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Jewish World Review Sept. 12, 2000 / 11 Elul 5760

Bob Greene

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Consumer Reports


Leave a light on for us
children of the pioneers


http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- KANSAS CITY | On the night I arrived here I was told, in this order:

1. To boil water before I tried to drink it.

2. Not to eat any food that any restaurant in my part of town might be serving, because the restaurants had been told to close, and those that disobeyed might be imperiling the public health.

3. Not to expect to eat any food in my hotel, because any dishes that had been washed might be contaminated.

4. To forget about ice -- the ice in the icemakers was considered suspect.

5. Go ahead and shower, but don't swallow any water that might splash in my mouth.

But this is not a column of complaint -- far from it. If any city is made for dealing good-naturedly with a water emergency in the middle of a hot summer, it is Kansas City, which has the nicest people in America, and which is undoubtedly the most underrated large city in the United States.

Instead, this is a reminder of how much we take for granted in our advanced culture of the 21st Century -- and how much worse off we might be.

The Kansas City water emergency happened when a 48-inch water main broke, and cut off service to 150,000 people. City officials called the water-main break the worst in local history; in the center of the city, water pressure became nonexistent, air-conditioning units shut down, and all buildings more than four stories tall were advised to evacuate because of fears of problems in the event of fires.

Water pressure was restored within hours -- but the boil-water order remained in effect for an entire day and night because of the possibility of contamination in the wake of the breakage.

So no water, no prepared food, no ice was the rule in a big portion of Kansas City -- including the portion where I was staying.

And -- the next afternoon, when it was all over -- here is what I figured out:

We are all lucky beyond imagining. We count on certain things, because as Americans during our time in history we have become accustomed to them:

We turn a handle, and fresh, cool water, safe for drinking, comes out; we turn another handle and the water is as hot as we want it.

We pick up a telephone receiver, and within seconds we can reach family and friends in any part of the U.S., and in most parts of the world. It's surprisingly inexpensive.

We flick a switch and lamps illuminate our homes and offices. We flick another switch to cool things down, yet another to warm things up.

Fresh food -- meat, dairy items, produce -- is readily available wherever we are, conveniently packaged and guaranteed safe to consume.

If we want to be on the other side of the United States, we can be there within a few hours -- jet airplanes are regularly scheduled so that if we leave by the middle of the day, we can be on either coast by dinnertime.

We become frustrated and angry when any of these things break down; when the water stops flowing, or the lights stop working, we act as if the world is coming to an end. The reason we behave this way is because we have it so good -- these amazing facts of our lives have been with us for so long that it strikes us as outrageous when they are taken away from us for a day, or for a week.

Thus, when Chicago has had its problems with electricity in recent seasons, the rage has been understandable: When you become accustomed to something being there on demand, you will not accept its absence -- you are more perplexed that it is gone than you are astonished that it is always so easily available. When airplane flights are delayed for five or six hours, or are canceled, you say you can't believe it -- when perhaps the truly unbelievable thing is that the planes are usually there to take us to so many places so quickly and so frequently.

Now . . . I am able to bring this kind of perspective to all of this because, as I write these words, the water crisis is over. I don't think I could have been as calmly reflective during the boil order, when no one knew when the water would be back.

As for food: For dinner the first night I had a bag of spicy peanuts from my hotel room mini-bar. For breakfast the next morning I had a Butterfinger candy bar. The pathetic thing is that I realized later these were probably the two most nutritious, well-balanced meals I have eaten in months.



JWR contributor Bob Greene is a novelist and columnist. Send your comments to him by clicking here.

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