The way it used to be...

Down here, on US 25-E, going to Kentucky & points NW, there was a pipe that stuck out of this mountain, & poured out a stream of DELICIOUS, cold water. You stuck yr face mouth up to it & got yr fill. We never worried about getting poisoned, sick, anything like that, & often, there were several cars waiting for their passengers to get THEIR fill., or fill up plastic jugs. Nowadays, people would likely have "Double-Dying Duck Fits" about something so unsafe & unsanitary, blah, blah, blah. but on a hot day, that cool water sure hit the spot ! There was/is a similar public well near Jefferson City, TN that was actually in a little building/shed, but offered similarly sweet, cool water. I don't remember ever hearing of anyone getting sick/dying from either place, but since everybody is SO effin' uptight about EVERYTHING anymore, it would be amazing if either place is still operational...

 

Hmmmmmpf... People back in the 1800s were made out of a LOT Tougher Stuff than we are. My maternal gran, who died in '93 after being born in 1889, she & her sister Laura were playing in their family's barn, sliding down a big mound of hay, & Laura ran a pitchfork thru her foot. She & my gran stuffed it full of straw, Laura hobbled around for awhile, & that was basically that. They DIDN'T tell their parents, 'cause THEIR daddy had told them to stay out of the barn, & they were terrified of what he would have done to them for such gross disobedience. Aunt Laura told that story to me as a kid, &I kinda pooh-poohed it, she says, "Looky HERE"... pulled off her shoe, & on the bottom of her foot were 2 small indentations that had blackish spots on 'em. Those are what's left of the straw, she explained. Nowadays, they'd have tossed Laura in the hospital for a week, pumped her foot full of antibiotics, Lord knows what all, it would have been a MAJOR league Big Deal. IIRC, Laura finally died in the mid-late Seventies, she made it I think almost to 100, too. There were 7-8 of them young 'uns, one was crazy, one got killed in WW2, but all the rest lived almost DISGUSTINGLY long lives.

 

I had/have an ICOM R-7000, which is a fancy radio that will pick up 20-2000 Mhz. It would pick up Cell phones, which in the early 90s weren't digitised, homogenized, refried, all that. Most of it was mundane "Maw, I'm at th' Store. Want me to pick up innythaing ?", or teenagers squealing w/delight over their newest toy. Only time I really ever picked up anything much interesting was when Uncle John, my neighbor across the street, was on the phone w/someone telling them his wife, Marie, who had been my 6th grade teacher & was kinda Mama #2. THAT was kinda tough.

 

Guess I shoulda put in my previous post that Uncle John was telling that guy that Marie had died. I think she had kidney failure, amongst other things. Their son, David,died last year, I think he was in his sixties. He had literally been shot to hell in Vietnam. He got caught in a firefight, was hit in his leg & torso, his wounds set up a electrolytic reaction, he should have died, but he made it back home. He woke up in an Army hospital in Japan a few weeks later, still had his fatigues on, still had dried mud on his pants. I saw him once several years back w/o a shirt on, & there were large chunks of his torso gone. He got 100% disability, but they kept trying to take it away from him, because he COULD work somewhat, some days he could outwork anyone, but a lot of the time he was doing good to get out of bed. He was a little, quiet guy, an EXCELLENT neighbor. & I miss him, even though we weren't that close. His wife, Regenia & me & my wife aren't all that close either, but we kinda keep an eye on each other. We're there for each other, if we ever need to be.