Floyd Guild’s Well and a Father-Son Secret

Daddy could witch water with his divining rod, which he made from a forked willow branch. He held onto the forked part with each hand and the long part would be drawn to the ground like a magnet when it was over water. It would really vibrate. He helped me hold it and it really did move. “Willow is a water-hungry tree. That’s how the rod works,” he told us. Later in life I learned there is some scientific proof of the truth of this. Anyway, he found the spot for the well just outside the kitchen door on the other side of the driveway. Wasn’t he lucky to find it so close to the house, so we wouldn’t have too far to carry the water in? Daddy decided not to dig a typical well. Usually the hole is dug and shored up with planks; then a continuous course of bricks is laid bottom to the top as the boards are pulled out. His great idea was to make these huge cement rings that were three feet high and three feet in diameter with about eight-inch-thick walls. He made a form and poured concrete into it, let it dry, removed the form, and continued pouring until he had cast a dozen of them. It seemed to take him most of the summer mixing the concrete in a cement mixer. Bob and I had great fun using the rings as forts and for hiding from Mom and the girls. Then his real genius took over. He set the first ring where the well would be, climbed inside with a shovel and started digging. By carefully undercutting around the base of the ring as he dug, the great round concrete ring sank into the ground. When its top had descended to ground level, another ring was set on top of it and the digging continued. He had to put the dirt into a bucket when the well started to get deep and Bob and I would pull it up on a winch until that became too hard, and then the neighbors came over to help—probably Dale McFarland and Tom Johnson. When he finished “Floyd Guild’s Well”, as it had become known, it was thirty three feet deep and very secure from a cave-in, which had happened to Tom Johnson’s brick well. Happily, there was one ring left over which we rolled down to the orchard where we played in it forever. This project was considered a “SAFE” project by Mom’s standards though she always warned Daddy not to fall into the well as he descended the ever-longer and longer, narrow homemade ladder into it. Because of the construction, the ground water seeped in between the bottom rings very slowly filling the well and producing sparkling-clean water. But Mom would have had a heart attack if she’d known that Dad and Dale lowered me into the well just before Dad hit water. It was a hot day and I had no shirt on. A thick rough rope was made into a crude halter. I was not scared, for some reason, as Dad and Dale lowered me slowly down. The rope really hurt my back, and it was very cold in the well and I started to shiver uncontrollably. When I got to the bottom, I looked up and just as Dad had promised, I could see the stars in the sky in the middle of the day. It was the thrill of my life. But there was a catch. I was sworn to a pact of father-son secrecy on threat of the razor strap if I ever told Mom. I told her late in life and she claimed she knew it, but I don’t think she did, though Bob may remember that day.