< PREVIOUS ] [ 1995 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
When I was a kid, I hated sunny days. I was a bookworm whose notion of fun was a stack of library books and a quiet place to read. Sunshine was necessary only for the half hour it took to ride my bike to and from the city library.
On dismal days when school was out, I could get away with that. But most summer days dawned dry and bright. My mother, eager to get her pesky children out from under her feet, forced me outdoors to climb trees, catch crawdads, race wooden boats down irrigation ditches, spear carp with pitchforks, employ slingshots against picture windows and otherwise participate in a wholesome American boyhood.
But something in my psyche seems to have changed since then. This recent spate of dark skies and cold rain has not elated me, as it once would have. Instead, I yearn for sunshine and aridity, even for the opportunity to mow the lawn, which has now started to swallow dogs and children. I fear that a roof will start leaking or a cellar will start filling. Our budget does not allow the furnace to run in June. The highways in all directions are either buried in rockslides or being eaten way by swollen rivers. Colorado just wasn't built to be wet.
But enough complaining. Let's find the silver lining in these clouds:
· Colorado should be able to repay its water debts. Kansas just won a lawsuit on the grounds that Colorado had been taking too much water out of the Arkansas River.
I don't know how those Jayhawks could even think such a
thing, but then again, they're a peculiar people. They
mispronounce the river's name as Are Kansas,
and
it's front-page news in Dodge City when there's actually
water in the river channel.
My relatives who farm out there complain of Colorado
rapacity when I encounter them at the annual family picnic,
but I point out that Of all the water lawyers in the
entire world, half of them live in Colorado. Given a choice
between water and lawyers, or no water and no lawyers,
which would you pick?
They say that's not a fair question, and assure me that once their Sen. Bob Dole is president, he will find a way to give Kansas water without lawyers.
At any rate, this year we should be able pay Kansas whatever we owe from previous years, and if the rains continue, we could probably get ahead and establish a credit in the interstate water account.
· Coloradans will become more creative. Normally, we're an outdoor people whose talented young residents devote themselves to hang-gliding, ascending 5.12 rock faces, snowboarding, kayaking and other forms of adrenalin-generating suicide.
Forced to stay indoors, like those poor residents of rainy Seattle, we might contrive similar contributions to American culture: our own grunge look which includes slickers and battered cowboy hats, our own chains of coffee bars which offer heavy-metal espresso and super-decaf iced giardia for health-conscious dieters, even our own form of droning nihilistic rock 'n' roll.
· Colorado might become more tolerant. Note that
the big flood of Noah's day came about because the
wickedness of man was great in the earth.
Note also
that lately you often hear I won't say it's wet outside,
but the animals are starting to pair up and get in
line.
Thus a golden opportunity for Focus on Family Values or some similar tax-exempt outfit in El Paso County. Tell us that the deluge will come unless we cease our evils: opposing Amendment 2, allowing evolution to be taught in public schools, watching Saturday Night Live.
Few apostate Coloradans will repent, so the combined national ministries of Colorado Springs will have to build and board a 300-cubit ark of gopher wood. With continued precipitation, the ark of the sanctimonious will float down Fountain Creek to the Arkansas and thence across the seas to Mt. Ararat, where they'll fall under Turkish jurisdiction and we'll be rid of them.
· Possible isolation of Boulder. As I write this, the creek is out of its banks and the water continues to rise. The Colorado haven of political correctness might become a mere island, accessible only to yachts and thereby keeping the proletarian rabble out.
Everybody wins. Boulder gets a natural form of income-based growth control, which is what it has always wanted, and the rest of us can ignore the Island by the Flatirons.
· Tourist trade should improve. Granted, we shut down the marketing department when we defeated the tourism tax. But as the waters continue to rise and everybody wonders how fast the record snowpacks will melt, Colorado will appear on national TV news, thereby garnering free publicity.
For many states, this wouldn't be good publicity -- after all, hardly anybody wants to visit a flooded Iowa or Missouri.
But we're the Land of Wild West Frontier Adventure, and if we put the right spin on this, folks will love to come out here and dodge rockslides as they drive. If they stray too far, there are rain-softened shoulders to give way, providing an exciting plunge to the bottom of the canyon.
So, no more complaints about the weather. Let us, instead, turn it to our advantage.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 1995 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >