Having grown up in Wheaton, twenty-five miles from downtown Chicago, one would think that my wife Ella would have enjoyed clean, purified city water, at least in the modern era of the 1980s and early 1990s. However, to the Palmgrens’s chagrin, the parsonage lay just outside of Wheaton and the Milton township, and therefore lacked city water service; the family spent twenty years drinking from a shallow well that drew from a sour source.
I have written about the provision of water to our parsonage in Northwest Kansas (yes, please go read it in Dryland Lament. As challenging as was the process of drawing water up from 300 feet below ground and delivering to our tap, the result was, truthfully, a wonder. Straight from well to cistern, free of chlorine, our water was clear, mineral-filled, and safe to drink (tested multiple times).
Ella grew up on stinky water. If you could taste the color yellow, that would capture her lot in life; the shallow well produced water suffused with sulfur. While it was safe to drink, Ella and her sisters occasionally bathed in questionably-tinged liquid and then went to church smelling of stinky eggs. Once again, it was time for my father-in-law’s ritual shuffle down into the crawl space, lugging a 50-pound salt block for the water softener/conditioner. His labors helped, but inevitably the smell would return.
The services we take for granted: clean water, functioning sewage systems, reliable garbage pick-up, electricity and gas; these are mostly assumed in America, especially in our suburbs. “It’s just part of the deal.” But none should count these basic services as guaranteed. Growing up on a lonely hilltop in a barren place helps teach you that. Sometimes though, the same lessons can be learned in the most “people-ly” of places.
The veneer of civilization should not be assumed, for it can be thin mask. I do not intend to provoke excessive worry or doubt, let us rather approach the services which civilized society provides with understanding and gratitude.
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