Dented, squat, aluminum cylinder, with a flat handle
the length of a child’s forearm. It hangs on a nail
beside a five-gallon crock of well water that sits on a shelf
just inside a fly-stippled screen door. A sweaty pack of kids,
on break from hide-and-seek, are lined up in the fading heat
of a July evening, and the water, cool and clear, is of nectar.
I feel it, still, some 60 years later, this love, for my cousins,
for that farm, not far from the Whitesand River dam, ripe
with pickerel, for the horse-drawn cutter and rake, resting
in calf-high quackgrass, across from the car bodies, rusting,
among a cluster of poplars, down from the shop that held
the forge and the bellows and horseshoes; and in the yard,
the smell of cattle and pasture, cut hay, and cow manure;
and chickens scattering over purslane and pineapple weed,
tame geese honking and shitting beside the drying slough,
the choirs of crickets coming on in the rose-grey gloaming,
and the drained dipper in my hand, the slight tin aftertaste,
the water, spilling down my throat, a deep fresh coolness,
rinsing, radiating through my ribs to the ends of my limbs,
my whole skinny body, like a small piston of joy.
And now I have tears of remembrance in my eyes, your words having transported me back to my grandparents small holding in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, the same 60 years ago. Those visits influenced and set the course for the rest of my life and, like you, I have been so grateful.
Did the well water in the bucket taste like iron? Ours did and it left red marks on the sand through which my grandfather strained it. Thanks so much, Stephen!
Thank you so much for this, Ann. It’s amazing the way those early memories stay with you, and how the current ones leave too quickly. Yes, the water had that patina of iron, but still, so refreshing.
Such evocative memories you’ve drawn here Stephen. I can feel the heat and smell the hay. Summer, blessed summer of our youth.
For me, it was the smell of seaweed with a hint of herring rotting in a barrel used to grow gooseberries and potatoes. There was the cry of a kingfisher perched in a cedar and the squak of gulls by the shore. There was grass as well, thigh deep on a 12 year old and a hand hewn scythe to cut it, the sweat on my shirtless body as it swept through it’s arc.
And a hand carved yoke to carry pails of dug well water from the lower well when the forest well went dry. And a carved cedar wheelbarrow especially made to carry the firewood from the inside beach to the woodshed, three loads before a massive breakfast.
It wasn’t a farm, but an island, 55 acres, separated by a channel of luke warm water when the tide came in, hard packed sand when it receded, a child’s paradise, in the water pushing a log or on the sand, digging clams.
And a cedar bridge, one log, with seven steps on the ends, planks laid crossways and railings of saplings, the best place to dive from when the tide was in.
Thanks for evoking my own special memories of a bygone summer. Warm regards, kirk
This is wonderful Kirk. Loved your island memories.
Beautiful! Thank you
Thank you, Suzanne!
Lovely. Your words ignited all 5 of my senses along with my own sweet memories!
Thank you so much, Kellie.
How lovely Stephen,
(Even though still suffering from my combination allergy/long covid issues, where currently I can neither smell nor taste) I could instantly taste that deliciously refreshing water, with the tin-ny aftertaste of many summers past.
Beautiful memories and words bring a soothing sunny-ness to my day!
Thank you my friend <3
Thank you, Tamara! Wishing you full healing and long well-being.
Thanks for the vivid picture, Steve. Water was such a precious commodity on our farm – somehow always had enough that we could drink. The farm dipper …!
Thanks Sam!