{"id":462,"date":"2021-10-15T21:17:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-16T03:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/?p=462"},"modified":"2021-10-15T21:17:00","modified_gmt":"2021-10-16T03:17:00","slug":"an-article-by-dan-conaway-in-memphis-theres-just-something-in-the-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/?p=462","title":{"rendered":"An Article by Dan Conaway: “In Memphis, There’s Just Something in the Water”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This article is a copy & paste from the Daily Memphian, 10\/15\/21. Check them out and consider subscribing at https:\/\/dailymemphian.com<\/a> .<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in the day \u2014 hot days after school in the spring \u2014 we played left field ball in a vacant lot on Poplar Avenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re wondering what lot, it was across Poplar from the street where Laura Lewis lived. She was in my class at White Station. She had twin little brothers. Big sister named Tancie. Remember? Yeah, that was the lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re wondering what left field ball is, it\u2019s baseball when you don\u2019t have enough guys for a whole game, or enough room for a whole game, or a tree in center field, so you play where you can with what you have. Yeah, it was a lot like that and lots of afternoons like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One out. The Poindexter brothers were up next, Chris batting followed by Duke on deck. The Lewis twins \u2014 Harris and Lawrence, just freshmen \u2014 some glove, not much bat \u2014 were on that side. I\u2019m playing between second and third \u2014 sort of a combo shortstop and third baseman. Chip Jenkins is behind me \u2014 the whole outfield. Pete Bale is pitching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We will get these guys out. Because it\u2019s getting late. Because it\u2019s hotter than the hinges on the gates of h—. Because my mouth is full of cotton and I, and everybody else, needs a drink of water. Not water we bought. Not from a plastic bottle. We need a drink of water from the hose on the side of that house right over there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We didn\u2019t know whose house it was, but we knew they wouldn\u2019t mind if we used the hose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not when I was growing up. Not from the hose on a hundred houses. Unless they had a fence and a dog. And the hose and the dog were behind that fence. The only dogs behind fences when I was growing up were the kind who would mind if you climbed that fence and headed for the hose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019d turn it on after the game, let it run a bit until it goes from hot to cold, then we\u2019d all fill up, and run some over our face, maybe spray each other a bit, and all pile into a couple of cars and go home. Along with a couple of our dogs. Maybe in Duke\u2019s Nova, or Chip\u2019s electric blue Super Sport, or my mama\u2019s convertible. The twins would ride their bikes home. I don\u2019t remember, but probably followed by a dog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All full of some of the best water in the world. All at the end of another very East Memphis afternoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All evidently come to an end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That lot, and that house behind it all became Bud Davis Cadillac, and that became Cadillac of Memphis. The house on the opposite corner from that lot is now the Blue Plate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And water these days has become a luxury item like those Cadillacs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was thinking about all of that, remembering that, as I strolled through the water showroom at Kroger for a look at the latest models and to kick the tires. Water in the front and at the back. Water stacked in the end aisle displays. Pallets of shrink-wrapped cases of bottled water on the floor, 50 feet of bottled water on shelves. Water with names evoking mountain streams, sunsets by springs, sunrises in orchards, and health and fortunes and life itself improved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One can get lucky right here in aisle 20, male or female, after just one sip of this water and one wink. One can throw one\u2019s cane aside and run from here to frozen foods after just one swallow. One needs a sommelier to sort the subtle fruit enhancements, the nuance of peppermint or chocolate or cinnamon, domestic or foreign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One brand is even called Smart Water and can be yours for three dollars for 30 ounces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll refer you to a meme I saw about that recently: \u201cIf you\u2019re paying three dollars for a bottle of Smart Water, it\u2019s not working.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this particular day, Smart Water was on special for a buck fifty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll refer you to the definition of that in the Urban Dictionary: \u201ca buck fifty\u201d \u2013 to the point: straight forward.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here it is in usage: I\u2019ll go a buck fifty with you; we\u2019re not drinking from the hose anymore, we\u2019re getting hosed.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"<strong>“A
