RIVER CITY JOURNAL: CONCRETE CREEKS AND TRAMP TECH: WHAT NEXT?

On a hot and muggy day, the old brain can concoct satisfactory explanations for just about anything at all.

Odd little things can make a big impression. Whatzisname Ripley made a fortune collecting little things that made a big impression.

In these dog days, it isn't always easy to come up with stuff to make you, kind readers, say. "Wow!" But I have a few interesting tidbits.

Take the water running down the concrete creek they built out along Kingshighway. It hasn't rained in how long? Yet there is water in the very bottom of that creek.

I sat in my car at the intersection of Independence and Kingshighway waiting for everybody who works on the west side of town to make their way to the east side of town to go to lunch. Meanwhile, everyone on the east side of town was headed for the west side of town, also hungry. Go figure.

This was before I had the air conditioner in the car repaired. It was in the mid-90s (temperature or humidity -- take your pick) and the view in front of me was a long line of cars. Ditto for the rear-view mirror. On either side was the concrete creek. And I expected it to be dry as a bone.

But it wasn't. There was a small stream trickling through the creek. Not enough to launch a boat, mind you, but a Popsicle stick would have eventually found its way to the Gulf of Mexico. I'm sure of that.

Somehow it seemed a mite odd that there was water in the creek, because the creek is for floodwater, and there was no flood in sight. Not even a good shower, unless you count the sprinkles from last weekend.

I figured it out though. What else is there to do when you're waiting for half a town to get to the other side while the other half is filling the void of the first half? Here is the sensible and logical explanation.

First, all along Kingshighway are businesses whose aim is to please customers. How do you make the buying public happy when the temperature and humidity combined are high enough to boil water? You make them cool. All those air conditioners produce thousands of gallons of condensation. I've seen it meandering across parking lots and down gutters along street curbs.

Eventually, all that humidity that became water so we could all be cool winds up in the concrete creek.

Another source is water put on patches of grass and flowers all over the City of Roses to fool the turf and thorny branches into thinking its as moist under the ground as it is above it. A little water goes a long way, but a lot of water spread over a small space in a short amount of time (surely there is a mathematical formula for this) produces runoff, which goes in the concrete creek.

So there you have it: flowing water during a heat wave with no rain.

This next thing I'm about to tell you isn't so easy to explain. Whizzing along I-55 the other day I saw a man standing in the shade of an overpass. It was apparent he was a hitchhiker. He had a large bundle of something at his feet. From a distance, I could see he was holding one hand in the general direction of the roadway, thumb up. I couldn't tell what he was doing with his other hand, however, except it looked like he was scratching his head for the longest time.

When I finally passed the hitchhiker, I couldn't believe my eyes. The fellow was dressed in haute-tramp style, unshaven and with stringy hair. The other hand? It was holding a cellular telephone to his ear. Probably talking to his partner on the New York Stock Exchange. Or confirming his reservation for the night at the Memphis Marriott. Who knows?

Water in a concrete creek on a dry day and a vagabond with a cell phone. Truly there are some days when you can honestly say you've seen just about everything there is to see.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.