Jack and Jill.
An artesian well sounds Greek to me and maybe even a touch romantic! The water supply for our home comes from an Artesian well 40ft underground in the front garden and pumped into the house. This works fine just the same as any house with a mains supply of water; with the bonus we do not pay any water rates. If the well been drilled 4ft to the west and properly installed there would be no need to top it up on occasions, those times being mostly laundry time. Every house in the village has a well and there is talk of the entire town being connected to mains water next year, if it happens it happens, local tell me they have been talking of this for the past 10 years.
Normally it is an easy and pleasant task fetching a tank of water from the Town well located on the edge of town half a mile to the east outside of the Municipal Garage. Water time is often a social time, meeting the locals who congregate with many types of vehicles containers, truck, tractors and trailers. To talk about the weather, crops and generally chew the cud.
It was the second Friday in December, almost down to the last pair of knickers and time for laundry. The weather forecast was ominous; a Colorado low should be meeting with an Alberta clipper over night and dropping heavy snow upon us over the weekend. This adds to my theory that it never snows in Muskeg Creek! It is just blown in horizontally from Saskatchewan.
After supper we intended to take 20 minutes to fulfill the task, to hitch up the trailer, go to the pump return and top up the well. The temperature had dropped to minus 20c, a slight wind chilled the air making it feel much colder, with the house exterior lights on I backed up the van to the trailer parked beside our garage and hooked it on remembering to connect the lights. Something made me look and darn it the trailer had a flat tyre, Ok I know it was only flat on the bottom it would move but with a thousand pounds of water loaded it would not be going anywhere.
Unhooking the trailer I reversed up onto the neighbours drive, connected the air pump into the cigarette lighter socked and let it pump away for 15 minutes until the desired tyre pressure was achieved. It was getting colder by the minute; I hitch up again and drove onto the snow covered roads to the Town pump. Upon arrival, our team work went into action. I turned on the main street light unlocked the pump switch, while Mary Jo jumped into the trailer to remove the Plastic 10 inch diameter threaded cap through which the water is poured. The cap was frozen solid; no amount of tugging pushing swearing would budge it the threads were iced, and a hammer would only shatter the plastic, and a blow torch melt it.
Abandoning the attempt we jumped back into the van which has a mediocre heater but when so cold as we were it felt like a tropical day, a solarium on wheels. As we pulled out of the yard two council trucks pulled in plus a large truck containing drilling equipment, which raised our hope that they really are drilling for water and maybe this time next years we will be on the mains water, and we would be happy to pay water rates! A cheering note but if we wanted to do laundry we had to overcome the freezing problem.
Back home an electric heating pad did nothing then our neighbour say why not get a kettle of hot water and pour over it. Duh! Right, why did we not think of that? So Mary Jo fetched our new whistling kettle from the stove, one pot of warm water did the trick the ice on the threads cracked and it was freed.
We were beginning to feel like Jack and Jill, trying to fetch some water. The wind was picking up our extremities were starting to chill; we jumped into the van and off to the town pump again. The dynamic duos into their team work soon topped up the tank, and on the way back home. I reversed the trailer to the well MJ opened the sealed top and inserted the hose. I turned the tap it opened and closed but the valve remained shut. Something had to be done quickly or we would have a 100 gallon ice cube.
"Hot water, we need hot water" I cried, "Get a Midwife! Get lots of hot water and don't bother with the towels". Mary Jo rushed into the house got the kettle and poured it over the valve and slowly the water trickled from the tank and through the hose then with a gurgle and rattle of ice it gushing into the well. By the time the tank had drained the hot water poured over the tap was frozen, and as we had got this far so made two more trips and made sure enough water would be there for a few days, and we would not have to struggle again for a while. Next time we would do it in warmer weather and after the Alberta Clipper, which incidentally never materialized.
We emptied the final 100 gallons into the well, by which time were really chilled. The trailer was soon returned to the side of our garage unhooked and the van parked. Returning into the house, there was an instant fog, our glasses steamed up as we stripped off layers of clothing, removing clothes with numb fingers and blinded with condensation is not an easy task.
The normal 20 minute task took well over an hour. It was time for a nice cup of tea to help relax and warm up. Ah! The kettle! You guessed, yes it was still in the trailer!
12/12/04
- Jack and Jill went up the Hill,
- to fetch a pail of water.
- Jill came down with half a crown.
- Not for carrying water!
