Hauling Water
Thursday, March 13, 2008
(I recently attended a presentation by the Alliance for the Great Lakes. It brought the following to mind.)
My Grandfather homesteaded near Conrad in 1911, having left his father's Nebraska homestead. In Nebraska, there was water. The nearest water to the Montana homestead was two miles away Aldrich Springs, over the hill.
While not a difficult distance, it did take one day each month to haul water for the family. The water comes from an artesian well. You haul it in a barrel on a stone boat behind a horse.
The youngest of the kids was my Aunt, and as the only girl, she would get first bath in a copper tub. First bath did not mean that the water got changed for the older kids. Grandpa thought that if the family used less water, he wouldn't have to spend as much time hauling.
When I was growing up, we used the same well, but by now there were roads and trucks. The old seismographer's truck (also called the nitro truck) we had would hold a thousand gallon tank. We had an 8000 gallon cistern, and it took my Dad and later me about a full day each month to haul enough water for the seven of us.
The Pendroy road had a turnoff to a one-lane road just before the bench. The small road went through a cattle guard and slightly up the hill. You would swing the truck around and then back under the pipe, since it was easier to wrestle the truck when empty. You would put the spout into the two foot hole at the top of the tank, and swing the lever that would divert the stream to the overhead pipe. Otherwise the water flowed down a very small creek through the shallow valley.
It is quiet save for the water flowing into the tank. As your eye followed the small stream, you could pick out the slight thread of greenery across the prairie. The tallest trees are prickly pear. You could smell the mint growing there in the summer. My sister still picks the mint and sends jelly any year that she visits there. After about half an hour, the tank is full. Throw it into first gear, and the truck groans over the gravel road back home.
I think there were complaints also about us using too much water, what with bathtubs and washing machines and everything.
So in moving to Illinois, right next to the great inland freshwater sea called Lake Michigan, it was sadly easy to get used to losing those low-water habits. My parents never lost them. It is amazing how little water it really takes to wash dishes.
So I thought that during our cousin's reunion, it would be good to walk the path that Grandpa took to haul water. My sister was heading home, so she agreed to drop my cousin and I off at the well. My aunt had thought that such a walk would be a good family thing, but she was unable, as she was ill.
My uncle and aunt now lived on the homestead land. Before we arrived, my uncle told us that the water was no longer safe for drinking as it was full of nitrates. No doubt a side effect of raising cattle in the area.
The mint was there as ever, and we set out down the valley. As we went along, there were cattle trails to follow, and an occasional single wire of an electrified fence. The Hutterite colony now owned the land, and they had a herd of sleek Black Angus. We could see other seepage from the artesian well along the crest of the hill. The water likely came from glacial melt from the mountains 40 miles to the west.
Away from the drainage of the well, the scrub and grass was brown and stunted. We turned left at the power line which marked the extension of the boundary of family land, and walked the hill. At the top, there was a spectacular view of the mountains to the west. Six miles to the east lay the town of Conrad. 95 miles to the north, near the Canadian border you can see the three Sweetgrass Hills. On an earlier walk, my sister and cousin and I stood in the silence. It is safe to say that each of us was doing the financial calculation of how to move back here.
As my cousin and I walked down the side of the hill, we recalled our youth when she would come up from California and stay on the homestead. We stopped briefly to take a picture that her father had requested, Sunflowers and Gravel.
Back at the house, my aunt said she would like to do it with us next time, but she never did.