As I am sitting in one of my favorite cafés and sipping my drink, I see a man dressed in a blue working outfit checking a gutter on the flat roof of a nearby house. Then I see him walking to another gutter on the same roof. All of a sudden, I feel overcome with joy. This is a good sign. More, this is an excellent sign. Croatia is coming along, after all. Wherever there are flat roofs, the simplest rule of preventive maintenance is to check all gutters at least once a year. Leaves, dead birds, and plastic bags can block them. Puddles can form and grow with every downpour. And leaks can appear out of nowhere, as it were. Once they become a nuisance, they are hard to fix. Repairs can be quite expensive, too. Often enough, the whole roof needs to be replaced. As a rule, though, this simple rule is systematically neglected. Until the roof starts leaking, that is. By and large, the rule is followed only in places that are managed well. Croatia is coming along, indeed. Preventive maintenance is a sure sign of better times ahead. I know, for I used to be an expert in the budding field. And in America, of all places. Preventive maintenance was the rage some thirty years ago. Back then, America was the best-managed country the world over.