Submitted by Ray Evans
These days, people take for granted conveniences such as electricity,
modern plumbing, central heating and other labor saving appliances. When I
grew up during the late 30’s and early 40’s in the Oak Hill
Section of Rockcastle County near Renfro Valley, most of those things were
not available.
For example, modern plumbing and running water were almost
non-existent. Families used a number of different ways to secure their water
for drinking, cooking, bathing and laundry purposes. Some simply carried
water in a bucket from a nearby spring or a well. Others had cisterns where
they captured rain water and then used a hand pump or one of those tubular
water buckets that looked much like a stovepipe to get water from the
cistern or a well. Some of the more ingenious ones employed a hydraulic ram
to pump water from a spring to a place near the house.
We had what was referred to as a “Water Boy.” Our house was
on the edge of a plateau of relatively flat land. On one side of the house,
the terrain of the land fell away abruptly to form a rather steep hillside.
There was a good spring about 400 feet from the house diagonally down the
hill. The “Water Boy” consisted of a heavy gauge cable that was
strung overhead on “L” shaped brackets fastened to poles or trees
from the house to the spring. The upper end of the cable was fastened
essentially to the eave of the roof over a side porch. A small platform
about 3’ by 4’ extended beyond the porch. A “J” shape
hanger with a pulley arrangement at the top end of it was hung over the
cable. A three gallon galvanized water bucket was hung from the bottom of
the “J” hanger. One end of a rope about 3/16” in diameter was
tied to the hanger and the other end was tied to a reel arrangement with a
crank handle. With this contraption one could lower an empty water bucket
where it came to rest under the end of a two-inch pipe from which a good
stream of water was usually available. After the water bucket filled with
water, it could be pulled up to the house by turning the crank handle that
was fastened to the reel.
One of my frequent chores as a youngster was to retrieve water from the
spring with the “water boy.” This was quite a task on washdays
when my mother, Elizabeth Lawrence Evans (1906 – 1980), did the family
laundry.
If you gave the rope attached to the hanger and bucket too much slack,
the bucket would go too fast down the wire and fall off the cable. I had
triplet cousins, Willard, Wilbert and Willie “Bill” Chasteen, who
lived in Louisville and visited me fairly often on the farm. They were
“city boys” and mean as rattlesnakes. They would do almost
anything for a laugh. They always wanted to play with the “water
boy.” They would essentially turn the rope loose and let the hanger and
bucket go racing down the hill. Consequently, we ended up with a lot of bent
and dented water buckets.
One time, John Lair of Renfro Valley fame, staged a foxhunt near our
house. Horseback riders on the finest saddle horses that I had ever seen
came from far and wide. Needless to say, our “water boy” attracted
a lot of attention from the foxhunters. My Uncle Hayse Clark had a similar
arrangement for getting water at a house where he lived in the Hummel area.
You could see our water bucket all the way to the spring, but his
disappeared quickly over the edge of the hill.
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