\u201cA bezillion\u201d gallons of water roll by Memphis every day on the Mississippi River.<\/strong> (Mark Weber\/The Daily Memphian file)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For a couple of millennia, water below Memphis has not only been good enough to drink, it\u2019s been good enough to become known as the Memphis Aquifer, good enough to be known around the world as some of the best water in the whole world, good enough to be the envy of the world … even the envy of Mississippi, who is trying to go all the way to the Supreme Court to steal it, or to make Memphis pay Mississippi<\/em> to use water from the Memphis <\/em>Aquifer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I mean, really, could I even make that last part up?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even still, our cavalier and careless attitude about our water, our lack of understanding about the value and fragility of it, almost allowed TVA to tap into our aquifer and take millions upon millions of gallons of it to cool a power plant \u2014 wasting a bezillion gallons of our \u201cdrinking\u201d water when a bezillion gallons of the Mississippi roll by every second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If it hadn\u2019t been for my friend Ward Archer and others who started Protect Our Aquifer, TVA would have done just that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if it hadn\u2019t been for Protect Our Aquifer and concerned citizens of Memphis and people in threatened neighborhoods, an oil pipeline would have been built right over the aquifer. It wasn\u2019t and it won\u2019t be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something as seemingly ordinary as water is the stuff of life, something as extraordinary as ours demands vigilance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Memphis water \u00ad\u2014 right out of your hose, right out of your tap\u2014 is already better than 99% of all of that bottled water in Kroger. I only say 99% instead of 100%, because some of that coconut or mandarin orange stuff is OK, but not one drop of any of it is worth what you\u2019re paying for it. Here\u2019s the complicated formula:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bottled water \u2014 costs more than just something, as in a rip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Memphis water \u2014 costs close to nothing, right out of the tap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there\u2019s this, that bottled water is, well, bottled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The water that supposedly comes from cold mountain streams or tree-shaded springs? Bottled in plastic, shrink-wrapped in plastic. Processed and manufactured in plants, stored in warehouses, stacked on loading docks, shipped in trains and trucks. And if it\u2019s supposedly from Alpine meltwater or some other exotic source faraway? Add ocean shipping, customs, and waiting in sweltering rail containers in shipyards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And those plastic bottles and packaging in our landfills and rivers, lakes, and oceans? Thrown out our car windows, gathered in our parking lots and yards and streets, along our curbs and trails in the woods?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even recycled, it all comes back to haunt us again and again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even the plastic bottles that claim to be \u201cbiodegradable even the caps\u201d are pouring water down your leg and telling you it\u2019s raining. If Cro-Magnon man threw one of those out of the cave 35,000 years ago, it might just now be disappearing, if a Mastodon stomped on one or a whale shark spit one out 10,000 years ago, you might just now not be able to read the sell-by date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every year, Americans are swallowing about 45 gallons of water per capita from either plastic or glass bottles. That means folks around here, people literally sitting on top of famed Memphis water, are getting soaked by paying for about 54,240,000 gallons of bottled water a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the price of Smart Water \u2014 10\u00a2 an ounce times 128 fluid ounces times 54,240,000 \u2014 that\u2019s $694,272,000 every year. Even if you buy Smart Water on special at half that, or water of reasonable intelligence at half that, it\u2019s still hundreds of millions of dollars. I\u2019ll go a buck fifty with you again, that\u2019s stupid money in a town that doesn\u2019t have a lot of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Put another way, a family of four is spending from $1,152 to $2,304 a year on bottled water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kids aren\u2019t playing left field ball where I grew up on Highland Street or on Perkins Road or anywhere that I know of, or much of anything else for that matter outside of the watchful eyes of organized sports and activities, outside of the circle of their parents and their SUVs, outside of fear of the world and its consequences. Maybe that\u2019s safer, maybe its worth the loss of kids learning how to take care of themselves, how to explore and discover on their own. Maybe so. We\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When kids aren\u2019t going anywhere on their own, their dogs aren\u2019t going anywhere either. Not outside a fence. Not without a lease. Certainly not in neighborhood packs. But they\u2019re not fighting either, or biting either, or dying in the street like several of my dogs did. That\u2019s definitely better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As much as I write about not trying go back, about memories as treasures not destinations, Memphis water is an exception. Try some.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of throwing away that plastic water bottle, start a recycling program of your own \u2014 fill it from the tap. Turn on the hose, let it run a bit to cool off and lose the taste of hose, and then take a pull of one of our city\u2019s great assets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then spray a little on each other. On the kids. On the dogs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the taste of Memphis water will take some of us back, it will win some of us over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m a Memphian, and some of what that means is in the water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

–Dan Conaway, https:\/\/dailymemphian.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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