A Vestige of Long Ago

For as long as memory serves, the rusty old pump has stood just beyond our south porch. If it has ever been operable during my lifetime, it was in the 1930s before FDR’s Rural Electrification Program finally found Oysterville. At that point, it and the well beneath it were abandoned in favor of a new-fangled electric pump hooked up to a new well-point a number of feet to the east.

We’ve long considered the old pump ‘yard art’ and Nyel has had vague plans to replace the missing pump handle. It had long ago been removed but, like most discarded fragments of my grandparents’ lives, it had been safely stored in the garage. As for the well, itself – we gave little thought to it, covered as it was by a thick cement slab.

Muscle Power

Several summers ago, though, as I was working in the flower bed between porch and pump, I heard the distinctive sound of splashing far below me. It was creepy. I finally determined that it was bits of loose soil dropping down, down, down below the area I was working. Yikes! I had unsettling thoughts about the ground (or the slab) giving way and someone plunging down into the unknown.

Brick Lining

I began avoiding that flower bed and even gave the adjacent lawn wide berth when I chanced to walk by. We consulted with Plumbing Guru Don Anderson who was reassuring. He surmised (correctly, as it turned out) that that the well was probably lined with brick and that there was no danger of a cave-in, But, he thought it would not be amiss to fill it in with sand to avoid any possible problems in the future.

Filling In

Yesterday was the day! Farmer Nyel and Gardener Dave pried up the cement slab – a difficult task involving crowbars and muscles – and filled in the eight-foot-deep, brick-lined well with two yards of brown sand. As far as we could determine, there was about two feet of water at the bottom with evidence that when the water table was higher in winter, the level came close to the top of the shaft.

The underside of the cement covering was interesting, too, reinforced as it was with old bolts and pieces of pipe. When the sand has had a chance to settle, that three-inch slab will be returned to its long-time resting place, though without the safety part of its original purpose. Meanwhile, the frozen bolt on the pump is being doctored by Neighbor Tucker with WD40 so that the old handle can be re-attached and our refurbished yard art can be reinstalled. A worthy summer project indeed!