Assault in the cistern

On the farm we had two cisterns. For those that do not know what those are it is a hole in the ground, many different shapes, which was dug and lined with cement to store water in where the climate was dry. The collected rain water or went by wagon to a water source and hauled it home to fill the cistern.  There are many places in Central Oregon that use cistern water even today. 

 One of our cisterns was used for water storage in case of a fire as we also had domestic water but in cases that extra water was needed we had some.  The other cistern we had was shaped kind of like an upside down light bulb.  On top of the light bulb was a square box of brick with a lid on it.  Dad had built shelves around the inside of the cistern and there was only a small area with a ladder with just enough room for one person. You would store all your canned goods there and they wouldn’t freeze.

It was a lot of work when you got done canning to go out and pack the jars down the ladder and put them away.  Mom rigged up a bucket with a rope and she would go down the ladder and set on the edge of a shelf and you would fill the bucket with jars and let it down. She would take the jars off and place them and yell pull and you would pull the bucket back up and fill it up again.

It was my brothers’ turn to let the bucket down. He let it down and up and down and up and was bored to tears.  He would let it down and started goofing off.  He let one bucket full down and mom unloaded it.  When he went to pull it back up, he yanked really hard trying to make it fly back up. Well the bucket turned, hit the ladder and flipped and hit mom right between the eyes and kind of flipped again and hit her in the forehead.

I guess you know what happened, blacked both of her eyes. He felt so bad.  She worked as a grocery clerk and had to go to work the next day and it looked like dad had beat her up.  I don’t think many people believed the story either as they would look at her, like, right, we believe that. And that is how rumors get started…..lol