Water

 A typical small town well in Germany. I got water from many wells like that.

Oh, how I hated it when Mutti said, “Sonja, take the canister and get some water!”

She might have run out cooking or mopping the kitchen floor (which was almost impossible to keep clean with seven people coming and going all the time.)

I’d grab the hated canister, an old U.S. army metal contraption Vati had exchanged from an American soldier for some free circus tickets. He got it when I was a baby; before he lost the circus. It had a small opening on the top with a chained-on screw-in lid, and it was heavy even without water. But, living in a caravan, it was an important part of our lives. We had no running water, and at that time, we also had no way to store a large amount of water. So, every day or two, one of us children had to get water.

If we were in a small town, I’d go to the town’s well, located near the center of the town. It had a trough connected to the pump, which was always full of water, ready for the cows and other livestock to come home in the evenings and take a drink before going on to their barns. I’d put the canister onto the grate under the pump, grab the long handle and pump it up and down for the water to come up. Until I was about twelve, I could not carry the canister when it was completely full. It held about ten gallons. I filled it as full as I could carry and dragged it back to the caravan home.

In towns where the well wasn’t close, Vati asked a neighboring farmer if we could get water from his outside tap.

To save water, Mutti made us wash only our hands and faces in the evenings. I don’t think I saw a toothbrush until I was ten.

To get us ready for bed, Mutti filled a bowl half-full with water and put it onto the kitchen table. She grabbed the baby, little Eva, or later, baby Michael, and wiped her face with a rag reserved for the children. Then she soaped her hands and rinsed them in the water.

The next-oldest child was next. We used the same water for the three youngest, and the same face rag for all of us. When it came my turn, I swiped the rag over my face. Sometimes Mutti inspected our work. “You missed your mouth,” she might say, or, “wash your ears, too.” But most often she didn’t even look. The last one, Carmen, poured the used water into the slush bucket by the door and put away the bowl.

One after the other, we tromped into the back compartment, the children’s bedroom, took off our clothes and slipped into the cold bed.

Tomorrow I’ll talk more about water in the caravan.