When I got out of bed and went downstairs the first thing I did; and if I didn’t do it my mother would remind me: “Wash off!”
So I reached up and took the wash pan off the nail where it hung for generations and put it in the old iron sink – the one with the pitcher pump where we got rain water from the cistern. My dad had dug the cistern out and lined it with brick and plastered over the brick. The eve spouts emptied all the rain from our tin roof into the cistern so we always had plenty of soft water to wash in and it was especially great for washing hair. Mom said it was the only water to use if you wanted to get suds from real homemade lye soap.
The water we drank and the water used in cooking came from the deep well pump outback. There was a kind of shed roof, covered with tin that was attached to the back of the house and offered protection when you had to get a bucket of coal or corn cobs for the stoves from the barn. And that’s where the deep water well pump was located. So getting a drink of cold well water involved going outside to pump it.
So I reached up and took the wash pan off the nail where it hung for generations and put it in the old iron sink – the one with the pitcher pump where we got rain water from the cistern. My dad had dug the cistern out and lined it with brick and plastered over the brick. The eve spouts emptied all the rain from our tin roof into the cistern so we always had plenty of soft water to wash in and it was especially great for washing hair. Mom said it was the only water to use if you wanted to get suds from real homemade lye soap.
The water we drank and the water used in cooking came from the deep well pump outback. There was a kind of shed roof, covered with tin that was attached to the back of the house and offered protection when you had to get a bucket of coal or corn cobs for the stoves from the barn. And that’s where the deep water well pump was located. So getting a drink of cold well water involved going outside to pump it.


























