Sink
A new short story by Lukas Kaiser
There’s a sink in Iowa that’s been running for nearly 75 years. Just two months shy of 75, actually. It’s an old, off-white porcelain sink from the 1920s — it was fairly new when it was turned on for good in 1935 — and it sits in the men’s restroom at an Amaco gas station in the middle of nowhere.
Back in the 20s, the sink was installed in the kitchen of the Grand Mariner Hotel’s first floor restaurant, The Lily Flower.
FDR had stayed at the Grand Mariner during the campaign and though he took his meals in his room, the dishes he ate off of were almost surely washed in the by-then constantly running sink.
So if you’re traipsing in the wilds of Iowa and you come across an Amaco station with a sink whose hot water dial is fused into the on position, you can revel in the fact that you’re washing your hands in the same stream of water that washed our 3rd greatest president’s dinner plates.
Sure, there are plenty of sinks and showers and other running water devices that FDR used that still exist — who among us hasn’t taken a sip from the drinking fountain on the 3rd floor of Manhattan’s PS 34, for example? But none of those sinks or fountains boast the same stream of water.
Conservationists would have you believe the sink is an abomination. “This sink is an abomination,” they’d say. “It wastes the equivalent of three lakes of water a year. Three lakes a year for 75 years? I don’t have my calculator on me, but that’s a lot of lakes!”
Oh, those conservationists. They never have their calculators handy. And they always seem to brush the facts under their hip, wine-colored carpets.
Yes, our protagonist sink sees the equivalent of three lakes pass through its pipes every year. But what conservationists don’t know — or don’t want to acknowledge — is where all that water goes after it falls down the sink’s drain.
No one has taken a full accounting of the plumbing system connected to our sink, but at least three pipes connected to it have been mapped. One heads eastward and breaks off into places like Maine, Toronto and Orlando, Florida. Another snakes its way westward and has sent water all the way to Vancouver and beyond.
The sink doesn’t waste three lakes-worth of water a year. It touches that much water and then it sends it on its way. It serves as a makeshift biologist, tagging its watery specimen with its 70-plus years worth of sediments.
It wouldn’t be a surprise to hear that water that’s been through the sink gets filtered and bottled somewhere along the way, maybe ending up in the Middle East or Ireland.
It’s an important sink, to say the least. I’d tell you where to go to find it, but I can’t seem to remember how to get there. If you end up coming across it, please let me know. And just holler if you’d like another cup of coffee.