0030

Last night's bath water and this morning's drinking water are from the newly functioning well. This is a big deal - free at last from dependence upon city water, and from trips to town to procure it. With a light heart, I ride my bicycle to morning Mass, a pleasant ride on this beautiful May morning, only my second weekend spent entirely at the new homestead.

After Mass, I call Lenore from the phone in the church hall, just to chat and to share the well news. On the return trip, riding up the hill past the state park, I hear the voices of families camping in the park, a pleasantly homey sound. There's a service road at this end of the park... I wonder if I could cut through the park on my way to and from church? Have to check that out next week.

0029

Picked up the repaired cylinder from Arnold yesterday. Rod connection repaired, and the leathers replaced, everything like new.

"I can't tell you how much you've saved me Arnold. How much do I owe you?"

"Eight dollars for the new leathers, and my time."

"You gotta be kidding."

"Eight dollars."

"One more question?"

"Go ahead."

"This whole thing started because I was getting sand in my water. Anything I can do about that?"

He smiles, his eyes crinkling. "Throw a couple quarts of clean pea gravel down the well before you put the pipe back down. That should filter out the sand."

"Pea gravel? That's all?"

"Pea gravel."

---

That was yesterday. Now I've thrown some pea gravel down the well, and Justin is up again to help me lower the pipe. He mans the pipe vice as I lower the pipe, same as before, only it's much easier work lowering. Plus, we're doing it one section at a time, the way you're supposed to!!

With the top section of pipe and rod sticking up a few feet, I lift the housing up and over, and thread it down onto the pipe. As I lift, Justin removes the vice altogether, and I lower the pump into place, and reconnect the handle.

OK, here's the test. Get a clean bucket, and hang it on the spigot. Start pumping. Within a few strokes, there's water. Empty the first bucket - the water is picking up a little film of oil from all the handling of the pipes. Justin takes his turn pumping; we're both enjoying this immensely. After a few buckets, the water is running clear and cool. And NO sand!

Smiles, pats on the back, and a victory celebration. Almost feel like doing an end-zone dance. More than anything, a grateful prayer of blessing upon Arnold. Eight dollars. Amazing. Pea gravel. God bless that man.

0028

The bandaged hand has been a handicap for several days as I've gone about planting potatoes, weeding, and doing other chores. Now it has healed enough for me to work a pipe wrench, and i manage to get the twisted well pipes dismantled. During this process, I learn that the rod through the center is also coupled section by section, and I could have been dismantling the whole thing one section at a time, as Justin and I raised it. What a dope! Well, I was ignorant of how wells are constructed; now I know a little better.

I can hammer the bent rods and get them reasonably straight again. I load the three bent sections of pipe along with the cylinder, and make a trip to town. I drop the cylinder off at Arnold's, who will correct the broken rod connection, then take the pipes to be cut and rethreaded at Hardware Hank. Have to buy a new length of pipe, too, cut and threaded to make up for the amount of bent pipe that is cut off. This whole process has been rather painful, but my confidence is growing that I will get my well back, finally.

0027

Going outside first thing, the tall pipe still startles me a little. Looks like a huge needle sticking up through my pump house roof. Mid-morning, Derek, Justin and Erin come trooping up my driveway, their necks are also craned, eyes fixed on the top of Jerry's pipe, over 50 feet up. Derek clears his throat. "Justin says you need my help with something?"

"Did you eat your Wheaties this morning, Derek?" He grins a little sheepishly.

Justin and Erin are the bystanders, the cheering section, as I open wide the pump house door, and explain my plan to Derek.

"We'll pick the bottom end up, one of us on either side, and walk out into the side yard with it. There's a lot of weight there, and that weight will be pulling up at first, so we'll have to keep a tight grip, OK?"

Derek nods. We stand opposite each other, bend and grab, and, at my signal, we lift.

"OK. Now, slowly, let's move toward the door."

We've moved less than a foot from vertical when it starts to veer off to Derek's left, my right. With all our strength, we resist, but we overcompensate. Now it's swinging the other way.

"No good!," I yell, "Let's put it back down!"

Derek's eyes are getting wide. I'm amazed at how much force is at work. The momentum of the long pipe is beyond our strength, a huge upside-down pendulum whipping itself first in one direction, then another, each time a bit more violently. The third or fourth swing is away from me and towards Derek's right, dashing itself against the window jamb with my left hand between. There's a noise of breaking glass, a dull thud, and the pipe is at rest.

I run outside. This is bad. Erin is crying, wailing aloud.

"Are you hurt, Erin?" She shakes her head. She doesn't appear to have been hit by anything.

"Are you OK, Justin?" "Are you OK, Derek?" They both nod solemnly.

The pipe is a wreckage of bent pieces lying to the west of the pump house. Apparently, the momentum and tremendous force kinked the pipe just above the roof, with the top sections smashing into the ground. My hand is bleeding. I tear my tee shirt off and wrap it around my hand.

"You sure you're OK, Erin?" She nods, still sobbing uncontrollably.

I ask Justin, "Why is Erin crying?"

"She's crying because you're hurt!"

"Oh."

My shirt is already saturated with blood. I take a look. It's pretty deep.

I walk down to their house for some first aid, then manage to fish a few bills out of my wallet for Justin and Derek's efforts. Back at my house, there's nothing to be done. I lie down with my hand raised.

---

Tonight in bed, it's hard to sleep. I still have to keep my hand above my heart, which makes for little sleeping comfort. I have plenty of time to review my folly, to berate myself, quite deservedly.

