500 Points

It was early spring 1969.  Up in the Bronx, a late afternoon #6 train  pulled into an elevated station a few blocks away from Fordham University. 

The conductor, a huge black man wearing the handsome dark blue uniform of the New York Transit Authority,  looked like he belonged on the offensive line of the Dallas Cowboys.  As part of the routine of his job,  he extended his head out of a window,  checking on the passengers getting on and off the train, so as to open and close the doors at the right time.

On the platform was a lean young man, a college student, 18 years old, who had positioned himself to be facing the conductor when the train came to a stop. Now the two were face-to-face,  and the young man suddenly reached out and grabbed the Official Transit Authority Cap off the the astonished conductor's head,  and started running toward the staircase.

The conductor, perhaps new on the job, was shocked by this brazen deed, this mockery of his high position, and made the highly questionable snap decision of jumping off his train to give chase.  The young college kid barreled down the  stairs and onto Fordham Road,  with the conductor right behind,  shouting out various profanities and threats.

People strolling on Fordham Road in the pretty twilight were treated to the spectacle of a terrified and desperate young man,  running with the hat cradled in his arm like a football,  with the screaming hatless uniformed black Goliath  never more than 40 feet behind.  They both became extremely winded,  and the chase eventually deteriorated into a series of off-again on-again running, trotting, and walking.  Perhaps the kid would have been wise to simply drop the hat, and thus end the danger,  but a higher motive pushed him to finish what he'd started.

After about 3/4 of a mile he made a left turn into the gate of Fordham University.  Now only 200 feet from his own personal Touchdown,  he broke into a dramatic final sprint toward a table out in an open lawn area.   Seated at the table were a few college students -- fraternity brothers, who were taken aback as the out-of-breath runner reached them,  threw the hat at them,  shouted "TEAM  D -- 500 points"  and then kept running, far into the complex of Fordham's ivy-covered halls of learning. 

A few seconds later the frat brothers saw the bewildered and exhausted conductor approaching the table, and they quickly surmised what had happened.  They suppressed their roars of laughter long enough to explain to the conductor that they were running the annual Sigma Kappa Beta Scavenger Hunt.  The cap was worth 500 points, and the thief merely wanted those points.  The conductor's sanity now returned, and he hurried out of the Fordham campus with his beloved cap,  back to the train station,  back to whatever consequences befall a conductor who abandons his train.

The thief,  imagining capture, death and dismemberment,  or at the very least some legal trouble, had run to a far corner of the campus behind a maintenance building, lying down in tall weeds.  It had rained heavily the night before, and he was soaked with water, mud and weeds  from head to toe when he emerged from the shadows  almost 2 hours later, and made his way back to the scavenger hunt headquarters.

By this time it was 8PM, the scavenger hunt was over, and all 40 participants  -- 10 teams of 4 -- had now gathered for the Final Counting of Points.  The bizarre story of the Giant Conductor had now gotten around to everybody, and the mud-covered fugitive got a huge applause when he finally arrived.  He enjoyed the recognition, and an impromptu award of a case of beer from the frat guys,  but he was especially happy that Goliath was gone.

Not only was he gone -- the big conductor never returned to the Fordham campus, not even to say Hi,  so it is not known if  he got in trouble or lost his job.   Hopefully he had a nice career and is happily retired,  perhaps cringing whenever someone says  "Fordham"  or  "scavenger hunt".   Maybe it's just a coincidence, but it so happens  that nowadays very few New York City conductors wear the uniform hat anymore.  The hat still exists, but wearing it is now "optional".

It turned out that the "500-Point Kid" was a guest participant from another college,  almost nobody at Fordham knew him, and he never returned to the scene of the crime.  However his story is still told  at Sigma Kappa Beta,  especially in April.  Somebody said he became a successful piano entertainer, worked on cruise ships around the world, and never stole anything again.