0026

It's a fine morning, the birds cheerily calling to me as I go out to meet the day, and the task at hand.

I assemble the reducers and the 20 feet of half-inch pipe, and lower this into the open casing until it rests on the top of the dropped pipe below. I turn the whole thing clockwise, jiggle it a little, turn it again, and now I feel some resistance. I turn it further, and the resistance increases. I try to pull up, but cannot lift the pipe. Could it be this easy? I turn it some more, this time with a pipe wrench, and, grasping with both hands, lift with my legs. I can lift it, and I know by the weight that I'm lifting the dropped pipe. I'll be darned! Arnold sure knows what he's talking about - I can get my well back!

Trouble is, there's too much weight for me to do anything more than lift with my legs. This is a two man job. Or, perhaps, a man and a boy. I work in the garden until I see the school bus drop Justin and Erin off, then walk down to see if Justin wants to earn a few bucks. (Of course he does.)

Justin works the pipe vise, repositioning it as I lift, then tightening it so I can get a new grip. Lift, reposition, tighten, new grip. Lift, reposition, tighten, new grip. About a foot at a time, the pipe rises up through the opening in the roof directly above. Within a few lifts, the inch-and-a-quarter well pipe appears, and Justin struggles to quickly adjust the vise to accommodate the larger pipe, while I struggle to hold the pipe that long. Now I can remove the 20-foot 'handle', and we keep going, up, up, up.

Now we're at the first threaded joint in the well pipe. I loosen the joint, but there's that rod running through the pipe. The top is about six feet above the roof. I'd have to stand on something higher than the roof and lift the ten-foot section of pipe straight up over the rod to get it clear. Doubting that I can do that, I just reassemble the joint, and we keep lifting.

By suppertime, we've lifted about 50 feet of pipe, and have reached the cylinder at the bottom, and the short length of pipe below that. With one final heave, the whole assembly is out and resting on the dirt floor next to the casing.

Justin and I go out to survey our accomplishment. The effect is rather startling - the pipe standing vertically up through the pump house roof, the top more than 50 feet overhead, as tall as the trees. We'll have to walk the bottom out through the door, out into the yard toward the east. Lifting straight up is one thing, but handling that much weight laterally may be too much for a man and a boy.

Justin reads my thoughts. "We could get Derek to help," he suggests, "he's as big and strong as a man!" Justin is right; at 14 or 15, Derek is quite muscular.

"OK. Give him a call, and see if he'll come over tomorrow. This is enough for one day."