Flooding the World

In my last post, I talked about my Grandmaw’s spring that I used to carry water from. Well that reminded me of another story. This story concerns the Bent Family who lived down the road from us. They were related to us in almost every way imaginable since they came to the mountain about the same time as we did, and like my family, they never left either. But for some reason, the Bent brothers didn’t have good common sense, they always done foolish things and were known far and wide as the laughingstock of the area.

Well one time, three of the Bent boys decided they were gonna dig a well close to the house so they wouldn’t have to carry water so far. As it was, they were carrying water from a nearby creek. Since we all lived up on the mountain, a person had to dig a well quite deep to hit water, unless you were lucky enough, as my Grandmaw Mary was, to have a natural spring on your property. Well, the Bent boy’s water witched all around their house and located a powerful stream of water right outside of their yard gate. They say that the Bent boy’s used a peach limb to water witch with, and the force of the water stripped the bark clean off right in their hands, a sure sign that there was water here…a lot of water…and not located very deep either. Everyone figured it’d be less than 30 feet down, which was great for up on the mountain, where most wells were 50-100 feet deep. Well, the Bent boy’s got real excited over this and took to digging their well. They got down about 10 feet the first day, and started on it again early the second morning. Oren Bent was doing the digging that morning, and his brothers Les and Res were shoveling and hauling the dirt up in buckets. About midday, when Oren was down about 15 feet, he felt the ground give a little under his feet and water started filling up the hole. They got real excited at this and quickly dipped the water out, so they could dig another few feet. It is common knowledge that once water starts coming into your well, then you only have to dig another 10 feet or so for storage.

Well they started digging more, but water started filling in the well faster than they could dip it out. This made for slow going but eventually they dug out another couple of feet. About mid-afternoon, the three boys stopped for a break and to eat, and when they started back digging at the well, they hit a big flat rock. Well, Oren said he just knew that the water was under than rock so it had to come out. They pounded on the rock, and pried on the rock with a big iron bar. Eventually it was starting to loosen. Then Oren said the rock started to shake a little and he got scared and come up out of the hole. Soon after he got out of the well, water filled up the hole. Thinking it was a wet weather stream of water that was feeding into the well, the boys didn’t think the water would last in the dry summer months, so they had to dig it deeper. They fashioned a crude water pump and hand pumped all the water out of the well, and by then, word had passed around about the goings on with the well, and several neighbors had gathered around to witness the spectacle, and lend a helping hand if it was needed. As soon as the well was pumped dry enough to dig some more, they once again started prying on that big flat rock. One of the neighbors offered to help by bringing his team of workhorses over to pull out the rock. Everyone agreed to this and Oren got a chain hooked around the rock and to the horses. With sheer horsepower, the rock was pulled up out of the well, and with it a great gush of water that shot several feet into the air. It didn’t let up either, water was going everywhere. Nobody had ever seen anything like it, and one old-timer said that it was what was called an artesian well. Everyone was jubilant that there was plenty of water now at the Bent home, and they all went home and spread the good news.


Mom & Dad's hand-dug well.

After a few hours, the water was still spouting up out of the ground and the Bent brothers were getting worried. They couldn’t get the well walled up or anything, and it looked like a river running down through the front yard. They got to thinking that if they couldn’t get this water stopped it was going to flood the world. The more they studied and reasoned on it, the more they convinced themselves that just that very thing would happen, so they knew they had to do something. They worked each other up into a frenzy of worry. After about an hour of this, they decided the only thing they could do was try and cover the well back up. They grabbed up anything that was heavy enough to sink and frantically tossed it into the newly dug well. They threw in old junk, they threw in rocks, and they threw in metal. Eventually, they had a heaping pile of garbage over the well, and then they covered that up with dirt and made what looked like a small mound over it. They felt pleased that they had saved the whole world from being flooded.

When the neighbors found out what the Bent boys had done, they were flabbergasted. Why, they asked, did the boys fill in one of the finest wells in the county? But the boys couldn’t be convinced that they had done anything less than helpful now that they had succeeded in saving all of humanity from a great flood. They never again tried to dig a well for their house; they were content to haul water from the creek for the rest of their lives.

