Turning Back the Clock

When I would visit my grandparents as a child there was a truck that would come around everyday in North Battleford with a big tank on the back. It would pull up to the houses on its route and fill a barrel that was located in each house with drinking water. Water for washing was collected in either a cistern located in the basement or in a 1000 gallon tank connected to the downspouts on your house.

This was the same in both town, and in the country on the farm where my other grand parents lived. My grandmother on the farm had it really easy because she actually had water in the house. My grand father had dug a well beside the house and had installed two hand pumps with a sink in the kitchen. The one pumped drinking water and the other connected into a big cistern in the basement. You didn't drink from the cisterm pump though, I remember when I was quite small being held by my feet and lowered into the cistern with a pail and a long stick to fish dead mice out.

As I was returning from downtown today there was a big truck blocking the street, as we passed it I noticed it was full of racks with big jugs of water. He was delivering drinking water to offices on the street. Struck me as kind of funny how we have progressed.