Water Bucket Memory

I had forgotten all about the water bucket and dipper that sat on the kitchen sink before we had running water in the house. A bucket of water would be pumped at the well outside the back door and brought in for use in the day's cooking and to drink from.

I was reminded of that enamel pail and the dipper by a beautiful passage in a book I just read. I'll comment about the book and author at the month end book report, but to put the passage in perspective, the book is set in 1870's Texas.

"Here had been people whose dearest memories were the sound of a dipper dropped in the water bucket after taking a drink and the click of it as it hit bottom. The quiet of evening. The shade of the Devil's trumpet vine over a window, the scattered shadows gently hypnotic. The smell of a new calf, a long bar of sun falling into the back door over worn planks and every knot outlined. The familiar path to the barn walked for years by one's father, grandfather, uncles. How they swung the bucket by the handle as they went at an easy walk down the path between the trees, between here and there, between babyhood and adulthood, between innocence and death, that worn path and the lifting of the heart."

I don't remember what year the line was run from the well into the electric pressure tank which pumped cold water up to the kitchen sink faucet. I would guess it was 1948 or 49, so when I was around 5 or 6. It would be two or three more years before a hot water heater was installed. Until then, water still had to be heated on the stove.

The house well never ran dry in all the 65 years she lived there, but Mom was still careful about wasting water. When Dad was alive, there was always a bucket under the well spout because he would pump out quite a bit of water until it came out good and cold for a dipper full to drink. You can still see a wire around the top of the pump where a dipper used to hang. When the bucket was full, the water was carried out to the chickens or to water plants in the garden. In later years Mom kept a pan under the spout to water the cats.

It is funny what will trigger a long forgotten memory - a passage in a book, a smell, a song......