In Praise of Public Drinking Fountains!

There they are! The blue drinking fountains of Westmoreland Park, inconspicuous, easily missed, hidden away, seemingly by design, chipped and cracked, relics of a cheaper and better bygone era when people drank from drinking fountains in parks or held up their snot-nosed brats for a splash and didn’t carry plastic bottles of inferior-tasting water or $29.99 space age “hydra flasks” filled with not pure water, but enhanced H2O full of snake oil additives.

I have taken over a thousand walks in this park the past 3 ½ years and never once—NOT ONCE—seen another person, not even a homeless one, take a drink from one of the three water fountains in the park. I sometimes think I am the only one left in Portland who uses them. I sometimes hit all three on one walk!

The water is cold and delicious, the finest the Bull Run reservoir has to offer, some of the best public drinking water in the world. It’s free, free, free!

What wants to carry bottles or flasks or ridiculous tanks of water encased in a backpack-like contraption on walks or jogs? How uncomfortable! How unsexy! How wholly unnecessary! If Elmer needs a drink, I merely fill my cupped hands with water and let him lap it up. I like the synergy of that sharing.

You rarely encounter a public drinking water fountain anymore. When you do, they typically never work. I wonder if there are any drinking fountains left in public schools anymore? They were almost gone when I left the teaching profession.

I supposed one day the fountains won’t work in Westmoreland Park and no one will bother to repair them—too expensive or too archaic. And there the fountains will remain for as long as they stand, a reminder when Americans didn’t buy water and expensive, absurd water containers to keep refreshed on a walk in the park.

Convincing Americans to buy bottled water was the greatest corporate scam marketing triumph of the 21^st century. There was nothing wrong with most of our public water supply systems, excepting places like Flint, Michigan, Jackson, Mississippi and elsewhere. What fools we were for buying bottled water to serve at events indoors where drinking fountains abounded.

Someone should write a novel about this.