The Rain Man

I met Steve Carr, aka The Rain Man, the other day.

A veteran of the "sewer wars" and bearing scars -- psychological ones, at least -- from several battles with City Hall, Mr. Carr recently made the news for his homemade drought-buster: an 1,050 gallon "rain harvesting" system that he built when he first bought his industrial property and home near the Berne Street Bridge in Grant Park.

Where once there were few, there are now some three dozen rain harvesters in Metro Atlanta, a testament to a new era of self-sufficiency and survivalism in the the drought age.

Hard to imagine a region that usually gets 50 inches of water coming to this. But why not? A basic cistern, if only a rain barrel for the garden, is commonsense. And though much costlier, a rain harvester geared toward potable water is basically a larger version of a rain barrel, boosted by pumps and cleaned by filters.

Carr is a "gainfully unemployed" maverick, of course, but not necessarily an altruist. He simply didn't have enough money after buying his property to hook up to the city.

But these days, there is a political tinge to his message. "Sonny prays for rain and I collect it from my roof," he told me, a dig at Gov. Perdue's rain prayer event at the Capitol, which was written about around the world. And who am I to say? It's rained a few times since then, so maybe it's worth a try.

But let's try a little practicality along with our prayer.

Carr is a marginalist, to be sure. But he's also a man afraid of computers for a good reason: A TV addict, he's afraid he'll get nothing done if someone plops a laptop in front of him.

Sound familiar?