I remember hearing this story from my Granddaddy Burns. He was a boy when the Bent brothers dug this well, and he said that there was a helluva stream of water down in that well. He showed me the little mound of dirt that covered the junk-filled well, and you can, even to this day, even see the water still seeping up to the surface from it. The ground all around there is wet and marshy, and it flows down onto my Uncle Chub’s property where he captures it into a small pond. His pond, fend from the Bent well, never goes dry and it is a great watering spot for cattle, even in the driest of years.

Do any of you readers out there have a well or spring story? I’d like to hear them if you do.

Grandmaw's Water Bucket

The below poem triggers memories of my Grandmaw Mary. It conjures up visions of the old spring that rested upon the hillside above her house. It was always a great honor to be asked my Grandmaw to fetch her a bucket of water. I know I always took great care to dip the bucket way down into the cool, clear spring to get the freshest and coolest water. I remember there'd always be a chance that you'd pick up a salamander in the spring so you'd have take special care to avoid that. With the greatest of care, I'd heft the full water bucket to my side and inch my way down the hill on the old footpath, worn smooth by the generations of feet who made this very same trek. In the springtime, I'd usually stop and smell the apple blossoms on the Yellow Delicious apple tree that grew by the footpath.

Grandmaw would always meet me at the back porch and take the water bucket from me. I know now that she most likely done this to keep me from slopping water on her kitchen floor, after all, how steady could I have been, I was only a little boy carrying a 2-gallon bucket full of water. After taking the bucket from me, she would heap praise upon me and give me a cookie or a piece of pie that she always managed to make appear as if out of thin air. She'd then sit the water bucket up on the water stand beneath her cabinet near the back door.

Grandmaw Mary in her kitchen.

She usually had two buckets and kept one full of fresh water, and used the other bucket of "dead" water to heat for washing dishes. Grandmaw said that once water set overnight, it became dead and people shouldn't drink it. I do know that fresh water tasted better. Grandmaw always kept cheesecloth over her water buckets to keep flying insects out of it, and she had a little metal dipper that you could dip down into the bucket and get out a drink. Nobody ever thought anything of it then, but nowadays people would think this unsanitary. You'd drink right out of the dipper, and toss the rest out the back door. You were never allowed to put the water you didn't drink back in the bucket, but you could dip a second dipper if you were still thirsty.

I remember a little shelf behind the water buckets. Grandmaw had two little teacups there, no doubt gifts from some of her children on one of their travels. Grandmaw typically didn't go anywhere, her extent of travel was limited to Franklin and the Bartow Flea Market. I was always fascinated by those teacups, one said "Paw, Come git yer coffee" and the other said "Maw, Come git yer coffee". On the Paw cup, it showed a hillbilly man sleeping outside on the door stoop, and on the Maw cup there was a mountain woman plowing a field and the man was standing in the door way hollering out at her in the field. I found a "Maw" cup in an antique shop right before Christmas and bought one for my mother. I need to get her a Paw cup now. They have them on Ebay, where I found the below picture.

It's amazing how a poem can trigger all of these precious memories of Grandmaw Mary, one memory triggers another, and so on. I could sit and talk about my Grandmaw Mary all day long.
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The Old Oaken Bucket

by Samuel Wordsworth

How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood,
When fond recollections present them to view !
The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled wild wood,
And every loved spot which my infancy knew;
The wide-spreading pond, and the mill which stood by it,
The bridge and the rock where the cataract fell;
The cot of my father, the dairy house nigh it,
And e'en the rude bucket which hung in the well;
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-cover'd bucket, which hung in the well.

That moss-cover'd vessel I hail as a treasure;
For often, at noon, when return'd from the field,
I found it the source of an exquisite pleasure,
The purest and sweetest that Nature can yield.
How ardent I seized it, with hands that were glowing !
And quick to the white-pebbled bottom it fell;
Then soon, with the emblem of truth overflowing,
And dripping with coolness, it rose from the well;
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-cover'd bucket arose from the well.

How sweet from the green mossy brim to receive it,
As poised on the curb it inclined to my lips !
Not a full blushing goblet could tempt me to leave it,
Though fill'd with the nectar that Jupiter sips.
And now, far removed from the loved situation,
The tear of regret will intrusively swell,
As fancy reverts to my father's plantation,
And sighs for the bucket which hangs in the well;
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-cover'd bucket, which hangs in the well.