"Don't Miss the Water until the Well Runs Dry"

I’m sure your have heard the old saying, “You don’t miss the water till the well runs dry.”  Water is a precious necessity that we often take for granted.  Back in the winter and early spring, I heard a bunch of complaints about it raining too much.  I for one love the rain a whole lot better than watching things burn in a drought.

Cool water is refreshing and more satisfying than soft drinks or even Gator Aid.  In recent days, hydrating one’s body with water has been imperative.  While cutting grass, I had plastic bottled that I half filled with water and then froze.  It lasts much longer while operating the mower or the tractor.  The sun was scorching, but the cold water was a welcomed relief.

I remember as a kid helping dig our well.  We had a pump down in the spring, but we mostly toted the water up the hill in buckets.  Now for those who think that tote is an improper word, let me give you a quick lesson in the construction of words according to Dr. Dorothy Grimes of the University of Montevallo in her 201 English class.

In olden days, farmers would put their produce in sacks called tote sacks.  Several years back, Le Tote bags were the in thing.  Anyway, the farmers would put the tote sacks on their donkeys and then proceed to carry them to the market.  Instead of going through the whole explanation as I just, they shortened the process to “tote.”  Tote means to carry something and I bet you thought it was another one of those crazy Chiltonian terms from up home.

Well, when daddy tired of toting water, he decided to dig a well near the house.  One day this older gentleman came to the house to help daddy find a place.  Any old place will not do.  The man carried a stick that resembled an enlarged slingshot, only was much thinner and he held it upside down from the way we held them to shoot rocks, chinaberries, and green plumbs.

Walking in the back yard, that skinny, upside down slingshot started shaking and all of a sudden pointed down.  The man told daddy that was where the well would be.  To make sure it was the right place, he turned the slingshot upside down again and started walking from another part of the yard.  One again the thing started shaking and pointed down in almost the exalt same spot.  I asked daddy what kind of stick it was and he said it was a “witching stick”; some call it a “divining rod.” Now, I was familiar with all kind of sticks.  The most familiar was the sticks momma used.  She called them switches and those suckers would find the water in your eyes.

Several days later I helped daddy unload a wooden beam, it looked like a small log, with handles on each end that were opposite from one another and a large pair of wooden X’s.  He called it a well winch.  For me that was a second new term for my vocabulary.  We used the well winch to lower daddy and other men into the hole, which would become our well.  Forty-six feet and several days later, we had water.  Daddy bought a new well pump, build a well house, and we had fresh water from the well.  That was the best tasting water.

Before I bought our trailer, that’s Chiltonian for mobile home, or built our house I hired Rutherford Well Boring and Drilling to bore us a well.  They were high tech, or so I thought.  When Mr. Rutherford arrived at an appointed time, I had the place for my well all picked out.  It was to be behind where our house would eventually be built.  He said that I would have to bore the well wherever there was water.  I asked him how he would locate it.  He went to his truck and pulled out, yep, he pulled out a witching stick or divining rod as he called it.

My forty-six feet, thirty inch bored well is in my front yard.  I built a pump house to look like an old timey well or a wishing well.  Most people think that it is for decoration.  I say, “No it has seven to ten feet of water flowing in at the rate of seven gallons per minute.”  Boy, it is good tasting water and a lot better than the stuff that you buy in plastic bottles

It makes one think, when Jacob dug his well, did he use a witching stick?  Naw, it was probably a divining rod!

Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.  Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour.  There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink . . . The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water?  Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?  Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again:  But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life(John 4:5-7, 11-14 KJV).