Do Elephants Jump? Read Free Page A

used to open the nut. Attached to the shut-off nut is a long stem that goes to the valve at the bottom of the hydrant, underground, that controls the flow of water. When the water flow is closed, the standing water above the valve is drained automatically. As Ward succinctly puts it, “There is no water to freeze.”
    When a firefighter is finished with the hydrant, he or she closes the nut and the water drains below the shut-off valve automatically. The shut-off valve is located well below the frost line, so fire hydrants rarely encounter any freezing problems, even in lovely climes like Chicago’s or Oslo’s.

Submitted by Todd Sanders of Holmdel, New Jersey

W hy Do So Many Bars Feature Televisions with the Sound Turned Off?
     
    We spare no financial expense, no mental duress, in order to plumb the depths of Imponderability. To research this question, we tore ourselves away from the plush confines of Imponderables Central to visit many taverns. Risking inebriation and worse, we confirmed that the “Yes, we have a TV on; no, we don’t have the sound on” phenomenon is alive and well in North America. What’s the deal?
    Somewhat to our surprise, we found bartenders uniformly negative about the boob tube and its role in their establishments. Why does management bother installing televisions? The thinking seems to run on the order of:
    Where there are bars, there are men.
Where there are men, there is an interest in sports.
Sports is televised.
Sports on television equals male butts on our stools.
If we don’t have televisions at our bar, men will go to the sports bar down the street instead.
    But the bartenders we spoke to analyzed this Imponderable more deeply. Televisions are important because they provide patrons with what Dan Sullivan, a Kiwi now living and bartending in Greece, calls “something to do with their eyes.” Single patrons are often uncomfortable and tense when alone. They may be lonely, or worried about looking like losers, or anxious about meeting potential mates. The television “makes it easier for them to be by themselves at the bar,” concludes Roger Herr, owner of South’s Bar in downtown Manhattan.
    Some bars and nightclubs also use televisions to run closed-circuit programming, anything from old Tom and Jerry cartoons to 1960s-style light shows to help set the appropriate mood for their establishments. One bartender compared this use of the television to installing fish tanks, a form of visual Muzak.
    Every bar employee we talked to indicated that as soon as the audio on a television goes on, some patrons are turned off. As Deven Black, former manager of the North Star Pub in New York City, put it,
    No matter how quietly the sound is on, it will offend someone, and you can never have it loud enough so everyone who wants to can hear it.
    Even manly men might not want to accompany their scotch-and-sodas with the mellifluous tones of NASCAR engines backfiring. And bartenders reported that most sports fans are perfectly content with the audio of their sports programs on mute, happily shedding commercials and colorless color commentators.
    All nightclubs and most bars feature music, whether a humble jukebox, live bands, or expensive sound systems. If the TV is going to interfere with the music, why pump dollars into the jukebox? If customers are going to listen to Marv Albert instead of Bruce Springsteen, what owner is going to be happy about installing a $20,000 sound system?
    But most of the bar industry folks we consulted make a more spiritual point. As bartender and beer columnist Christopher Halleron put it,
    People go to bars for conversation and socializing. When you turn up the boob tube, that element is taken away as people become fixated on whatever it spews and stop talking to each other. The same phenomenon occurs in the living room of the average American family.
    Exactly! If we wanted to sit sullenly and watch blinking images while avoiding human contact, we’d stay at home