Memoirs of Lloyd Moss: 1915
During the first summer we had a wonderful happening in our own back yard. Three burly men came with a large drilling rig to dig a well right up against the porch. First ropes, then the drill bit was screwed on, the engine started, and the steady thud, thud began that was to last, during daylight hours, for the next three weeks. Beside the hole, they built an enclosure of planks in which they kept a very soupy mixture of clay and water and every once in a while they would pour a bucket of this down the hole for lubrication. As the hole got deeper they would pound a section of well-casing down to hold the sides from caving in. The sections fit one into the other and were just big enough for the drill bit to clear easily. From time to time a bit would have to be unscrewed, a new one put on, and the first one sharpened on a grindstone. The wrenches used looked enormous to us - one man alone couldn't lift them. Whenever the rope broke or a drill bit came off, they had to lower special grappling hooks to get the drill up again. At intervals, they lifted the bit out and lowered a special iron tube to bring up mud, crushed rock etc. which they poured onto the ground until our whole back yard was a quagmire. Whenever the earth strata changed from clay to shale to hard rock, they pulled up their rope and changed to an appropriate design of drill bit for the job. Of course when something broke they shut down and usually repaired it themselves and they even had a blacksmith's forge that they would set in operation.
We children practically lived on the porch all this time and never grew the least tired of watching. The men talked to us sometimes, and they talked with each other constantly in a special well-digger jargon, I suppose, about the prospects of how deep this well would have to be, of the rock formation they were going through, of the difficulties they had had on other jobs around the country, and the fact that the prohibition law was about to go into effect. They weren't much on singing, but they had a kind of musical ditty that went - "How're you going to wet your whistle when the whole damn world goes dry".
Finally they struck enough water to stop. It was quite a deep well but it was very anti-climactic to us kids because, I suppose, we must have expected a gusher. They put a water-pipe down with a long-handled pump in top that could be operated without stepping off the porch, assembled all their equipment, and went out of our lives forever. Mother said it was the hardest water she had ever seen and put containers around to collect as much rain water as possible for wash days. However, we no longer had to carry water from the spring down in the valley. I was sorry to see the well-diggers go because I learned all kinds of mechanical tricks and methods of improvisation from observing their work day after day.
When mother needed milk she had us take a little covered pail and a dime and walk down a logging road through the woods to the valley below. There was a single cabin down there and, inside, it was always so thick with steam and smoke that you could hardly see. That, together with the smells of cooking cabbage and babies, made it an ordeal to stand for the short space of time it took for the woman to fill our bucket from a big open container on the table. Perhaps the fact that none of us seemed to like raw milk was a fortunate thing. There couldn't have been enough left after the cooking uses anyway. I shudder to think now of the microbes that must have been swimming around in that milk. Pasteurization was years in the future in that hillbilly region. A new Methodist Church was built on peach orchard land between our house and Millstone station. Mother had been a Methodist before she was married so naturally she was drawn to it and soon found herself playing the organ for services. They hymns that were popular here I have never forgotten. Here are the titles of some I remember: "Onward Christian Soldiers", "Throw Out the Lifeline, Someone is Sinking Today", "I Shall Never Forget How the Fire Felt", "Jesus is Calling", "Rock of Ages Cleft for Me", "Crossing the Bar", "Washed in the Blood of the Lamb", "When the Roll is Called up Yonder", "We Will Gather at the River", and "There's a Silver Lining Behind the Dark Cloud Shining".