Chapter 1

(Water well Man)

I grew up in a farming family environment though we lived in town ... Sounds confusing, it is ... My Dads family were all farmers and we spent most of our free time on the Farm working and playing ... Back in the late 1950's life was a lot simpler and if you wanted something done you did it yourself ... My one uncle, Uncle Hoppy, had his own borehole maintenance company and worked all over the country ... Now uncle Hoppy was a big man that came back from the war with only one leg but he still lived and worked hard with a passion ... When I started thinking about writing this little story it was with fond memories of those early days ... Plastic, or PVC, pipe still had not been made so all the work was done with Galvanized pipe ... Great companies like Stewarts and Lloyds sold everything from foot valves to windmill heads with everything in between ... Not many of the old pump manufacturers have survived intact – KSB is the one that has whereas fantastic companies like Mono have been raped by corporate buyouts ... The Borehole Man was generally brought up into the family business as a son, cousin or a friend ... You did your apprenticeship in the hot African sun and learnt how to do things with few spares and a lot of initiative ... If you needed a key for a keyway, you found a piece of scrap metal and shaped one with a flat file ... Town was a 6 hour drive one way and you made do with what you had ... The knowledge that was gained in those early days is now unfortunately lost to memory as nowadays everything is done with HDPE piping, Nylon couplings and plastic pumps ... Everyone is now an expert technician and actually knows stuff all ... I used to laugh at the farmers when you needed a part ... Using the old party line phone you would crank up exchange and ask for the closest S&L branch ... No telephone directory needed ... the switchboard operator would ask what you were looking for and within 15 minutes one of the neighbours trotted across with the required part ... I remember when I dropped a pipe on my foot, It wasn't half an hour and the clinic sister was there and had it wrapped up in plaster of paris ... Yes it was broken and she had been next door delivering a baby ... those days have unfortunately all gone as today's health and safety, OSH and all the rest make working in the field a pain in the arse ... If you lost your finger because you put it in a V drive you were sent off to Casualty and learnt not to be stupid again ... Nowadays that would be a court case with all sorts of shit hitting the fan, none of it to the stupid idiot for being a stupid idiot ... So on with my rambling tale...