While on a quest to better understand how the idea of ‘water’ fits into the modern American psyche, I have been researching the word ‘mineral’. There appears to be a general consensus that petroleum, for example, is a ‘mineral’ — a word that comes to us rather directly from Medieval Latin minerale meaning “something mined”.
Petroleum is something you extract from the earth. Clearly, a mineral.
Then we have this thing called ‘water’, and the researcher’s life gets confusing, because water can also be extracted from the ground. But usually it comes out of the kitchen faucet.
Petroleum does not come out of the kitchen faucet, which is a good thing, because my morning coffee would likely taste even worse if I were making it with petroleum.
Water can also fall from the sky. Something petroleum usually does not do.
Back when I was a kid, we used to play a game called “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral” — basically, the ’20 Questions’ guessing game, but where the ‘moderator’ had to start out by revealing which category his or her ‘secret thing’ belonged to.
I suppose this game must have been around for quite a while, because in the 1871 version of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, the Lion, wearing glasses and perhaps visually challenged, asks Alice wearily, “Are you animal — vegetable — or mineral?”
But is water a ‘mineral’? I’m pretty sure water is not an animal or vegetable… so maybe it’s a ‘mineral’?
Or… does ‘water’ exist outside of those three categories, in its own unique classification? This would certainly make the guessing game easier.
“Is it animal, vegetable, mineral, or water?”
“Water.”
“Then I my first guess is: it’s water!”
But life is not so simple, because water is virtually everywhere you look, hidden in plain sight. And it doesn’t always look like water.
We all know, for example, that the human body is mostly water — about 60%, give or take. But the human brain is about 80% water. Who knew?
A potato is also about 80% water.
Which would then suggest that Mr. Potato Head (when assembled using a real potato) has a brain with a water content similar to a human brain.
As we can see, the formerly-well-defined line between “animal”, “vegetable”, and “mineral” starts to become uncomfortably blurred, when we include water in the calculation.
All of the above-mentioned thoughts — unsettling as they may be — came about because I wanted to better understand how our idea of ‘water’ fits in with the American Dream. We don’t know if potatoes have dreams (although they’re certainly ‘American’, especially the ones from Idaho) but we know that Americans have dreams, and many of our dreams are about water. I am thinking, in particular, about swimming pools.
We modern Americans use water like it’s going out of style. A few generations back, people avoided water whenever possible, because it was known to contain germs. Back in those days, you might have taken a bath once a week, but you would be sure to boil the water first. (It was too fricken cold, otherwise.)
And no one would think of drinking plain water. It had to be distilled (whiskey) or thoroughly cooked and fermented (beer).
Then the people in Hollywood invented swimming pools, because the ocean was too salty and ruined their hairdo. To fill their swimming pools, they had to invent running water, which they loaded with chlorine to keep the pool from turning into an algae-infested swamp. (Is an algae-infested swamp “vegetable” or “mineral”? No one knows.)
As things turned out, the chlorine also killed the germs in the water, and people realized they could drink water from the tap without getting seriously ill. As a result, whiskey and beer declined in popularity, which then led to Prohibition, followed by the Repeal of Prohibition, followed by huge liquor taxes.
The unfortunate outcome has been, we’re drinking all the water out of Lake Powell and Lake Mead and causing a serious water shortage — all in the name of keeping our brains hydrated.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.