Now & Then | The farmer-plumber dug ditches with shovel and pick

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

I used to say I’d love to be 10 different people. That way I might be involved in the many occupations that have interested me.

Early on, I imagined myself as a farmer, following my dad’s footsteps. Later, I wanted to be an engineer;

not the train engineer, but the designer of engines and machines. When I was in school, I supposed that the most useful course I was taking was agri-shop.

I didn’t think English and history and geography and civics would be useful in my working life. But the Lord called me to the ministry, and everything turned around. English, history and geography and all became very important to me, and my farm and shop interests became side-lines and hobbies.

This past week I have been reviving my involvement as a farmer-plumber.

My brother Ben and I have been reworking some of the old plumbing in the house where we grew up.

We have both remarked about the strange feeling it gives us to work onpipes and valves that we saw go in as new years ago, and now they are old and worn. It makes us feel our 70 years, but it especially amazes us that nearly 60 years have passed since we were building this house new, and fully 65 years have passed since we started laying pipes on the farm, giving us indoor running water for the first time. How quickly time passes!

It is also amazing that prior to that ditch-digging 65 years ago, many of the conveniences we take for granted now were not available to us at all. I’m thinking of heated running water in the house, of bath tubs and showers that operate by turning a knob, of washing machines that fill without trips to the well for water, of bathrooms that replaced the out-house.

Farm people in the earlier days almost had to learn a variety of skills. A farm could hardly be operated successfully if you hired people to do everything for you. So we learned about animal husbandry, about soils and tilling the soil, about plants and gardening, about maintaining farm machinery. We learned some carpentry, and to my point now, a little plumbing. My dad was not too good as a mechanic with the machinery; he would turn the mechanic work over to us three boys when he could; but he was a pretty fair self-taught plumber.

Before we got electricity on the farm, we didn’t need plumbing. We didn’t even have a sink drain. There was no sink. We did have a big dishpan. When you were finished washing the dishes, you might use the dishwater to mop the floor, or you might carry it outside and pour it out, or you could water the flower bed.

A few people had running water even before they got electricity. My wife’s family, the Ray and Zula Patterson family, had a nice spring

Community, Pages 5 on 10/20/2010