I feel like writing some more about water. I have told you about my grandfather T. A. Rippy’s Piney Mountain Spring Water company that supplied the Valley, Harmon Field and Lynn areas. The water was delivered by gravity so there were no pumps involved. It was so pure that no treatment was required, either. I grew up drinking pure water and raw Jersey milk. They taste different from what we drink today.
I also wrote in times past about how good water tastes when lifted from a dug well by a bucket. It was also pure and untreated, coming from the underground aquifer. Drinking from a spring is a similar experience . . . the water is pure and its cool temperature is “just right.” My Aunt Georgia’s family farm had a bold spring and her father had built a “spring house” to keep the milk and butter cool. The “house” was there to keep animals out!
I never did like the taste of the pumped in well water or of the chlorine in “city water.” We now live in “The Woods” off Hayes Road and have Columbus city water. I am thankful that we don’t have to have a private well, but we are not thrilled by the water we get. They warn us when they are going to flush things, so we don’t let water into the house until it runs clear from the first outside faucet. Standing clear water leaves a brown ring, so I really don’t know what I am drinking now . . . maybe I am getting my “iron” ration in every glass!