(Also for Three-Word Wednesday and ABC Wednesday: "K" is for "Kearney")
I was brought up in Los Angeles. As a kid I got interested in a part of local history that wasn’t covered in school: the Los Angeles Water Wars.
Even when the town was just founded,
in 1781, folks could see that this was a great spot for a community. It was practically on the Pacific Ocean, they
told themselves, and look – Hollywood was just next door.
The town had an impressive,
awe-inspiring name (in Spanish): “The Village of Our Lady, the Queen of the
Angels.” After some time it became more terse, just Los Angeles, “The Angels.”
(“The Lakers” would have sounded a bit lame at that time.)
It was a quiet village. The villagers didn’t have much energy; their
idea of a big time was to have two enchiladas
for lunch. But the place seemed to have potential, the possibility of a great
future.
There was one problem. Water.
There was, of course, plenty of
water; they were practically sitting on the Pacific Ocean, after all. But that was that salty stuff; who enjoys
drinking that? The fresh variety was in
short supply. (It still is.)
One day around 1900 a citizen of the
town named Fred Kearney was vacationing two or three hundred miles from L A and
he saw something astonishing. In a place
named Owens Valley he saw tons of fresh water – millions of
gallons of the stuff – all just sort of lying there. It was the runoff of the Sierra Nevada
mountains.
Kearney thought, the Romans did it,
why can’t we? In other words he and some
other Angelenos planned to build an aqueduct that would have Owens Valley H2O
cascading down to the queen of the angels.
It would be gravity-fed; no pumps
needed. We conduit! he cried. What could
possibly go wrong?
Well, what went wrong was that the
Owens Valley area had quite a number of farmers. (They were manufacturing a marvelous new
invention, the orange.)
They weren't willing to cooperate. To keep their water, they were ready
to fight, and they did. Thus did the L A
Water Wars come into existence. Perhaps
the most famous of the wars you never heard of.
As you may have guessed, the
acqueductors won.
Reason I tell you all this is that it
has to do with the Berownial quiz of the week.
The above story, without the puns, should remind you of a famous motion
picture.
Your assignment, should you choose
to accept it, is: name the movie.
(Also submitted to Sunday Scribblings)
