Water
This past week, the pump went out on my well, and after two days with no water, I was struggling to find anything good about the situation. All I could think about was my lack of water.
When I was a little girl, we didn’t have a well. Our water came from a mountain and filled a concrete reservoir above my house. We had so much water it supplied our house as well as two neighbors, one of whom was the greatest man to have ever lived. His name was Leslie Hedrick, and I was his adoring granddaughter.
Back then, we were blessed to have only one channel on our TV and the picture was so snowy it was painful to watch. So with little to do, a walk over to Grandpa’s house was the highlight of many evenings.
I would find Grandpa and Grandma sitting by their fireplace having devotions. He would fold his bible shut and welcome me with as much hoopla as if the Queen of England had graced him with a visit.
Grandpa was always reeling me in with his antics. One cold winter evening he said to me, “Just a while ago, I had the best drink of water I’ve ever tasted in my life.”
“Where from?” I asked.
“Out of my dipper from the spigot in the kitchen.” He grinned when he saw my reaction. I had fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker. I still made a trip to the kitchen for a taste to be sure. The aluminum dipper had a round teacup sized bowl and a long thin handle with a hole at the top. Grandpa had hammered a nail on the window facing and hung the dipper there for all to use. I suppose that dented dipper was fairly old, used long ago to draw water from a bucket that was carried in daily from the spring outside. It worked just as well with indoor plumbing.
I filled the dipper with ice-cold water, put the dipper to my lips, and had a drink. Nothing quite like it, he was telling the truth. From then on, every time I visited I would make a beeline to the kitchen for a drink from that dipper—even after I was grown.
When the well pump man finally showed up at my house and water began to pour from my spigots once more, I took a good long drink, and it tasted quite good. Yet, it will never compare with the water that trickled down from a crevice in the Snowbird Mountains filling Grandpa’s dipper from his kitchen sink, but it was pretty close.
Grandpa Leslie