"You are such an imbecile, Jerry! It's incredible how stupid you are! That pipe was, what? 150 pounds? Maybe more? Not counting the weight of the water still inside it. And it was how far up in the air? 50 feet? Maybe higher? Supported laterally at the roof opening. Which means the fulcrum of this 50-foot lever was where? 7 feet up, maybe 8? And which end of this lopsided lever were you trying to control? Even without a calculator, you should have seen that the force would be somewhere in the thousands of pounds. Not a difficult puzzle, but you never took time to think it through. Which qualifies you as an utter fool!"

I can't beat myself up all night. I need to learn a lesson here - I need to think things through better. There is also much to be grateful for. It is bad, but it could have been much, much worse. What a tremendous relief that no one was hurt except the moron who deserved it, and that injury isn't serious.

And that's another thing. Erin, crying because I was hurt. What a little sweetheart. I kinda guessed that about her nature when I first met her. How does she do that - spontaneously feel someone else's pain? A humbling lesson for my spirit as well. Am I capable of learning these lessons?

I toss around a bit more, trying to find a comfortable position. It's gonna be a long night.

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."

0025

I've had to spend a couple days in the garden to get caught up on planting, and on hoeing the very hardy weeds. Then, Tuesday was rainy off and on all day, so I started making plans for introducing some indoor plumbing into the house.

The small room upstairs along the middle of the south wall is the most likely candidate for conversion into a bathroom. I have obtained some information on composting toilet systems. I'm thinking of the Sun-Mar Centrex style, with the composter located in the basement, and a one pint flush toilet upstairs. This will require a two pipe drain system, with the grey water from the sink and tub separate. So I spent most of my time just noodling, scratching my head, measuring, and making tentative plans for what I'll need to buy on my next trip to town.

Finally, this afternoon, I turn back to the broken pump. I'll need to lower (and, hopefully, later, raise?) things pretty much straight up and down. So, I get up on the pump house roof and remove one roof panel, and cut a hole in the roof board directly above the well.

The confidence and hope I felt after talking with Arnold are now waning. It feels kinda weird, and a bit disconcerting, to be working toward a goal with only the vaguest notion of what I ought to be doing to get there. But, I remind myself that, without a good well, all my other plans - for indoor plumbing, a wind generator, a sustainable garden - are pretty futile. And so... Lord willing, weather permitting, tomorrow I work on the well again.

0024

I like Arnold almost as soon as he opens his door and bids me enter. He listens as I introduce myself and tell my story about trying to pump the sand out of my well, and breaking it somehow, and finally dropping the whole works irretrievably down. Before I've finished, he has beckoned me to the kitchen table, placed a beer in front of me, and has sat down opposite with his own beer.

Arnold is a well-seasoned man, in his 80's. He tells me of his wife of many years, who passed away suddenly while sitting at the kitchen table, "right where you're sitting now." He speaks of the many wells he drove or helped drive for folks around here. He speaks of long years working at the taconite works; inhaling asbestos-laden mine dust has given him emphysema and a weak heart. His breathing is indeed labored, but he tells all his stories with a smile and a twinkle in his eyes, and with obvious relish.

We've finished our beers. Arnold pauses, and, with the same smile and twinkle, says, "So, you've got a dropped pipe!"

"I'm afraid so. My neighbor tells me that you might have some kind of gadget that could retrieve it?"

"What size is the pipe?"

"I think it's inch-and-a-half."

"It's inch-and-a-quarter," he corrects me, "and what size is the casing?"

"3 inches, inside diameter."

"How far down?"

"The top of the dropped pipe measures about 18 feet down."

He rises. "Well, let's go out to the shop and see what we can find."

Out in his shop, Arnold reaches a length of small diameter pipe down to me, then another. He eyes my little Tercel in the driveway. "I suppose you could tie these onto the roof?"

"Sure. Or just leave the hatch open, and let them hang out a little in the back." He nods his OK.

But I'm puzzled, and the puzzlement obviously shows, for he explains, "These two ten-foot lengths, coupled together, will reach down 18 feet, plus a little bit."

"Uhhh, OK.... But where's the gizmo that I use to grab the dropped pipe?"

"You're going to drive into town and buy two reducers to get you from half-inch female to inch-and-a-quarter female. Thread that onto one end of these half-inch pipes, and you've got yourself a twenty foot long 'gizmo'. Understand?"

"I'm afraid not. How do I get the reducer to thread onto my dropped pipe when it's so far down?"

"You said you've got a 3-inch casing, right?"

"Right."

"Then that pipe doesn't really have much wobble room, does it? Nowhere much to go when you drop that reducer, except to thread onto the reducer when you turn it. Do like I say, and you'll grab that pipe, no problem."

The wonderful simplicity of it finally dawns on me. Seeing that, Arnold's smile widens into a grin.

He goes into his shop, and comes out with a pipe vice.

"Use this to keep the pipe from slipping back down. No more U-bolts." I grin sheepishly, and thank him.

"You're a life-saver, Arnold. What do I owe you?"

Ignoring that question, "You might need somebody to help you pull the pipe up. I'm too old and weak to be of much help. Then, when you get down to the cylinder, bring it and the last section of rod back to me. All you've got is a broken rod, and it always breaks down by the cylinder. I'll rethread or weld the rod, and pack your cylinder with new leathers as well, and you'll be all set." With that, he waves me off, and goes back into the house.