I didn’t notice the exact date or year that fire hydrants turned
yellow from red.
Nothing that drew my attention when
kids needed to get to baseball,
or the groceries needed putting away,
or bills were stacking up or work schedules interfered with street life.
One evening,
I sat across from this stolid guy,
his paint crumbling,
marked up around the top.
Time to ponder this deep question.
It’s been since the 1950’s!
At home, I looked it up.
Why?
A perennial question for a child;
a question I keep for such occasions
No answer was forthcoming,
it just squatted there,
little arms awaiting fire hoses.
Again, at home I looked it up.
Yellow is more visible to fire fighters than red!
Simple, logical and now I can rest my tired brain.
“A fire hydrant is not something you
want to lose, especially in an emergency.”
~ Shannon Wiersbitzky, What Flowers Remember
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