After Dad lost the farm, we traveled around a lot, fixing up other peoples houses.
One year while Dad worked for the highway department, he found out about the little schoolhouse in Kingsbury being for sale. It would become our home for years although there was no running water. It was built on a rock ledge and we were told it would be too expensive to drill for water.
This bathtub was in Bentley's pasture. There was a pipe in the hillside that ran through the hole in the tub where the faucet would have been. It was an artesian well. We heard stories about underground rivers and caves. We got our drinking water here by the pailful all the years we lived in the school house.
It was usually my job to get the daily water, a bucket in the morning and one in the evening.
One morning I had filled the pail and climbed to the top of the hill to begin the trek home through the field and woods and under the barbed wire fence, but I stopped still at the top and stared straight at a huge copperhead snake.
I screamed and threw the pail of water at him. I ran home yelling like a banshee. I remember cursing at Dad that he could get his own d*mn water!
Dad went back and killed the snake and I kept getting water, but from then on I made a lot of noise.
I took this photo of the Bentley road. I used to love winter and how beautiful this land was. The road is still there but everything else has changed. Now instead of squirrels on the hillsides, there are trailers.