January 11, 2010

Emily continues to reminisce -

Team work
A wash tub could hold at least 10 or 12 gallons of water.  So to make the task of getting the wash water , two people could carry a tub full from the well to the house.  Tom was about a year and a half younger than I.  We were assigned to carry wash water by tub.  At that time I was into my growth spurt.  Tom had not begun his, so he was smaller than I was. It was very necessary to keep the load balanced.  Sometimes some of the water would splash over the side.  Once when that happened, Tom just yanked his side up and let all the water fill my shoes!  We decided the best solution was to refrain from reporting the incident to our parents.  We returned to the well and proceeded to keep that load carefully balanced.

Few families had a refrigerator. Many had a spring house which was a small structure built over a spring or a cool part of a stream of water. This provided a place to keep milk, butter and eggs from spoiling. We were one of the families that did not have a spring house. Some people put their milk down into the well. Daddy and Mother thought the milk might spill and ruin the well water.  In the summer time we cooled the milk with well water, placing the buckets of milk in a wash tub and pouring fresh water around it. The water needed to be changed during the day.  The water that had warmed up was used for cooking and etc.   It seemed to me that I carried enough water to fill an ocean!

Tom was an extremely brilliant child. There was a grove of mature oak trees between the house and the well. Tom made a road all the way through the grove for toy cars which included tunnels, bridges etc., working on it most of one summer.  His tool for making the 'long way road' was a hoe blade.