Two things you can pretty much take for granted in developed countries around the world these days are sewer and water. You don’t realize what a precious convenience and extravagance they are until you’ve lived in a home without them. And like many of you, I have. Twice.
The second time was here in Headingley. This section of my street had no hook-up to community sewer and water till this past spring.
For my almost 30 years here, I’ve had to haul the water in, call the septic service once a year for a pump out and cover the septic field with flax straw every winter to keep it from freezing up.
It’s such a treat now to be able to stand in the shower without the mediocre water pressure dropping off constantly till the pump kicks in and gives you enough pressure (for a few seconds) to at least be able to rinse the soap off. Paradise, actually.
The first time I lived without sewer and water was as a kid growing up in Killarney in the 1950’s.
At least the Headingley version offered a reasonable facsimile to sewer and water — not so in Killarney. Our drinking and cooking water came from a well outside our back door that you hand-pumped into a pail and carried in as needed, year-round.
One of my favourite memories from those days — when I was about six — is of when I had to refill the drinking water pail one night.
It was a regular ceramic pail, sat on a counter in the pantry, which we all drank out of with the dipper that hung beside it. I reached up and got the nearly empty pail, carried it out to the pump, hung it on the spout and pumped it as full as I thought I could carry. I lifted it off, carried it back to the pantry, struggled to put it back on the counter, dipped some water and started drinking.
There was no light on in the pantry.
I felt something bumping my upper lip, wondered what it might be, I walked into the kitchen where the light was on and saw a dead frog I’d pumped up from the well.
Today, the kid would show his mom, she’d call 911 and, following a visit to the ICU to be checked out, the kid would go through years of counselling. But not back then.
I thought nothing of it. It was the only drinking water we had. I went to the back door, flung froggie into the night with the dipper and went back for more. Seems to me I may have climbed up on a stool to see if there were any other corpses in there before I resumed drinking. A different time indeed.
Going to the toilet was an experience then as well. I remember when we actually used an outhouse (like a port-o-let placed over a hole dug in our yard) in my very young days, then we switched to an actual toilet of sorts — a wooden lid on a big pail that was placed in the dark reaches of the old fieldstone basement.
Talk about a terrifying trip. The toilet sat right beside a huge rain water cistern we used for washwater, and I was positive there was a monster in there waiting to pounce on me the second I was "committed" to my task. Very scary. I could "hold it" for a long time back then.
The funny thing is that despite my longing back then for the comforts of big city living, nowadays I find myself collecting all sorts of archaic devices from that bygone era.
My collection includes a few hand water pumps and even a wood-burning cookstove like the one my Mom and Grandma Lyle cooked on.
But that’s a story for another day. Have a great weekend!
lmustard1948@gmail.com
