydrant, she says, honors a fallen friend — a New York City fireman and street artist.
“I go out and talk to the hydrant while I’m shoveling,” she says.
Matrone has big hopes for the hydrant program. She hopes more people will adopt and, if the artistic aspect of it catches on, to do an art walk through town focused on the hydrants. They could have running themes, art projects that get people thinking about breast cancer awareness or autism awareness. For her, the hydrant adoption is about getting people thinking about “being responsible for what’s in your backyard.”
Stu Estes of Florence has been caring for the hydrant in his frontyard for 42 years, he says. “I have a philosophy: if I clean it I’ll never need to use it,” says Estes, a retired accountant. Though he’s against joining the online program, as he’s been doing it all this time without it, he’s happy people in the city are taking notice of the simple thing they can do to enhance everyone’s safety — clearing their hydrant. The firefighters request three feet on each side, he adds. “I have a thing about safety,” says Estes, who served four years in the airforce during the Vietnam war.
Rachel Taylor-Doward of Florence adopted two hydrants through the Adopt-A-Hydrant page. She named them Salt n’ Peppa. Taylor-Doward says she saw the link on Dwight’s page last week and instantly signed up.
“I’d seen firefighters digging out hydrants before,” says Taylor-Doward. “If I know that the need is, there it feels wrong not to walk across the street and help.”
Dwight says the program is a great way to raise awareness to one small thing that everyone can do.
“I think there are those in the community that assume [hydrant clearing] magically happens,” Dwight says. “They’re ubiquitous but you never really pay attention to them, and those little fire plugs have been there for centuries.”•
Amanda Drane can be contacted at adrane@valleyadvocate.com.
