Water Fountains and Water Bottles

As children we drank from water fountains and garden hoses. I can't imagine doing either today. We would line up to drink from the fountain at the playground at Willard. If the line was long there was an unspoken time limit for each person. Usually the oldest person on line would arbitrarily determine when someone younger was done. This is how many things were settled in the school yard, like who's turn it was to use the stickball court or the best patch of field for a football game. In these latter cases the older boys would simply say the game was over and that was it. Though in the case of the water fountain a tad bit of mercy was displayed and cutting in line was not highly thought of by anyone.

I saw this same outside Willard fountain vandalized more than once. The water flowed down the steps and onto the dirt playing fields. After a while when the flood became to noticeable a janitor would come and shut it off. It would remain off until the time came that someone in authority believed the kids who played at Willard had learned their lesson about vandalizing water fountains. Last time I looked the fountain was gone. I suppose it was tampered with too often.

When the fountain was out of order, or we were not near by, we would drink from any handy garden hose. It didn't taste too bad as I recall if you let the water in the hose run out and you were drinking from a fresh flow.

Today we have water bottles. You can't go anywhere without seeing them littered about or clutched in some sweaty person's hand. We had litter of all kinds as kids but nothing to compare with today's water bottles. This is my observation and nothing empirical. The water bottle I expect will be regarded by history as a bad thing, despite all efforts to recycle them by charging a deposit on each one. I say this because they have helped in the decline of a very useful social custom, that of waiting one's turn. Whether it was waiting for a chance at the fountain or a turn at the hose, these moments of delayed gratification could be viewed as character building.

This is just one man's view, and a slightly old school one at that. ;-)