1950-52, Maryland, NATC

The other night I had written a large paragraph covering a little-known footnote in my life, and I accidentally hit an unknown key, and the paragraph disappeared forever! I hope it doesn't happen again soon.



The "footnote": I forgot to mention that while we were living at that lady's place in Scotland, MD, I needed to wash some clothes with no washing machine. We did, however, have a large wash tub. Wanting to get the most effective results with the least effort, I did what to me just came naturally, and with marvelous results, both from the standpoint of a clean wash, and minimal use of my personal energy. I simply TROD out the wash, i.e., I took off my shoes and stockings, rolled up my pant legs, and after putting in the laundry, water, and detergent, stepped into the tub and proceeded methodically to walk over the clothes. Of course the lady thought I was "nuts", and probably Marjorie might have been a little embarased for me, but also she was somewhat used to me by now.



I mention this also, because I did laundry the same way after we moved into our new house, (one-room shack, just built). The next door neighbors, the other side of the fence, were genuine hill-billies from Virginia, but they had also never seen the likes either. So I guess I was a side-show. Oh well.



It was not too effective, to walk 1/4 mile into the woods across the road to get water from a spring. Johnny Wise, the blacksmith across the road suggested a solution. He had an earth auger with pipe extensions whereby one could manually drill for water. But he had loaned it out to Mr. Kupcheck up the Three Notch Road a mile or so. So we waited some days, and some more days. Eventually, I stopped in on the Kupchecks on my way home one evening. He and his wife were from Slovokia. He grew poppies and smoked a pipe. He hadn't gotten around to drilling for water, but since I was waiting for the use of the mechanism, he may have just lent it to me, being very cordial.



I was all excited. First chance I got, I started drilling for water, and at the same time, sent to Montgomery Ward's for a $4.50 pitcher pump, on credit, along with a driving "point" that incorporated a check valve. After a few days of spare-time boring into the ground, I really did hit water-bearing sand. Success! I removed the drilling mechanism, and having gotten sufficient piping, borrowed Johnny Wise's sledge hammer, and drove the point well into that patch of water-bearing sand. Then I screwed on the pitcher pump. Then, as everyone with the experience knows, I got some water and primed the pump. Again, success! We had our own source of water, just 100 feet from the house. We were so happy.



I furnished the house with a lot of used furniture bought very cheaply. I got a little wood-burning stove (I think that was new), and all that winter we kept warm and cooked with wood scraps I obtained free from a local sawmill. On the way home from work one day I spotted a large steel barrel abandoned by a road crew who had been tarring the road. The barrel had been used to hold road tar, but was now empty. I took it home, and constructed an elevated holder for the barrel (wooden crosspieces for legs), and mounted it in the rear of our house. Then with hoses and things, I ran an outlet line through the wall into the house. I took a large handbasin, and pounded out a hole in the middle of it with a ball peen hammer. Then I took one of Gifford Jr.'s wooden blocks, and whittled it down on one side to form a plug for the hole. Under the house, I made a V-shaped drain with two boards. Every evening after work, I carried buckets of water from the pump to the barrel, and filled it. Thus we had running water in the house.



A few odds and ends before I continue, but forget them. Down at the end of the peninsula, where the Patomac joins the Chessapeake Bay, there is a marker with an enscription that follows..



(Please note, I'm making up some of the names & dates so they may not be accurate, but I've always wanted to go back and take a photo of the actual marker).



"Site of the First United Church of Christ, built 1723, burned by the British, 1783

Rebuilt 1793, burned by the British 1813.

Rebuilt 1825, burned by Federal troops 1863."



There were some charred timbers there.



One of the other things I wanted to mention was about Johnny Wise. Several things, in fact. One was he used to keep all sorts of "thing" in each corner of his blacksmith shop. When asked why, he repeated an old saying: "Everything comes into use in 7 years". (I like that saying; it justifys a pack-rat like me).



Another "snapshot" of his personality: He told me that one day he was eating some stewd tomatoes cold, out of the can, and a salesman stopped in on him, and "got after him" to buy a kerosene stove. I don't know that he bought it though.



Back to our situation across the street. Not long after we moved into the house, I wanted to have the kids to be able to roam free, so I fenced in the large lot using cheap 2 x 4's and chicken wire. I put in a driveway gate consisting of another 2 x 4 NOT put into the ground, but made a receptacle for it using another hole next to the terminating post on the other side. The receptacle hole was lined with stove piping. Often Marjorie would see me coming, run out and open the "gate" for me.



Note, I had told Oliver Wise (the carpenter), of my grandeouse plans to some day have an automatic gate opener. When he saw how I was greeted upon coming home, he commented: "Well Mr. Neill, I see that you have gotten your automatic gate-opener."



When growing up I used to read "Moon Mullins" in the funnies. I remembered one case where "Kayo" the mean little kid was so small that his bed was one of the drawers in a chest of drawers. Now we also were quite short of space, and that idea looked pretty good to me, so we put Gifford Jr. to bed in one of the drawers of the chest of drawers. Worked O.K. P.S., he was a little kid, but not mean.



Recall we now had "running water", but no electricity, telephone, nor mail service. But within the fiirst year, electric service came by, and we got it. Also a telphone. One of the first things I got was a used washing machine. It had a very small diameter separate spinner to wring the clothes dry. Open at the top, and dangerous too. Should you put your arm in there while it was spinning, it would twist off your arm in about 2 seconds flat. But it worked for us.



I wanted to get an electric pump and have real running water, but the flow from the driven point was to slow to support it. So I decided to bore down deeper. But in doing so, I broke off the pipe connection about 10 or 15 feet below ground. And temporarily we were again reduced to me going into the woods to get a little water.



At this point, I borrowed money from my Dad, and hired well diggers to dig a proper well, which they did. Then I sent to Sears or Wards and ordered a 1/2 horse jet pump, and started digging a trench from the house to the new well, with a gradual incline up from the well to the house. I bought a lot of piping, plus a check valve to put at the bottom, in the well. Then I started screwing piping together, going from the well to the house, to the corner of the house. I made a hole in the floor in the corner, screwing on a 90 degree elbow, and coming up into the kitchen portion of our humble abode.

At this point, laughing to myself, because I knew it wasn't the proper way to do it (and I didn't know the proper way, which would take too much time and money to find out), I then screwed the jet pump onto the end of the pipe. At the outlet of the jet pump I screwed on more piping to the next corner of the dwelling, where I put a "tee", and a large diameter pipe vertically up almost to the ceiling, and capped it. Continuing from the "tee", I ran piping over to the home-made basin, and connected it to the existing faucet that had been previously fed by the barrel outside. I wired up the jet pump. And we had running water for real, with a vengance! I say this last phrase because about the smallest thing we could fill when turning on the faucet was a pitcher. But we lived with it.

Well, I'd better quit for now.