THROUGH
MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of
Their
Descendants...Their Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the
Mists of History on Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene Dyer Jones
It was a hot dry summer, much
like this May
and June 2011 has been. Water was
scarce, and crops looked pitiful in the fields.
To complicate matters, our well went dry. What
were we to do for drinking water?
I don’t remember the exact year,
somewhere in the ‘30’s after the economy, too, had fallen in the crash
of
October, 1929. Times were hard, and to
have the well go dry was adding another angst to the already long list
of woes
the farmers in Choestoe Community faced.
I was old enough to remember, and to
think of how serious was our situation.
I remember my father, J. Marion Dyer, praying that he could find
water
as he went on his search.
Remembering this incident, I
thought it
quite strange that he went out to one of the peach trees near our
garden and
looked until he found a branch. He cut
it, and in his hands he held a “y”-shaped limb.
With the limb in one hand and a
shovel in
the other, he went walking down the dirt road by our house. I was following close behind him, full of
curiosity. When he got to the trail
that angled up on the bank, the trail on which we drove our cows daily
to
pasture, he turned right. I followed
right behind him, stepping fast to keep up with him and see where he
was
headed.
We had a v-shaped walk-through
entrance in the fence leading to the pasture where people could enter
but where
the animals could not get through. Dad
went through this entrance, and there I was, following not far behind
him. He
propped his shovel at the fence and moved on.
He proceeded on through the pasture,
and after descending the hill we were in sort of a little valley, with
a
stream, now only a trickle from the drought, providing the only water
our
cattle had to drink, since our well was dry and we could not fill the
watering
troughs at the barn.
Daddy made a right turn again, and
walked a distance into the glade. On
each side of the now nearly-dry stream elder bushes grew.
These too, looked skimpy in that hot, dry
summer heat. Even in the mountains of
North Georgia, the weather was unseasonably hot.
I saw my father grip the peachtree
limb by its forked prongs, holding it out before him.
In
my childlike way, I wondered what he was doing with the limb and why he
held it
at an upward angle out in front of him as he walked.
On he went, gripping the limb and looking
carefully down at the ground. He seemed
to be concentrating in a very concerned way, and I kept very quiet, not
daring
to break his reverie or interfere with his strange actions.
He walked on in the low place in our
pasture, many paces, the peachtree limb held upward as he gripped its
forked
prongs in both his hands.
Then, amazingly, the limb tipped over
as if by magic, as if pulled by a gravity that defied reason. Daddy let the limb down to mark the spot
where some force had pulled it. Leaving
the branch on the spot, he went back to the fence to retrieve the
shovel he had
left there. Bringing it to the location
of the peachtree limb, he began to dig.
I stood watching as he lifted
shovelful after shovelful of dirt from the ground.
He had dug down, maybe a foot or more, when,
miraculously, a gushing stream of water came forth, bubbling like a
fountain.
He had found a bubbling spring, buried
underneath the soil right in our pasture.
It was not long until water was flowing out.
He dug deeper, smoothing and making a
circular opening, and also digging a trench for the water to run away
from its
bubbling source.
Daddy had found a source of
water. Most of that day was spent
digging the spring deeper and shoring up this marvelous watering place,
building a rock wall around it on three sides.
He also went back to the house to get some lumber.
He built a large spring box over the stream
that flowed out from the bold spring.
This spring box would be our “refrigerator” in the days before
electricity came to our farm, the place where we would place our jugs
of milk
to keep them cold. Later, he would
replace the temporary “spring box” by a springhouse, a more permanent
building
with space to set butter and other items, as well as the milk we needed
to
refrigerate. The water bubbling out from
this marvelous spring was cold and clear, tasteful and pure. I had heard the story of how Moses in the
long ago wilderness wandering days had struck the rock and water poured
forth. My Daddy had dug into the earth
at a certain spot and water bubbled forth.
Another necessary job was to erect a
strong fence around the area of the spring so that the farm animals
that were
pastured in the same vicinity would not break through and trample on or
otherwise
molest this source for family water. As
the summer moved along, he made the new spring an oasis, a beautiful
place to
go to fetch water, and a quiet, cool place apart where we could go and
rest
awhile from field labors.
When rains came again to water our
valley, our well was restored to its former productivity.
We no longer had to carry water in buckets
the half-mile from the spring in the midst of the pasture to the house
for our
daily use. But we kept up the spring,
kept the foliage trimmed from around it, and kept the springhouse as
the place
for our refrigeration until electricity finally came to the valley
later on.
Today, with many seasons having come
and gone since that bubbling spring was discovered that summer day in
the
1930’s, I’m not sure if it still bubbles forth in the midst of that
little dell
near the elder bushes in our old pasture.
In fact, the land has changed and been developed since those
long ago
days when a family was desperate for water.
In memory I think back to that day
when in wonder I followed Daddy as he held his peachtree limb in front
of him,
and with a prayer on his lips went forth to find water.
There was a name for the peachtree limb: it
was called a ‘witching stick.’ And the
person who held it just so to find
water was called ‘a witcher.’ Thinking
about it, it doesn’t sound so good, as if the person endowed with such
a gift
would have some power of a darker nature as bestowed by witches or
seers. This method was also used to detect
water
deep beneath the ground as folks in our community sought to find the
right spot
to dig a new well. Whatever the power,
whether of gravity working on the chemistry in a peachtree limb,
whether
coincidence, or whatever, it seemed to work.
Now there are technological imaging
devices that declare a source of water before well drillers take their
machines
and quickly get to the source of water.
But back in the days of our forefathers, they used what they
knew in the
ways common to their culture. And,
miraculously, these ways seemed to bring the desired results. After
finding the
spring, we didn’t take water for granted any more.
We thanked God for clear, pure water.
[Ethelene Dyer
Jones is a retired educator,
freelance writer, poet, and historian. She may be reached at
e-mail edj0513@windstream.net;
phone 478-453-8751; or mail 1708 Cedarwood Road, Milledgeville, GA
31061-2411.]
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