Before we Had Plumbing

When we were young, most of our houses didn’t have indoor plumbing. Families were larger then with many children. In our family there were 13, 7 boys and 6 girls. That meant that we had to be lots of water. A good many families had their own well, but for those that didn’t, there was usually several public wells to provide for a gate supply of quality drinking water. A lot of families had water barrels, a couple of good galvanized buckets and hoop to make lugging the water easier. I remember growing up in our house and the watter barrell was usually kept in the porch and the buckets were ona stand with a dipper or jug alongside for bringing water into the kitchen or for filling the kettle.

Sometime in the summer the barrel was put outside as in my painting. One of our daily chores was to fill up the water barrell. I can still remember. “Before you go skating or trouting you have to bring water and file up the barrell”, and I would always say “come on Jack “(my younger brother). Notice in front of the door in the painting there is a poke mat. Remember that?