Water

[sheeplady]

When I was a kid there was a public pump in the next town, a town famous for its "clean, pure spring water," and we'd go over there now and then with a trunk full of glass gallon jugs that Coke syrup came in from the drug store, and fill those up from the pump. Best tasting water I've ever had, and it was absolutely free except for the time it took you to go get it.

We did this for many years until one day the pump was gone. We opened the paper the next day to find that the water was full of benzene, leaked over the decades from a gas station two miles away, and that was the end of Famous Clean Pure Spring Water in that town.

The village I grew up outside of had a small "spring" that was called the water tub. The water tub used to be in a four corners (in the center of the road) but the invention of the car meant many people came down the hill into the valley, their brakes failed at that fateful intersection, and they crashed into the water tub. So they moved the water tub in the late 1920s several blocks away.

We used to go to the water tub to get water, just like tons of people. (Well, there was less than 200 people in the village proper, but people came from other bustling metropolises of similar sizes and smaller in the surround area too.. it seemed everybody drank some of that water.) One day I asked my father how they got the spring water from the intersection to the new tub location. Hmmm... right? That was the last day anyone in my family drank water from that tub.

To this day I have no clue where that water comes from. I don't want to. Every time I drive by there and see some unsuspecting person filling up jugs I shudder a bit.

 

[LizzieMaine]

From "Scouting For Girls," edition of 1923:

"When one must use well water, note the surrounding drainage. If the well is near a stable or an outhouse, let it alone. A well in sandy soil is more or less filtered by nature, but rocky or clayey earth may conduct disease germs a considerable distance underground. Never drink from the well of an abandoned farm: there is no telling what may have fallen into it.

"Disease germs are of animal, not vegetable origin. Still waters are not necessarily unwholesome, even though there is rotten vegetation in them. The water of cedar or cypress swamps is good to drink whenever there is a deep pool of it, unless polluted from some outside source. Lake water is safe if no settlements are on its border, but even so large a body as Lake Champlain has been condemned by state boards of health because of the sewage that runs into it.

"When a stream is in flood it is likely to be contaminated by decayed animal matter.

"When traveling in an alkali country try to carry some vinegar, limes, or lemons, or better a stoppered bottle of hydrochloric acid. One teaspoonful of hydrochloric or muriatic acid neutralizes about a gallon of water and if there should be a little excess it will do no harm but rather assist digestion. In default of acid, you may add a little Jamaica ginger and sugar to the water, making a weak ginger tea.

"Muddy water: I used to clarify Mississippi water by stirring corn meal in it and letting it settle, or by stirring a lump of alum in it until the mud began to precipitate, and then decanting the clear water. Lacking these, one can take a good handful of grass, tie it roughly in the form of a cone six or eight inches high, invert it, pour water slowly into the grass, and a runnel of comparatively clear water will trickle down through the small end.

"Stagnant water -- A traveler may be reduced to the extremity of using stagnant or even putrid water, but this should never be done without first boiling it. Some charred wood from the campfire should be boiled with the water, then skim off the scum, strain, and set water aside to cool. Boiling sterilizes and charcoal deodorizes."