What a fountain can do for a town

Here is a sad piece of news.   

GroveAtopia has no public fountains.  Not a one.

I'm not even sure if we have any public drinking fountains. Well there is probably one in Coiner Park, but that's not even the kind of fountain I'm talking about.  

I'm talking about the kind of fountain you enjoy.  

There are lots of these kinds of fountains.   Some trickle daintily from one tier to the other.   Some gush high into the air with great force.   

Some sit quietly in a garden corner.  Others occupy big public spaces and invite you to go right in and enjoy them.

That's the kind that's in this picture.  It was taken just the other day on a Sunday morning, in Olympia, Washington.   The fountain is in Heritage Park, and sits between the capitol building and the waterfront.

It's really a very simple fountain.  There are a series of holes drilled directly into the pavement, and from those holes, in varying patterns, at varying intervals, water shoots out.  That's what's happening in the picture right now.

I cannot tell you why this and other fountains like it are so compelling.  But they are.  People simply cannot stay away from them.  If you've ever seen the one in front of the EWEB building in Eugene, or the Salmon Street Springs Fountain in Portland on a hot summer day, you know what I mean.

Maybe it's the delight of being caught completely off guard by a blast of water, or the lure of simply getting wet - or trying not to.  People ride bicycles through them.  They ride skateboards or push babies in strollers through them.  They put cups on the spouts and watch the water shoot them high in the air.  They run through them, laugh through them, prance through them and scream with delight through them.

And all that's happening is water is shooting through holes in the pavement.

GroveAtopia should have one of these.  People would come here just to see a fountain like that.