Sunset at the Water Tower
by Kathy White
Title
Sunset at the Water Tower
Artist
Kathy White
Medium
Photograph - Photography--greeting Cards Or Notes Are Cheaper By The Dozen!
Description
This photo, "Sunset At The Water Tower" was taken in a small East Texas town of their city water tower silhouetting the distant sky. I like to look for the water towers as we travel around and sometimes photograph them, as I did this one. The industry name for a water tower is “elevated tank.” They were first built using riveted steel and later the contractors welded the tanks. Water towers range from one hundred to three hundred feet tall, hold from fifteen thousand to three million gallons, and cost roughly $1 per gallon to build. Amazingly solid, they can withstand northers, dust storms, and even tornadoes. Most last a good fifty years; a city usually outgrows its water tower before the tower itself wears out.
In case of emergency, water systems need reserves of water, so that people can continue to have access to water while a problem with the water system is fixed. Water towers are tall and are often placed on high ground, so that they can provide sufficient pressure to deliver water to homes. Scientists estimate that each foot of a water tower's height provides a little less than half a pound per square inch of pressure.
The traditional water tower colors are silver with black lettering. But occasionally a town picks the local school colors instead. Some include their sports mascot names on the tower, but most just use their town names. The unofficial writing on the water tower could, and sometimes does, include the very large graffiti scrawled across them by the bolder members of a recent graduating class or a couple of rambunctious, sometimes inebriated young people.
One article I read had this to say about the once popular graffiti writing practice. "Nowadays most small towns fence in their towers to avoid the cost of repainting, as well as the risk to life and limb, that might result from a prom-night spree, and modern tanks have internal ladders and no catwalks, thus foiling stunt-minded city kids. But water towers don’t mean much to city kids, anyway. Water towers are a symbol of the prairie and the plains. Beer-aided and peer-abetted, country kids will readily tackle the hundred-foot climb, armed with only a can of spray paint. It’s a stupid action but an understandable one—a sort of rural Russian roulette. Because when you’re seventeen and trapped in the middle of nowhere, climbing a water tower isn’t just something to do; it’s a way of flouting the land and defying the sky."
Uploaded
May 2nd, 2016
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