Aunt Hattie’s Well 

         My Great Aunt Hattie lived on a farm on Gallows road, in Virginia.  Tyson’s Mall sits there today.  She lived there with Uncle George.  Hattie and George’s relationship was unexplained.  It was 1950. I was 7.

         An hour’s drive from our home in Georgetown, I would arrive at Aunt Hattie’s wound up and cranky.  I would run and climb in the barn and wind down somewhat.  Then Uncle George would entertain the residual spizarinktum, my Mother’s word, and cranky out of me with his cigarette rolling machine.  My Mother smoked.  My Father, smoked.  I assumed smoking came with Adulthood and when I became an Adult I wanted to have a contraption like Uncle George’s to home brew my own Lucky Strikes. Thinking back to that time I can’t be sure Uncle George didn’t have a still as well.

         Aunt Hattie had a well on the side porch.  I remember looking down into the well and my head being enveloped by the well’s cool dank miasma.  I remember my Mother holding onto my legs.  Uncle George hauled up a pail of water.  He offered me a glassful.  I was dubious.  My Mother was dubious. My Father took the glass and drank.  He grabbed his throat, rolled his eyes and fell to the floor.  Ha. Ha.  Uncle George said if I took a drink he would let me roll a cigarette with his machine.  The Women all hushed him.  Mission accomplished.  I took a sip.  It was cold.  It was minerally sweet.  It was the best water I had ever tasted.  Today a glass of water can return me to that moment at Aunt Hattie’s well when I took a sip, then drank, a perfect glass of water.