When I was in grade school, back in the early seventies, I was a member of the safety patrol. I would stand on a corner near my house and block traffic with my orange plastic belt, shiny silver badge and long, yellow pole with an orange flag that read STOP on it. One afternoon, I was on my usual beat: the northeast corner of Fairview and Catalpa. A city bus was at the light preparing to turn northbound on Catalpa. When the bus began its turn, the back wheels jumped the curb and hit the fire hydrant on the corner. The hydrant bent roughly fifteen degrees and popped several bolts on its base. Immediately, water began to pool around the bottom of the broken hydrant. It was leaking pretty badly and would need repair. Luckily, there was a fire station on the northeast corner of Fairview and Catalpa.

So, I stuck my safety patrol pole in the gap between the sidewalk and the base of the hydrant and pried the hydrant the rest of the way over. The result was a fifteen-foot geyser of water spewing from where the hydrant had been.

It’s a good thing the fire house was right across the street because I hurriedly looked around to see if anyone had seen me pry the hydrant off. When I was confident that no one had, I ran home.

My mom asked me why I was so wet.

“Puddle.” I said.

After my first post, Miss Black asked “So, what is a dickwagon?”

I’ve included a handy photo of a dickwagon reenactor at Colonial Williamsburg for reference. In the late 1600s and early 1700s , sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis, gonorreah and “lympe dicke” were rampant. Without the benefit of modern antibiotics, doctors of the day were often forced to take drastic measures up to and including amputation of the affected area.

Much like modern Republicans, the Puritans who founded Massachusetts were often more sexually deviant than non-Puritans. Males as young as ten were infected due to the prevalence of pederasty as an evening pastime among most Puritan men. Sodomy was thought to “provyde increased vygorre and much needed dyscyplynne” to young male Puritans. During one outbreak of what was then called “Dicke Dryppe”, as many as five-thousand men were affected. Because of the widespread practice of sodomy and bestiality, virtually no male was immune. At the peak of the outbreak, doctors were amputating as many as eighty penises a day in an effort to mitigate its spread. It soon became apparent that something had to be done about the increasing amount of amputated penises. Enter the “Dyckesman”.

The Dicksman was specially trained in the collection and disposal of the amputated penises. Outfitted in a heavy, leather apron, long, leather gloves and a thick burlap mask, the Dicksman would hoist the disembodied members by the shovel-full into the back of his wagon. He would then transport them out of the town proper where they would be burned.

Children were instructed to stay away from the Dicksman and his dickwagon lest they become infected. Much like the nursery rhyme “Ring Around the Rosie” is thought (falsely) to have roots in the Black Plague pandemic, a nursery rhyme was written to warn children of the dangers of the Dicksman and his dickwagon:

If it paines when uryne be
Lo, the Dycksman comes for thee
Chancres, sores or pox or dryppe
Doctor comes to take a clyppe
If you heare the wagon’s wheeles
Sound of sheares and children’s squeales
Hie thee to thy beds be quicke
Lest the Dycksman take thy dycke