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| Tales From the Well |
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That wasn’t Sivert’s first experience digging wells. When he was a young man, he was asked to help deepen a well for a man named Mr. Watkins, who was the proprietor of a store which stood across the highway from the present day Decker Lake Hall. His well went dry and he hired Sivert and another young man to dig it deeper. When they finished the well, it was 35 feet deep. “That was deep enough,” Sivert joked.
Mary’s family, too, had a hand dug well on their homestead. Their farm was on the eastern end of Palling Road. The house, which was built by Mary’s father, Carl Holmgren, between 1926 and 1930. At first Carl, then a single man, just hauled his water from a nearby stream. After he married Florence, Mary’s mother, he decided he needed a well which he dug in the early 1940s. |
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Carl Holmgren fits a hand pump in his well
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The soil in the area is hard-packed clay. Carl had to use a pick and shovel to dig the well. As the well became deeper, he used a team of horses to haul the buckets of clay up to the surface with a windlass. Someone at the top would dump the bucket for him then lower it back into the well for the next load. The well grew deeper.
One day, when Carl was working below, a neighbour stopped by for a visit, accompanied by a dog. The dog barked, spooking the horses and making them bolt. As they galloped away, the bucket dragged behind them to the top of the well where the rope snapped. The bucket tumbled back into the well. Carl was still below. The well was only about four feet square so there was no room to jump out of the way. Luckily for Carl, there was a slight bend in the wall of the well and the bucket caught there instead of hitting him. |
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