Hippo

He was aptly nicknamed “Hippo” because he had most of the hippo’s less appealing features. Now that I think about it, I really can’t think of a single redeeming feature of that large, nasty, dangerous animal, and that describes Hippo, our most feared neighborhood punk, to a “T.”

While most of the kids in my Chelsea neighborhood in Manhattan weighed much less than 100 pounds, even then, when he was no more than twelve years of age, he was well past 160 pounds and each pound was meaner than the other. Hippo lived on 21st Street and went to PS 11 on 20th Street, my block. Just like most of the rest of my depression-born generation, the streets were our backyard, front lawns, and baseball diamonds. We played stickball with a broom handle and a “Spaulding” ball, pronounced “spaldeen”. For that matter, so did Willie Mays, who would go back to his old neighborhood when he was in the big leagues and play stickball with the kids because, he said, “It sharpened the eye.” Years later, while stationed at Jacksonville Naval Air Station I hit .440 one season because the softball looked like a basketball to my “sharpened” eye.

The streets were clean and there were few, if any, cars because no one owned one. We played stick ball, stoop ball, box ball, roller hockey and kick the can, to name a few. You were always in motion and it was a pretty good life except in the winter when you threw yourself down on the thick street ice on a battered sled. It was all we knew, except varying degrees of poverty, but we didn’t feel sorry for ourselves. Until Hippo came around.

He would twist your arm behind your back until it felt like it would pop out of your shoulder, or give you a black eye just because he felt like it. He would literally douse cats in kerosene and set them ablaze and laugh as he swung them by the tail before hurling them off a four story roof . He was a true psychopath before any of us knew what the term meant.

He favorite means of torture, however, was a dart he perfected. He would take off the head of a wooden matchstick, “X” the rear end with a razor so that it would accommodate two pieces of paper which acted as stabilizers in flight, then insert a needle into the front. It was very effective and he could throw it with accuracy. One day he caught my friend Donald Wilson and me in the front vestibule of the school and as Donny bolted down the stairs he took the dart in the arm. Hippo howled. We were terrified. Even now I remember that incident with a shudder. He was an expert at sowing fear, had no friends, nor did he need any.

One hot afternoon the word got out that Hippo had a cat on the roof of his building on 21 Street and he was going to throw it off after setting it ablaze. Kids came from everywhere and sure enough, Hippo was holding the screeching cat with a pair of his father’s work gloves as he poured kerosene on it. The cat was fighting for its life and kept trying to scratch its oppressor. Hippo reached down to strike a match on the edge of the roof and the cat connected with his face. Hippo roared and the kids in the street cheered. He swung the cat toward the street, apparently tripped over the kerosene can, lost his footing and fell four stories to the street as a hundred kids watched, dumbstruck.

No one said anything until the buzz started and everyone tried to get a look at the body, for that’s what he was now. The reign of terror was over. A local radio car from the 10th Precinct showed up and got details from a dozen kids. They threw a blanket over the body and told us to get back and we did. There was respect in the those days for the big figures in blue who patrolled our streets.

Donny and I could talk of nothing else for days, nor could anyone else in PS 11 or the Catholic schools in the neighborhood. But not one of us could say anything good about him, and truth be told, we all silently breathed a sigh of relief.