20. Water

St. Louis has the best drinking water in the nation. It's true. It's been decided by a panel of water tasting judges. Wouldn't that be an interesting job?

I've known this my whole life.

Our water is clear, for one thing. It comes out of the tap without sediment or color. Ice cubes melt in your glass and there's no extra stuff at the bottom that got pulled out when the water froze. I have lived in places where water was slightly brown or pink or cloudy. Sometimes very cloudy. Sometimes "better make tea before you drink it" kind of sediment problems. Nasty stuff, after living here.

Our water is also taste-free. It does not taste like a chlorinated pool (like my inlaws' water); it doesn't taste metallic, salty, muddy, stale, or swampy. There's no taste at all. Perfect for all purposes, frankly--it makes great coffee and tea, for instance. It's like licking the condensation off a glass of an ice cold beverage of your choice. It tastes like wet.

Our water is cold, too, with pipes far enough below ground to keep from freezing.

We have a lot of it. Enough that I don't have a water meter--I pay a flat rate for water, no matter how much I use. All the old houses in the city are this way. Those two big rivers, you know.

I love St. Louis water. Enough that when I travel, I have a hard time staying hydrated, because every other tap water I've tasted? Gross.

4. Alley

I like alleys. All of our "services" happen back there--power lines, phone, cable, sewer, trash pickup. Many of us park back there, either in tight garages or parking pads. Every May, we gather as a block (the two halves of the block that share the alley--my side of Halliday and the adjoining side of Magnolia--and clean it. Due to this alley cleaning day, I met my neighbors behind me long before my neighbors across the street.

Our alley used to be brick paved, but our alderman had asphalt put down a few years back. We didn't want it, for various reasons (for some, because brick slows you down, for others, because we like the still-usable to be used). But traffic doesn't seem to go much faster on the asphalt--those threatening dumpster hooks are a good speed-bump--and it sure is easier to keep clean.

City alleys, with their dumpsters instead of private trash cans, are often victims of dumping crime--folks who don't know how or can't be bothered to haul away an old mattress, concrete chunks, construction detritus, or auto parts, like to dump them in the anonymous dumpsters. But my alley is patrolled by several neighbors who keep developers from cheating and have the direct phone line to the "dumpster investigator." But that's not all we do in the alleys.

Kids learn to ride bikes. We trade gardening secrets and produce. We sit on the bump that used to be an ash pit across the way and plot against the developer at the end of the street. We gossip about city politics. We clean up graffiti and watch each other's (literal) backs. We admit pregnancies and steal blackberries. Kids sneak from yard to yard.

My uncle Glennon took down a nasty weed tree that was on the border of our alley and our property this past fall. Now I have a view of everything that happens back there--people trolling for bulk trash that's set out once a month, the neighbors going to work. My kitchen window looks out into the alley and I find I spend a great number of tiny moments at that kitchen window.

People who live without alleys don't seem to get what the big deal is. My brother, down in suburban Houston, thinks it's a waste of space that could be more yard (hmm, and more to mow?). But I wouldn't trade it for more yard or a garage on the front of my house with a driveway. I don't want to drag a green waste cart to the curb and watch trash trucks drive down my street. And I don't want power lines in the front of my house, endangering the street trees. Put all that in back.