Water

I don’t remember much about the plumbing in the houses we lived in at in Slab Fork. I’m pretty sure we did have a sink with running water in the house, but I think we did not have a bathroom. I remember a babysitter about 13 years old who lived next door. I believe she was Otto Graham’s daughter. Anyway, she took me with her to their bathroom while she relieved herself. She passed some gas, and I said I was going to tell her mother. The teenager asked me not to tell, so I didn’t.

We moved to Jenny’s Gap when I was about four years old. We carried water from a spring a little way up a hollow from the house. A galvanized pipe about 2 inches in diameter had a small stream of water running out of it. There was a flat rock we sat a 10-quart water bucket on. The bucket would be full of water in about five minutes.

Mommy asked me to take the bucket to the spring late one evening. It was almost dark and I was afraid the “Booger Man” might get me. Mommy persisted, so I decided I had better do it. I slowly walked up the path between two laurel thickets and placed the bucket on the rock. I immediately turned and began running for home. I stepped on my shoestring about half way home and fell against a truck rack Daddy had acquired. The back of my head somehow made contact with a metal bracket at one of the corners. Daddy was working, so I didn’t have any transportation to a doctor’s office. It was too late in the day anyway. Daddy took me to see Dr. Lewis N. Fox, Slab Fork’s company doctor, the next morning. Dr. Fox stitched my head up and it healed in a few weeks.

We moved to Glen View (Crab Orchard) in October, 1955. I was seven years old. We then had a bathroom with a bathtub, a commode, and a sink. I’m not sure, but I think we children got our first toothbrushes after we made this move. We had to take a bath every Friday night whether we needed one or not. I can remember sitting on our couch immediately after a bath, watching Friday night boxing, and waiting for Daddy to get home from work.

We moved to the farm at Jumping Branch about a month before my twelfth birthday. The water supply was a spring down over the hill. There was a well house near the back porch. I’m not sure why we didn’t get water from it. A previous owner had constructed a concrete box around the spring and had piped the spring discharge through a pipe to a livestock watering trough about 50 feet away. We kept boards positioned on top of the concrete to protect it from falling debris. In order to get water from the spring, we would move a few boards out of the way, skim any floating dust or debris off the top of the water, and then fill the bucket(s) we had brought with us. Keeping us supplied with drinking water was not much of a chore, but water to wash clothes was a different story. We caught rain water when we could, but Mommy usually wanted more water from the spring. Sometimes she wanted a lot of water. For a while, each of us had a quota. My quota was usually two or three No. 3 washtubs while Wayne and Joyce each had a smaller tub to fill. I wanted to haul my quota as soon as I could. I used two half-bushel buckets. Joyce and Wayne used standard 10-quart water buckets.

When Mommy’s mule (me) went off to Marshall University, it didn’t take long for Daddy to hire a well driller. Mommy got a sink with hot and cold running water, but no bathroom.