The water pump sat under the windmill. It was one of those big old black cast iron things you see at antique stores now. It had a tin cup on a piece of rope hanging from it. The water came from a well that went deep into the ground. It was the purest sweetest water I have ever tasted.
There was also a smaller version of the pump in the kitchen at Gramma and Grandpa’s house but the water from it came from the cistern and wasn’t drinkable. That’s what they used to wash dishes and every Saturday Gramma would fill the wash tub up with the cistern water she heated on the wood stove so the kids could take a bath.
If you wanted a drink of water when you were inside the house, there was always a bucket of water in the kitchen that had been brought into the house from the well pump. My understanding is that it was the responsibility of one of the thirteen kids to refill the bucket whenever necessary; and I assume that was often!
Whenever we visited our grandparents at the farm, one of the first things we would do when we piled out of the car was run for the pump; even if we weren’t thirsty. It was fun to count how many times we would have to pump it to make the water run.
The water that ran from it was crystal clear. It’s been forty years since my last swig from the tin cup but I can still almost taste it. It was always cold, and better than any five dollar bottle of water I’ve ever tasted!
We drank from it often when we went to Grandpa’s house; all of us loved to pump that old handle. There were forty nine of us who were first cousins so it took awhile for all of to get our turn. When we would all get together at the farm we would run and play until we were hot and sweaty and so thirsty! So of course we had to use the pump to get a drink! I’m amazed we didn’t run the well dry!
Probably the main reason we had to have water though was because we spent a lot of time in the barn, chipping salt off the big block of salt that the cows licked. Every time we left the farm we would have a hunk of it in our pockets. When Grandpa would catch us, he would act like he was mad and yell at us to stop. I think he grinned all the way back to the house though. How was he going to stop forty nine grandkids from hacking up the salt block? He was outnumbered!
When I think about licking on that hunk of salt, it still makes me crave water from the pump. And I wonder how all forty nine cousins managed to survive without getting some strange illness like hoof and mouth disease! Maybe that pure sweet water from the pump had some kind of natural antiviral component in it too!
©2011 Brenda J. Young
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