Paul in Centerville, Massachusetts, says his parents, who hail from Brooklyn, New York, always referred to a fire hydrant as a Johnny pump. This term is largely confined to New York City, and may derive from the fact that these sources of water were used to wash away horse droppings and other detritus out of the streets and into the sewer system. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of ““Johnny Pump” Is Old Brooklyn Slang for a Fire Hydrant”
Hi there, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, this is Paul Mena calling from Centerville, Massachusetts.
Hey, Paul.
I was born and raised on Long Island in Nassau County, New York. My parents were born and raised in Brooklyn and moved from Brooklyn to Nassau County when I was just a few months old. And they brought with them an unusual Brooklyn figure of speech that I have not heard anywhere else. And that is Johnny Pump, which is the phrase that they use to describe a fire hydrant. And for some reason, I thought that that was a universal phrase.
So the first time I tried to parallel park in Nassau County and remarked, oh, this is not a real space. There’s a Johnny Pump there. That was the first time I realized that we were not in Brooklyn anymore. So my questions are, is this phrase Johnny Pump used anywhere outside of Brooklyn? And what is its origin? Johnny Pump meaning a fire plug or a fire hydrant, right?
That is correct.
How far back are we talking that your parents lived in Brooklyn? They left Brooklyn in 1960. And I was born in 1959. And they use the expression for as long as I can remember, especially when we made trips back to Brooklyn and parking was at a premium. That was a very common situation that they would try to park, and there was a Johnny Pump ruining their parking experience. And when I’ve tried to use the expression, it’s either seen as very quaint or very odd or results in a lot of laughter. And so now I don’t say it except with my wife, who I think at least pretends that it’s a quaint expression.
No, it is. It’s a good quaint expression. And if you use it amongst the right people from Brooklyn, they’ll know that you’re an old-timer anyway, if not an insider. I think Johnny Pump is fading, although you will still find it here and there. It is a Brooklyn expression, although you will find print evidence that it was used in Manhattan and other parts of the five boroughs. The origins are murky.
I think that the Johnny probably is related to the John, meaning the bathroom, because what you would do is if you were a city worker, you would crank open that fire plug and you would direct the spray in the gutter to clean out like the horse apples and the trash and whatever, you know, the whatever kind of filth was in the gutters to put it, send it towards the sewer grates or the sewer opening. So it’s kind of a street cleaner, kind of cleaning the street as a john. But that’s just a guess. Otherwise, we don’t know.
I do know that I found it in the Brooklyn Eagle as far back as 1926. And again and again, it comes up in association with Brooklyn, including boxer Rocky Graziano had a kind of a tell-all in Collier’s magazine in 1949 where he talked about his life as a Brooklyn kid and talked about opening the Johnny Pump and getting their trunks on and kind of like running from the police who came to shut the Johnny Pump. But you’ll find similar stories again and again throughout the 30s and 40s and 50s of people talking about hot summers and opening the Johnny Pump. But yeah, hang on to those old terms. Mark you for who you are and where you’re from. Those are good ones, Johnny Pump. You and Rocky Graziano remember the Johnny Pump.
And your wife.
And your wife.
Yes. She tolerates it anyway. Take care. Appreciate the call. Thank you so much. Thanks, Paul. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
We call those terms two-headed terms when you grow up saying it and then you move someplace else, and everybody looks at you like you have two heads when you use that term. Have you had that experience? Call us about at 877-929-9673 or send an email to words at waywordradio.org.
