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INNOVATIONS THAT GET NO RESPECT
A gallon of water weighs eight pounds, five and a half ounces. Once a week, I fill the poultry waterer in my chicken coop. The waterer holds five gallons. The coop is 200 hundred yards (one “stink distance” away) from my house. The chicken coop does not have running water. Therefore, every Saturday morning I fill a five-gallon water can, hoist the 41 and a half pounds, and carry it... Like hell I carry it. I put the five-gallon can in my tractor bucket and drive 200 yards to the chicken coop. The most important innovations are things you don’t notice that are right under your nose. Or right up your nose – as I found out while filling the water can from the garden hose when the water stopped running. And I looked down into the nozzle as my
13-year-old son was standing behind me kinking the hose. Ready availability of water is an astounding innovation. And we take it for granted. Actually, the way we regard water is worse than taking it for granted. Recall the national hullabaloo when icky stuff started to come out of the faucets in Flint, Michigan. We regard the ready availability of water – clean, pure water – as an inalienable human right. It’s no such thing. Water doesn’t come from the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution. Water comes from smart thinking and hard work. As far as archaeologists can determine, humans didn’t even begin to dig wells until around 6500 B.C. If you didn’t live right next to the river, just getting the day’s drinking and cooking water meant a big backache. Or a big
By P. J. O’Rourke
88 | September 2017
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