By “BUZZ” KING, guest columnist
Most town people had wells way back. The well we call the “town well” is still at the Village Green, but there were many others — too many to talk about.
A few of note were eight along the one block of Blood Alley, four of which are still there today, but not in use. We are talking dug wells. There was one near the pavilion on the Village Green, and two now under the Christian church parking lot where the Pittman House stood. One was fresh water and the other was a sulphur well which brought people from all over to stay at the Pittman Hotel for health reasons.
One year was very dry, hot, and this resulted in a low water table, which, of course, was worrisome to most, and in particular, the Pittman Hotel. They paid a local man to dig it out deeper, but as only a local person would do, he dropped a stick of dynamite in the well, and just as quick, the well filled with water — good, fresh water.
Days later, the folks who used the town well, which had never gone dry, ever, found it was dry as a bone. Guess where that water went? Water moves in veins, and that dynamite blew a hole between two veins. After that year, the town well would dry up when a dry spell hit.
The county, seeing a problem and having the means, installed a pumphouse and deep well beside Salt Creek, near the then-bridge at the south end of Jefferson Street, and ran a water line to the courthouse. They were building an addition with two restrooms and a walk-in vault on the first floor and a room for judges on the second floor at the north end of the building. There sat a house which was purchased and razed to make way. Realizing a.) no sewer, and b.) no room for a septic field, well, nothing to do but run a drain down the hill to the west to (expletive) Creek, which ran from Hidden Valley to Salt Creek at the end of Johnson Street, and which had always been used for such things as this — hence, the name.
In 1947, construction started on a 2-inch water line from Ogle Lake in the state park to town. The line ran along what is now Old 46 East, through Firecracker Hill property and past the “poor farm” (now the school district’s “White House”) into town — thus, making that pumphouse useless.
Our house had well water ‘til 1954 when my father saved money to enclose the back porch and install a 30-inch shower and a sink, as well as a flush indoor toilet — all of which was very strange to a child used to bathing in a No. 3 washtub, as did all the family.
My uncle Ben (mother’s brother) came down from Indy and dug a trench in the shape of a rectangle and filled it with concrete. Coffee cans left voids in the sides as needed for inlet pipe and outlet to the drainage ditch (which was open). Two days later, he dug out the center, poured the floor, and made a slab with that same No. 3 tube to form a lid and access hole. And then we had a functioning bathroom. Now, a small LP heater and we were green to go!
‘Til next time.
”Buzz” King is a nearly lifelong resident of Brown County and past president of the Nashville Town Council. His father, Fred King, was the unofficial county historian.
