Monday, August 7, 2017

Day 235 CJSM-book


Day 235

 

 

Dropping the red hot lid into the cistern and

using Uncle Freddie’s big magnate to fish it out

 

 

We located a ten acre parcel of land for sale and negotiated the purchase; on this “view” property I constructed our first new home. The spectacular view offered a panorama across the limestone bluffs through the Mississippi River valley to the mighty river and beyond some thirty, or so, miles into neighboring Missouri. Gorgeous sunsets live in my memory to this very day.

And…I promptly…Sold that little piece of heaven, swimming pool, barn, and, all!

For the “Gypsy-man” six years at one location seemed an eternity; I pocketed the Profit!

Moving our little tribe to a farm, we lived in the old house for two months while I built our second abode. We had electricity but no running water. Talk about “roughing” it!?

A cistern just outside the kitchen supplied our water needs. All I had to do was drop a five-gallon bucket attached to a rope into the cavern, allow it to fill with liquid-life and hoist the elixir to the surface. Simple-enough!? Right?---Hmm!...wrong! Ah! The best laid plans!?

The pump on the cistern did not work, thus the “bucket-trick”; it got worse since the access to the cool water was protected by a steel lid which had to be opened to accept the bucket. Simple!?

That there cistern sat on the backside of the old farm house facing a western exposure; an evil afternoon sun heated that steel lid scorching-hot! Yep! I dropped the molten lid into the cistern.

My ears refused to hear the telltale “Splash!  echoing my “idiocy”! Candy and the girls’ ears couldn’t believe my bellicose “sailor”-vocabulary as I voiced my displeasure at the incident.

Uncle Freddie had a super-large horseshoe magnet about 2” X 3’ X 5”, very powerful. That damn misbehaving lid now cooling in the sweet cistern water weighed about ten pounds; I left for Freddie’s farm to “borrow” his savior-magnet; he had a good laugh at my temper!

Laying on the boiling-hot concrete on my belly while dropping that magnet attached to the “bucket”-rope and letting out some twelve feet of line, I fished a good half-hour trying to retrieve that recalcitrant “hiding” lid. Finally! Success! I “caught” the elusive steel plate on the magnet and gently pulled my prized “catch” to the surface. Yea! I am invincible! (Ha! Ha!) No! I’m not!

Leaning the “mean” ole steel lid against the pump housing, I dropped my re-attached water-bucket into the reservoir to fetch clear, cool, life-saving liquid water. That bucket had taken a lesson from the lid---I reckon that’s true enough. Hard as I tried to get the bucket to hit the water surface just right to tip so the water could fill it, the bucket refused to co-operate! Patience!

After a dozen failed attempts, my “infamous” temper won out and I exploded with some well-intentioned “sailor”-words and gave that pump housing a “Chuck Norris” devastating side-kick dislodging the newly retrieved lid which did a  slow-motion 3 ½ -Gainer on its “practiced”-plunge into the depths of the pool! Anybody got a powerful “magnet”! I gots “sperience”!’

Just maybe, for a brief instant, I may have agreed with my family that I was an idiot to uproot them from a “resort”-type home to an ancient “little-better-than-a-cave” adventure!? Hmm!

Never could settle for “just-one”---“two” just has to be…Better!

Okay! So I ain’t none too smart---nobody likes a “smart”-ass…but, I am entertaining! Hmm!

 

Ah! Cookie Jar Sweet “Uh! Oh!-again!” Memories!

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