The Artesian Well

Bill Mattocks

Sr. Grandmaster
MTS Alumni
Joined
Feb 8, 2009
Messages
15,627
Reaction score
4,434
Location
Michigan
Growing up in central Illinois in the late 1960's. Middle of nowhere in a part of the state where flatness of the land belied the concept that the earth was a globe. Sure didn't seem that way. One old fella said that in the autumn, when the corn was down, he could sit on his back porch and watch his dog run away all day. That kind of flat.

Towns were small, and we lived in one that only consisted of 400 or so people. It seems strange now, but we had a full kindergarten through high school school system - the graduating class every year averaged about 30. The school system was so small, our teachers came to us from class to class, we didn't change rooms, except for gym class.

In the summers, farmers grew corn or soybeans. One took nitrogen out of the soil, they said, the other put it back in. And we had a lot of companies that were involved the development of hybrid strains of corn. This was before any notion of genetic manipulation, they just planted five or six rows of one strain, and one of another, and then they hired kids like me to pull the tassles off the five or six rows before they were mature, so the pollen from the one row could cross-pollinate the others.

There wasn't too much else to do when you were 10 years old in San Jose, Illinois in 1969. Babysit, deliver the newspaper, mow lawns, get in fights, camp out in the backyard on weekends, steal beer from your dad. That's about it.

So you signed up; if you were tall enough, and your mom packed you a lunch, and every morning at 5 a.m., the rented school bus came by and picked you up along with your friends; all boys, no girls. You'd ride a couple hours out into the country, and meet up with eventually hundreds of buses, thousands of kids, most from towns you heard of but had never visited.

The bosses were teenagers, pimply-faced and unsure of themselves, so they yelled but were very lazy. We obeyed them, and raced up and down the rows of corn, pulling tassles as we went. Corn is a sticky plant, and we'd get paper cuts from the leaves as well. We learned to leave our sleeves down, even though it would get hot well before noon.

Like a lot of boys, I stole my dad's cigarettes when I could, and learned to smoke out there in the fields - nobody cared if we did or didn't, as long as we detassled corn; and smoking looked so cool. I got sick, really sick, the first time, but not after that. By the end of the summer, I was smoking a pack a day. I thought my dad didn't know I was stealing his smokes, but I was wrong, he knew. At the end of the summer, he took me aside and told me the free ride was over, if I wanted to keep smoking, I'd have to buy my own. I guess it was because I was so young, I just stopped and didn't have a problem with it when school started up again.

When the pimple-faced bosses yelled for lunch time, we'd race back to our buses for our brown paper lunch sacks, and settle down under trees or whatever shade we could find, eating bologna and cheese and crunching Fritos under the blue, hot Illinois sun. Some kids had pop, but it would always be hot by then, and most of us didn't come from families that could afford it anyway, so some of us always hoped to see a well on the farm we were on, or anyway a hose coming from the farmhouse. There usually was.

An artesian well is unusual. The water comes up from the ground like a regular well, but is under pressure from below and does not have to be pumped. In fact, it has to be capped off, due to the pressure. A lot of farms in the area had these in the backyard. You could spot them easily. A single rusty iron pipe sticking straight up from the ground, with an orange or red enameled handle that looked kind of like a gasoline pump handle, but the handle was spring-loaded to keep it closed, so you'd have to pull up on it, and finally it would spring open and stay that way until locked down again.

The water that came out of those artesian wells was something special. It was cold, very cold, nearly too cold; especially in the shimmering heat of an Illinois summer, where the tarmac of the road could be too hot to stand on in your Keds, where you could see the air dance and weave over the highway, creating little illusions out of oncoming vehicles.

We'd put our cupped hands under that water, and the intense cold was nearly painful, especially as it was shooting out under such high pressure. We'd give our hands a second to kind of numb up, and then we'd lift a double-handful over our heads, letting it run down our backs under our shirts, and it felt like the best thing in the world. I can remember well the stance everyone took; it was universal. Head back, eyes closed, water soaking down their backs, and a tight, brilliant smile etched onto their faces, combined with an 'Ahh!' of pure satisfaction. We were young gods then; we didn't know how not to be.

Then we'd fill up a Dixie cup and drink, the cold water hurting our teeth, but we didn't care; sometimes we'd take several cups, until a boy next in line would start to shove. We'd reluctantly move away from the spigot, but it was OK, we'd had all we needed. That water tasted like no water in the world, it was simply the best ever.

Returning to our friends and the shade, we'd dig out stolen cigarettes and light them up, enjoying a smoke, playing tricks by making smoke rings, and eventually getting bored. If the pimple-faced bosses didn't get us moving by then, there would usually be a fight or two; we had to do something with all that energy.

We'd make another detassling pass, in a desultery and less enthusiastic way, usually in a smaller field, and then it would be early in the afternoon and too hot to work. The buses would load us up and return us to our little towns, we'd get off the bus and walk home splitting off the group smaller and smaller as ten became five became two and then I'd be alone in front of my front door.

They paid us $1.65 per hour. I made $300 that summer and bought a B&W TV set and a Schwinn. When I get my Social Security statements, they list that income and the Social Security taxes I paid on it.

I don't have to struggle to remember the green corn plants, or the black, black dirt they grew in. I remember well the smell of the soil when disturbed by the tennis-shoed feet of a young boy, how it smelled like all things good and real. The white clouds, unthreatening of rain, the blue, blue sky, the country roads that went straight as a string from town to town and seemed to extend forever. The white farm houses, the barns and silos, the smell of the cows and the manure and the horses; we knew who raised pigs and sheep too, from the smell. Chickens that avoided us, geese that would chase us, and sunburns on faces and shoulders.

But of all my memories of that time, one of the things I remember best is the crisp, clean, nearly-painful feeling of that artesian well water flowing down my head and running down my back, shivering in the delicious bite of that cold water on those hot days, my numb cupped hands, and the teeth-chattering cold of that first sip from a Dixie cup full of that water. It was in those moments that we boys incontrovertibly owned everything of value in the world - it came up out of the ground like magic and made the world real and right.
 
Last edited:

Sukerkin

Have the courage to speak softly
MT Mentor
Lifetime Supporting Member
MTS Alumni
Joined
Sep 15, 2006
Messages
15,325
Reaction score
493
Location
Staffordshire, England
Sadly the 'Ursai' doesn't allow me to rep you for that Bill but that was a lovely evocative 'period piece'. Thank you for those memories :rei:.
 

GBlues

Purple Belt
Joined
Jul 26, 2008
Messages
314
Reaction score
22
Location
All over the U.S.
Yeah, that was a great story man. I like hearing about my elders youths, really makes you realize how much different things were in those days. Well, water is the best drinking water in the world. My uncle Lee has a well on his property in Arkansas, and man that was a sweetest tasting water I ever had. I've never tasted water like that. So good. :)
 

teekin

3rd Black Belt
Joined
Jul 24, 2008
Messages
905
Reaction score
51
Location
Winterpeg
Bill, my mother's father had an artesian spring on the farm too. It joined a creek and pooled in a shallow ravine before running off to join the Red River. It was in the town of Eden MB. The water is just as you say, painfully cold right from the source. Once it pooled in the ravine in July and August however, the minnows and I found it perfect for swimming. I think those were the happiest hours of my childhood.:highfive:
lori
 

Latest Discussions

Top