Sirens explained

   My cheerful SuperShuttle driver explained last night's disturbance. A large furniture store burned down. The pink lights were firetrucks.
   "I think my wife and me, we even bought some furniture in there once," he said.

   According to the Fire Department Twitter feed I found just now, while killing time in the St. Louis airport (a place containing more salad greens than I saw in three days at KC), 32 units were there. No wonder I woke up.
 
   He also explained the pink fountains.
   “It starts out where they are red, for the Chiefs. But then they run the water and dilute and dilute it down.”
   It’s down to a cancer color now, for October.
 
   So my vision of Kansas City gains focus: Midwestern banking and shipping hub decorated during the past century by the hobbies and preoccupations of its grand captains of industry, who loved trains and fountains. A city slathered in sugared barbecue sauces, whose waters bleed a red that fades to a cancerous pink, and whose fire department heroes conduct lifesaving work while intermittently strobed by the aura of Barbie’s Dreamhouse burning to the ground. A city where, were it possible to tally and then average the Nutrition Facts of all the restaurant fare served up to all its tourists, offers about 1 gram of fiber per capita, per day.

   But that is of course unfair. It is only what I experienced in my three-night stay at the Westin Crown Center and not the Kansas City loved by the people who actually know the place.