Pump

After my maternal grandfather died, the brothers had this pump installed in the side yard so that my grandmother wouldn’t have to walk all the way to the spring for fresh water. Alverta could be tough as nails–I remember many a cold winter’s day when she’d walk the dirt lane to our house, about a quarter of a mile away and all uphill, steepest at the very end. My dad would beg her to call ahead so that he drive her in the car and save her some steps. She rarely called, and I never heard her complain. The house, as noted in an earlier post, had electricity, but the kitchen stove was a big wood-fired beast; in the winter, heat was provided by a combination of that stove and a coal stove in the living room. Upstairs, where the bedrooms and the scary stuffed animals were–no heat.
Grandma thought that water pump was about the best thing in the world.