When I was born, we did not even have a well, let alone indoor plumbing. Before the well was dug, we had to get water the best we could. Sometimes we got it from the branch, in buckets. But usually we would get it from Uncle Earl’s. He had a well as far back as I remember. You had to draw the water from the well with a bucket and rope. The rope went over a Whirl, and from there into the well, so that you could pull down—not up—to “draw” water from the well. They made special “well buckets in those days. It was a sort of tall, skinny bucket. The bail was twisted in a loop at its apex, so you could tie the rope on there, and the rope would stay in the middle rather than sliding from side to side and spilling the water as you drew the bucket from the well. The tall skinny bucket was not inclined to float when you lowered it to the water, it would turn over on its side so that the water would run in, and when it filled and went under, you were ready to draw it out.
At one point in time Uncle Earl had a windlass on his well. Somehow, in the local vernacular, windlass got converted to wi’less. Of course, nobody had to spell that word, so I don’t know how the abbreviated word should be spelled! Totin’ (another well-known country word) the water from Uncle Earl’s well could be quite a chore. It was about a quarter of a mile from Uncle Earl’s well to the Little House, and a two-gallon bucket of water probably weighed 15 pounds. Needless to say, a wash tub, or five-gallon bucket full weighed a lot more than that. By the way, water buckets were also an identified product. It was not just a bucket—it was a water bucket, and was usually enamel. But I’m digressing, and I’ll have discuss the water bucket and dipper in another essay. I was talking about getting the water from Uncle Earl’s well to the little house. Daddy improvised. He built a sled with runners on each side made out of two by sixes. The 2X6’s stood upright, and boards were nailed across them. Only the two-inch sides of the 2×6’s touched the ground. Daddy’s mule was named Pete, and he stayed at Uncle Earl’s barn at night with Uncle Earl’s mule Molly. But Pete could be hitched to the sled, and drag it around the road to the Little House. And I didn’t mention the milk cans. Daddy had driven the milk truck, so we had milk cans that held about five gallons. They had lids, and were very nice for hauling water! And some where I will need to mention syrup buckets, and we used them for water sometimes. They didn’t hold but a gallon and a little fellow like me could carry one of them!
But the time came when we had our own well. I must have been three or four years old when Daddy got it dug. There was a Black man named Buck Tolbert in our community who dug wells. He also drove the school bus for Black children who attended the segregated Black school. But again, I am digressing and that will require another essay! Buck Tolbert dug our well. He used short handled picks and shovels. The well was about three or four feet in diameter, and after he had dug down four or five feet, there was an improvised wi’less that served multiple purposed. You understand, of course, that a wi’less had what I learned in physics to be a “mechanical advantage.” Less strength was required to lift stuff out of the well with it. So the wi’less was used to get Buck Tolbert into and out of the well! And while he was digging, a helper used the wi’less to pull five-gallon buckets of earth from the bottom of the well to the surface. Buck Tolbert had to dig down about twenty five or thirty feet before he found water, and then had to keep digging in the mud to assure a plenteous supply.
The well digger was protected from cave ins. The well curbs—concrete cylinders about three feet in diameter slid down into the well as he dug. There are no doubt a lot of details that I don’t remember (not to mention some that my imagination from the memory of an event that occurred seventy-five years ago) but that is the basic story of the well digging. I want even mention the fact that the five-gallon bucket came loose while Buck Tolbert was at the bottom of the well, but miraculously, he was not injured!
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